Hyperx Alloy Elite

VERDICT

Excellent design, excellent performance and an excellent price –HyperX’s keyboard department does it again

- James Archer

HYPERX HAS ITS fingers in an esoteric bakery’s worth of gaming hardware pies, from RAM sticks and SSDs (just like its parent company, Kingston) to headsets and mice. This try-it-all approach might have resulted in alack of focus and lacklustre products, but when the Alloy FPS (Shopper 349) came out –HyperX’s first stab at a mechanical gaming keyboard –it quickly won us over with its compact yet durable design and genuine Cherry MX Blue key switches.

More recently, a couple of spin-offs have appeared: the ten keyless Alloy FPS Pro, an even smaller version aimed at the traveling LAN party attendee and eSports enthusiast, and this, the bigger Alloy Elite. It’s £20 more expensive than the Alloy FPS, not to mention considerably thicker and heavier, but you don’t need to look very hard to see why.

LIGHT SHOW

As good as the Alloy FPS was, it skimped a little on bonus buttons and features, which are here in full force on the Alloy Elite. At the top left corner sits one button for toggling the red back lighting’s brightness levels, one for cycling through various lighting effects, and one for engaging Game Mode, which disables the Windows key –a potentially must-have shortcut for anyone prone to accidentally bringing up the Start menu during a game’s crucial moment, minimising it or sending the window to the back.