[section_title title=Testing]

Testing

Using the Venom Warrior was a bit of a mixed bag. It’s really well made, stable and sturdy with no flex thanks to that thick metal armour. I rather like the styling and even though black and red has been done a million times for every gaming product, Venom have implemented it well here. The included rest, let’s call it a palm rest as it’s far too short to reach my wrists, is really comfortable with a sleek rubber finish to the top that’s a little too slippery at first, but grip gradually increases with use. If it gets too grippy after reacting to your body then you can easily take it off, wash it, and start from scratch.

The keys themselves have a loud satisfying click to tell everyone in the office that you’re busy working (and bring attention to those who aren’t with some conspicuous silence) and have a bit more resistance than I was used to, having only ever used membrane keyboards in the past. “How much resistance?” you might ask… um, I don’t know. Those secretive folks at Venom have not told me what the actuation weight is for the keys, nor do I know the travel distance to the trigger point or even if alternative switches are available for you to choose between. I can’t help but think that Venom has missed a trick here. Members of the mechanical keyboard community are pretty knowledgeable about what makes a good product as well as what makes a perfect one for him or herself, but the lack of information regarding this liquid silicon filled switches, that are brand new and developed in-house, is something that won’t sit well with many enthusiasts.

The macros are well handled, considering there’s no supporting software to use. An LED has different flashing states to highlight which stage you are at and learning to program the macro takes just a few seconds of trial and error to find the boundaries. Unfortunately, there’re only 4 keys, which admittedly is better than none, and they only accept 20 keystrokes. This makes them great for gaming, but you won’t be programming hotkey links to all your social media channels or starting your favourite game with just one button. So depending on how you want to use these you will either find them great or very restrictive.

The function keys… subtitled ‘Insert rant’ (or ‘I’m confused’). Easy access to media controls when in game is brilliant, ranging from either being a simple convenience that stops you having to alt-tab when chatting in-game, to the essential allowing you to quickly pass on a song that’s about to start swearing on your Twitch stream during a boss fight; I think every keyboard should have them. Here you have the full range, not just song controls but a button to activate your preferred player in and a mute button. But why on earth they included volume +/- keys at all when there’s a very stylish volume control in the corner of the board I can’t understand. It’s not easy to operate the function button at the same time as the F2 and F3 keys to control the volume with just one hand. I have a large span and can only just manage it, but it was so awkward that I was realistically left with the choice of using both hands to change the volume or just use the included volume switch. This essentially wastes two easily identifiable function button combos.

Next we come to the other oddity, that ‘disable the keyboard’ function key, again in a prime location in the top row at F10. When used, there is no visible marker to tell you that the keys have now been disabled, no LED and the background lighting which remains in the same state as it was previously. What’s it there for? As I alluded to earlier, if you are into playing tricks on people then perhaps you could get regular use from it, or if you have a particularly persistent pet that really likes forcing your fingers off the keys then I could understand it; for the most part I didn’t get any use from it, even with my cat constantly jumping on the desk it was just as inconvenient to stop myself from typing as when my cat does it to me.

Now we’re up to 3 keys that can be arguably vacated for something more useful… and one of those is the combo that currently occupies FN + Q. I have said before that this secret combo is only discovered by reading the manual since there is no marker on the key itself. The entry reads, “Speeds up the keystroke transmission rate.” Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for added functionality where it improves quality of life in some way, but the pedant in me immediately asked the questions, “By how much? How many times till it’s at maximum?”, and, then a more important one, “How do I slow it down again?” Sadly, I’m here with more questions than answers again, but if there’s no way to turn it down again maybe that means faster is better, and no indicator again to show how fast it currently is, which suggests that you shouldn’t play with it often. If only Venom had provided a way to display what the stroke transmission rate actually was, and used the volume +/- key combo to raise and lower it, we could say if it’s useful or not but I pressed it about 30 times, didn’t notice any difference, and then just ignored it.

Thankfully the other function keys are much better handled. Starting your preferred email client or web browser is a snap as is accessing the calculator. The windows key is tied to the function combo that disables it and lighting controls are numerous and easy to understand. With the inclusion of two combo keys to adjust brightness as well as the main key which toggles through the colours before turning the lighting off as well as working with the function key to turn on the alternating lights and pulsing effect it’s all starts to look pretty good as far as the pretty colours go. The backlight itself is bright when at maximum, clearly illuminating the boundary between each key but sadly because the caps are solid, coloured plastic with printed labels the lighting doesn’t help at all when it comes to reading the keys in the dark.

Changing the WASD keys for the cursor keys was something that I only did once to test that it worked, and typing the letters WASD on the arrow keys was a strangely satisfying thing; but as far as gaming goes I don’t think I’ve played anything in the past decade that didn’t allow you to remap movement keystrokes to something more personal so I can’t see the point on a modern peripheral.