Cougar have gone with a simple design, omitting any kind of dedicated Macro or media keys. The brushed aluminium and dark key caps contrast well. The back and sides of the keyboard are black plastic with the aluminium bolted onto the structure.
The font and symbols used on the key caps are clear and easy to read, with or without the backlighting. The wide font allows the RGB colours to shine bright. Along with the brushed aluminium reflecting back, this keyboard puts on a beautiful show. This keyboard is currently only available with the standard American layout, which might annoy some U.K users.
The keyboard features several multi-function keys, activated by holding the Fn key, located at the bottom left. F1 through to F4 control the profiles and RGB lighting effects, F5 to F8 are used as volume controls, with F9-F12 utilised as media keys. Further functions can be found on the print screen and pause break keys, switching between USB and PS/2 mode, with Page Up and Page Down used to adjust backlights brightness. You can switch between 3 different profiles saved within the keyboards on-board memory, with each profile able to save 3 different lighting effects, which can all be customised to a huge degree within the Cougar UIX driver software.
This keyboard bears a single 1.8m braided USB cable, which splits into two at the male end, many would assume this is for a USB pass through, but that isn't the case. Cougar have told us this is to provide the additional power required by the RGB lighting if the selected USB slot isn't adequate (UBS2.0 is capable of delivering 0.5A, whereas USB3.0 can provide 0.9A, with dedicated charging versions pushing up to 1.5A). I tried the keyboard on my Gigabyte Z170-K3 (USB3.0) using only the main USB cable and it worked without issue; Cougar do recommend that both plugs are used, so for the purposes of this review, their instructions were followed.
The Mechanical Cherry MX Red keys are clear, to allow for the RGB colour output, the key caps are also raised up away from the keyboard to better show off the lighting, which, along with their easy removal, helps aid inevitable cleaning. The mechanical keys are rated to "at least 50 million clicks."
The font and symbols used on the key caps are clear and easy to read, with or without the backlighting. The wide font allows the RGB colours to shine bright. Along with the brushed aluminium reflecting back, this keyboard puts on a beautiful show. This keyboard is currently only available with the standard American layout, which might annoy some U.K users.
The keyboard features several multi-function keys, activated by holding the Fn key, located at the bottom left. F1 through to F4 control the profiles and RGB lighting effects, F5 to F8 are used as volume controls, with F9-F12 utilised as media keys. Further functions can be found on the print screen and pause break keys, switching between USB and PS/2 mode, with Page Up and Page Down used to adjust backlights brightness. You can switch between 3 different profiles saved within the keyboards on-board memory, with each profile able to save 3 different lighting effects, which can all be customised to a huge degree within the Cougar UIX driver software.
This keyboard bears a single 1.8m braided USB cable, which splits into two at the male end, many would assume this is for a USB pass through, but that isn't the case. Cougar have told us this is to provide the additional power required by the RGB lighting if the selected USB slot isn't adequate (UBS2.0 is capable of delivering 0.5A, whereas USB3.0 can provide 0.9A, with dedicated charging versions pushing up to 1.5A). I tried the keyboard on my Gigabyte Z170-K3 (USB3.0) using only the main USB cable and it worked without issue; Cougar do recommend that both plugs are used, so for the purposes of this review, their instructions were followed.
The Mechanical Cherry MX Red keys are clear, to allow for the RGB colour output, the key caps are also raised up away from the keyboard to better show off the lighting, which, along with their easy removal, helps aid inevitable cleaning. The mechanical keys are rated to "at least 50 million clicks."
