Ozone Strike Pro Review

👤by Richard Weatherstone Comments 📅18-05-14
Lighting, Switchgear & Performance
Mechanical switchgear


One of the biggest attractions to the Strike Pro is that it can be ordered with one of four types of MX Cherry mechanical switches. Red or Black, (weak/strong non tactile), Blue or Brown (weak/Strong tactile). So whether you long tactile feedback or a light/strong key press, the options are available. Our model was fitted with the red MX switches which are great for light, fast typing but if like me you have shovels for hands and sausages for fingers, black or brown switches may be better! If you can, we advise to give all the switches a try at your nearest stockist (Overclockers UK) to see which suits you best because they can easily make or break a keyboards appeal depending on your personal preference.

Whichever switch you prefer, you will certainly appreciate the accuracy of mechanical switches and will struggle to go back to the wobbly, rubber membrane type keyboards.

Lighting



It can be claimed that keyboard lighting is simply a gimmick but we disagree. While it is true, it will have little use other than aesthetics for those who know where each key is, for those that don't it is another tool in the box to speed up reactions. Anything that can enhance reaction time in gaming can only be a good thing in our book!



The Ozone Strike Pro allows the user to fully illuminate the keyboard but also has a few different modes to the lighting. First there is the staged lighting which can be increased to four stages (off, low, medium, high) along with pulse and gaming. The pulse function slowly 'breathes' the led on/off with varying intensity while the gaming function illuminates only the QEWSAD, ESC and arrow keys.

Performance
We tested the keyboard in a variety of scenarios as follows:

General use
While primarily a gaming keyboard we believe that 99% of users will also be using this product as their general use keyboard so it is important it can also cope with the demands of everyday use. We typed up this review using the keyboard and while Cheery MX Red switches were not our preference (too many miss-strokes) it was a pleasure to use. Our one concern was that after a shorter time than expected we started to suffer cramping due to either the undersized palm rest or the angle of the key set. Which caused our issues we cannot say for sure however after trying the keyboard with both legs extended and folded away we couldn't say we were ever 100% comfortable.

Gaming
Here is where the keyboard came alive.



For FPS, the keyboard was as expected sublime. Straffing performance was excellent with key response firm and assured while extremely fast. As with the general use complaint we did find that the keystrokes were a little too small for our liking which resulted in grenades being thrown and macros being initiated unintentionally but this is not a fault of the keyboard or the switches, it is just that the red switches not best suited to my clumsiness! The rubberised texture did make our hands a little sweaty but did well to counter this by keeping a grip. We can't recall the keyboard moving under the strain of hours of gaming either which was great. If only the palm rest was bigger and more textured it would be near perfect.

The keyboard is full n-key roll-over meaning that multiple key-presses can be in-putted simultaneously. It is also worth noting that being a mechanical keyboard it is built to last (50 million keystrokes). When you first pick the keyboard up you will note that it is much, much more heavier than a regular keyboard due to the switches which we will add have never failed us yet despite years of abuse.

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