Corsair STRAFE Mechanical Keyboard Review

[section_title title=”Conclusion”]

Conclusion

The STRAFE is an interesting keyboard in my eyes. Corsair have gone back to the basics to provide a simple, yet effective and decent performing keyboard, without fancy brushed aluminium cases or a million extra macro keys. Yes, certainly the Cherry MX switches play a major role in the performance, as they do in most mechanical keyboards, but it is the simplicity of this combined with the powerful customisation software that makes this keyboard great and perfect for gamers.

Despite being simplistic in design, the STRAFE does contain some useful internal features such as NKRO and a powerful enough processor and on-board memory to create fancy lighting effects and macros which you can easily share with others. The addition of the contoured key caps was a nice touch, as gimmicky as they seem, they actually felt great and made locating them far easier than without.

I’m not a sucker for LED backlighting (especially red), but I do applaud the inclusion and customisable nature of them, as many users (particularly the show-offs at LANs) love to make their keyboard their own. Additionally, they can be useful for those all-nighter gaming sessions.

What really makes the keyboard though is the complex CUE software, which pretty much enables you to change almost every aspect of the keyboard. Yes it can be complex to setup, but watching a few tutorials on YouTube made it much simpler to create macros and fancy effects.

The STRAFE is the first keyboard I have seen from Corsair that has refrained from using the brushed aluminium body, so you would like to think that this would be reflected in the price.. wrong! Well, kind of. At a few pennies over £100 it can still be considered as fairly expensive, however you do get what you pay for and in the case of the STRAFE, it is quality. Despite having a textured plastic body, the keyboard still has a fantastic build quality and solid feel to it. It is also nice to see that Corsair have returned to their main sails logo! It just goes to show what feedback from Corsair’s customers can actually do.

Overall I think the STRAFE is a great keyboard for gamers – great build quality, simple design, fantastic customisability, but at a cost. For these reasons I am very happy to award the Corsair STRAFE with our:

Well done Corsair and big thanks for sending this over.