HyperX Alloy Elite
This keyboard might look flashy, but does it actually paint the town red.
Add a luxurious 18 zone LED light bar, a suite of media controls and a generous rubbery palm rest to HyperX’s well received Alloy FPS and you have the elevator pitch for the latest keyboard from the relatively new peripherals competitor.
The HyperX Alloy Elite is built from a solid steel frame and comes with a generously sized palm rest that give this keyboard a unique sturdiness. If you’re attracted to the RGB lights of the latest gaming keyboards, you’ll be disappointed by the red only LED lighting across the Hyper Elite, but for those who see keyboards through rose coloured glasses, the local version of this keyboard puts everything on red by adding Cherry Red switches.
The included N-key rollover, anti-ghosting technology and an 1,000Hz polling rate add to what is, all up, a pretty good feature set, but there are some considerable limitations you’ll have to be on board with. Most notably is that the Alloy Elite has no companion software whatsoever. This means no customisable function keys, no controllable lighting schemes and no recorded macros. When other vendors offer this, it’s hard to not feel as though you’re missing out, but in reality, the best element of per-key RGB lighting is the ability to custom colour gaming keys — a feature that the Alloy Elite compensates for with eight swappable silver gaming keys and a dedicated WSAD lighting scheme.
Verdict
A quiet, responsive board that is good for typing and gaming, but misses out on a software suite.