The Asus ROG Strix Flare is a keyboard designed for gamers. This gaming keyboard has backlighting and customizable RGB lighting and is more prepared to make your games more enjoyable. With ten programmable macro keys on the left side of the board, this gaming peripheral can be customized to suit any gamer’s needs.
With the ASUS ROG Strix Flare, a colorful beast with some incredible customization, you can get an advantage over your competitors or light up the room.
If there’s one area where ROG’s peripherals have surprised me, it’s their beautiful keyboards. ROG, or Republic Of Gamers, is a branch of ASUS that produces some rather colorful items. Since the older ROG Claymore debut, I’ve been watching what may be the next keyboard, and here it is the ASUS ROG Strix Flare. Unlike the Claymore, this keyboard has a more professional feel, but it still has a lot of great functions.
The Flare has an appealing appearance thanks to a two-tone plastic with a quarter of it designed to seem like brushed aluminum. They let the RGB shine through by backlighting each key, lighting the sides, and illuminating the see-through Perspex slide at the top. This white foundation covering the bottom of the RGB switches adds a beautiful touch to the buttons. The keyboard is available with various Cherry MX switches. However, I’m using Cherry Red switches. The keyboard has inbuilt memory, a USB passthrough, and some sturdy media buttons, but it’s not cheap, so let’s look.
Pros
- Design – the keyboard has an appealing appearance.
- Increased comfort with the addition of removable wrist rest.
- Customizable RGB and dedicated media keys are great features.
- Choose from a variety of Cherry MX switches to personalize your setup.
- Sturdy — a keyboard with minimal give.
- Software that is intuitive and simple to use.
Cons
- Plastic is used everywhere.
- Price — this is a high-priced item.
Keyboard Size & Weight
- Weight with cable: 1,256g
- 100 percent in size
- 45.4cm (17.8 inches) in length
- 15.5cm – 6.1 inches in width
- 3.1cm – 1.2 inches tall
Tech Support for Keyboards
- Cherry MX RGB Red, Brown, Blue, and Black switches
- Windows 7 and Windows 10 are supported.
- Yes, there are media keys.
- RGB: Yes
- Yes, there is a passthrough.
- Wired connection
- 2m cable length
- Braided cable
What is included in the box?
As you would expect, the package is loaded with highly colored neon lights that flash from the device to imitate the keyboard’s vibrant RGB. As you’d expect from ROG, the packaging is attractive and far from dull, with the goods prominently displayed on the front. An annotated keyboard picture with all the features set out and where to locate them can be found in the back. The keyboard comes with a different fabric/polyester sleeve to preserve the goods even more.
We have the following items on the inside:
- Keyboard ROG Strix Flare
- Stickers/User Guide
- Wrist rest that can be removed
Design
Size & Weight
The Strix Flare measures 45.4 cm in length and is a 100 percent (total) keyboard. It’s your usual size and has a beautiful solid feel, but it’s also a shallow profile at 3.1 cm. I like the height; it seems like a solid, robust keyboard without taking too much space on my desk. The keys are embedded in the body, and with a width of 15.5 cm, there’s plenty of area for the top-of-the-line media keys. With a weight of 1,256 grams, the keyboard is very substantial. However, it’s not so heavy that you’ll have trouble transporting it; it’s probably significantly lighter than typical for a complete keyboard, which is understandable given its primary material. There is an interior steel plate that provides its weight and anchors it to the desk, but we won’t be moving it around very much, so the weight isn’t a big deal.
Keycaps
The backlighting shines brightly through the keycaps, which are constructed of ABS plastic and have been laser etched. It’s a standard material and manufacturing procedure for RGB mechanical keyboards, and it will wear out with time. The laser etching looks fantastic when the board is lighted up, and the black coating contrasts nicely with the lights and white base. The keycaps float off the floor, making the board simpler to clean. I would have liked a lower profile casing to highlight that they float, but it’s still a good feature.
Switches
The Strix Flare we’re looking at has Cherry MX RGB Red switches, but it’s also available in Brown, Black, and Blue. The Cherry MX Reds feature a low actuation of 45g and no tactile feedback to let you know when you’ve performed a keypress. This pushing pace is often best suited for gamers who need faster peripheral reaction times. The Red switches are easy to press by mistake from time to time, but it’s not something I noticed in-game as much as it was with typing at the office or seeing typos on the internet. The Red MX switches are always my preferred option as a gamer, but check out our switch guide to see what switches you may like.
Design, Case/Internals, Shape & Texture
The design is simple but effective; it’s a complete keyboard with no additional keys along the edges, and everything is in its proper position as a no-nonsense high-end board. As previously said, it is entirely composed of plastic. However, it does have an angular quarter that is supposed to resemble brushed aluminum. This is a great touch, but for the price, I was hoping for some genuine brushed aluminum like the Corsair K70 keyboards.
