Corsair Strafe Mechanical Keyboard Review

Final Thoughts

Price

The Corsair Strafe Cherry MX Red Silent RGB Mechanical Gaming Keyboard is priced at £139.99 from Overclockers UK, while the MX Red and the MX Brown are priced at £129.95. If you want the non-RGB version, you can find the MX Red and the MX Brown at £99.95 each.

Overview

There’s no easy way to say this, oh wait, yes there is. The Corsair Strafe is one of the best keyboards ever made, it’s that simple! Of course, I can elaborate on this.

The build quality of this keyboard is rock solid. Sure, I loved the aluminium top panel that we found on the K-series Corsair keyboards, but the matte finish plastics on this keyboard are thick, strong and provide a nice soft contrast to the powerful built-in lighting system. The switches are obviously of an incredibly high standard, as Cherry are world-renowned for their perfect switch engineering and that much continues to be true with their innovative Silent switches. The key caps are of a premium quality and even little details like the custom USB headers are a welcome touch.

The visual appeal of the keyboard is obviously very high, it’s a great looking keyboard even with the lighting off, but it just steals the show when you fire up the lighting. I’m not one for the crazy effects, but when it comes down to it, nothing has more versatile lighting customisation than the Strafe RGB. Personally, I always dial in my favourite shade of neon purple and leave it be, but it’s still nice to be able to get that tone just right.

Gaming, working or just having something shiny to put next to your fancy rig for events, it doesn’t matter what you want to do, this keyboards got plenty to offer. The silent switches are a pleasure to type on all day and they’re less of a distraction while you’re gaming. At the base of it, this is just a very nice mechanical keyboard and it will behave as you would expect, but it’s just that little more refined and feature-packed than most.

Pros

• Exceptional build quality
• Detachable wrist rest
• Per-key RGB lighting
• Multimedia controls
• 104-key roll over
• Gaming key-caps
• MX Silent Switches are definitely quieter
• Competitive Price (relative to rival similar spec products)
• USB pass-through

Cons

• None

“The Corsair Strafe is a great all round keyboard for work and gaming, packed full of cool features that put it ahead of the competition. The MX Silent switches are certainly amazing and it would be hard to imagine buying the stock MX Red over the MX Red Silent edition!”

Thank you Corsair for providing us with this sample.