Anyway, issues aside, it’s a beautiful-looking keyboard, and you won’t want to turn it off once it’s plugged in and flashing away. It’s a near-perfect rectangle with narrow bezels (edges) that provide a beautiful boundary for your lit-up keys. Asus has put a range of media keys on the top of the board, which frees up some space. The media keys are on the left side of the keyboard, which is ideal for right-handed gamers. This is an excellent idea since your left hand will have to travel less to push the media buttons, and you won’t have to move your right hand away from the mouse. The media keys themselves are stunning, and there’s a volume scroll bar on the far left. These scroll bars have never really been something that interests me, if I’m honest, but after getting used to a keyboard with one for the last few months, I can’t ever go back to a board without as it’s just so convenient. The volume bar is clickable, enabling you to mute the volume instantaneously, which is a fantastic feature. The media keys are to the bar’s right, and the windows key lock function button is the most intriguing. I can’t recall the last time I used the windows key; it’s useless, but at least with this keyboard, I can lock it, preventing any accidental tab-outs that these switches might cause. Other controls include essential play/pause and fast forward/rewind buttons, and a button to adjust the RGB brightness with four settings.
The branding is all over the place, but it’s done tastefully; the side facing you has ‘Strix’ carved into it. This board also has a unique design element in the upper right corner, a piece of customized perspex that slides in and out of the commission but comes with the ROG logo by default. The bottom of the board has a giant ROG logo on it, but you’ll never see it, and most significantly, the whole keycap set is in the Republic Of Gamers typeface, which is a nice touch.
Three huge rubber grips are located underneath the board to hold it in place and the steel plate within. As expected, the two folding stands at the top feel pretty solid and have the same rubber coating on the bottom that provides additional grip. Depending on how your keyboard is set up, a groove is going through it that seems to be carved out for another peripheral wire.
The cable is robust and has an excellent tight braid on it for added longevity, and, to be honest, braiding is more appealing to the eye. It’s around 2 meters long and includes twin USB ports, but the board has a USB pass-through so that it won’t take up more space.
Features & Performance
When you first turn on the ROG Strix Flare, you’ll see a rainbow of colors spreading over the board. A keyboard in this price range should include RGB lights, and this cycle does an excellent job of illustrating the RGB feature’s capabilities. If you’re feeling odd, you may alter the brightness in four steps or have it turned off. The RGB lighting also illuminates the perspex slide in the upper right corner; if you wanted to, you could construct your customized slide with the additional blank piece of plastic included in the package. This customizable function is interesting, but it requires a little more work. I would like to have some stickers included with the keyboard that I could use to personalize this slide instead of having to sketch on it or print out templates from the Asus website. The RGB strips on both the left and right sides of the keyboard illuminate the surface to match the color/effect on the keys.
To utilize the board’s RGB features, you don’t need to download any software since it comes with specific preprogrammed light effects that you can modify using the Fn key + left and right arrows labeled mode.’ It’s worth mentioning that the program allows for greater customization and color options, but we’ll get to that later.
The keyboard comes with a Wrist rest that can be removed and is made of the same two-tone plastic we see on the case of the board. The wrist rest is soft to touch, but that’s down to its smooth plastic, It would have been friendly with maybe some padding for the price, but it’s still comfy to use. As I mentioned, the rest is detachable, and it slots in place very quickly. It’s a passive rest and will fall off if you move or lift the board, but when playing, it never loosened or let me down once, so it works well.
A USB passthrough is an essential yet valuable function found on many current keyboards. The passthrough on the Flare keyboard is conveniently situated next to the cable. A few gamers, like myself, have a peripheral that has to be plugged in and unplugged frequently, so having a port I can use without moving my system around is beneficial. Also, if you have a wireless mouse and don’t want to utilize the USB extension that most wireless mice come with, this passthrough might be ideal.
The board comes with specific pre-installed default profiles in its onboard memory. Like the color effects, these profiles may be accessed by the user without the need to install software, allowing you to begin customizing multiple keyboard profiles for different games or jobs. Start by holding down the Fn key and then pressing numbers 1-5 on the number strip to pick the shape you want, similar to how you did previously with the color change. In addition, the board not only allows you to create Macros on the fly, but it also allows you to record them, which is a fantastic feature. To start recording a macro, press the Fn key and then the right Alt key, and then repeat the procedure to stop.
Overall, the keyboard was faultless, never failed me, and performed well in games. With the Red switches in place, it’s a responsive keyboard. With the inclusion of the media keys near my ‘WASD’ hand for easy access, it’s a delight to use. Unfortunately, I experienced the occasional unintentional tab out while using the Red switches. Still, after I realized there was a lock windows button, this became one of my favorite boards (I’m easily delighted).
Software
The Flare may be operated without software, but if you want to customize and use the board’s capabilities fully, you’ll need to download the ROG Armoury program. However, the program is worth having since it allows you to go deep into the RGB by assigning distinct lighting to each key. In addition, you can synchronize your ROG peripherals with your ROG PC components using Aura Sync, which is a pretty unique function, and wait till you see a whole system in RGB unison. It’s stunning.
Related Tags
- Asus rog Strix flare price
- Asus rog Strix flare pink
- Rog Strix flare keyboard software
- Asus rog keyboard
- Asus keyboard
