ISSUE 380|COMPUTER SHOPPER|OCTOBER 2019 81
ROG,ORREPUBLICof Gamers, is by farthe
boldest and brashest of Asus’s consumer
sub-brands. The ROG Strix Flare shows why:
it’s afull-size keyboard and then some,
completewith full RGB lighting that doesn’t
just cover the keybacklighting but shines
out from the sides as well. There’s even a
shard of see-through acrylic lodged in the
top; more on that later.
Beneath all the visual pizzazz, however,is
actually avery practical, very usable keyboard.
Forinstance,the underlying keyswitches are
Cherry MX Reds –quitelikely the most
popular mechanical switches forgaming
thanks to their smooth, linear action and less
noisy,click-less noise profile.They’re as
effective on the ROG Strix Flare as theyare
everywhere else,providing aresponsive and
robust feel to every keypress.
The MX Redswitch’s lack of tactile
feedback (unless you fully bottom out the
mechanism) isn’t ideal forextended typing
sessions, however.We’ve found aversion of
the ROG Strix Flare with MX Brown switches,
which add alittle bump to help touch-typists
be sure they’ve hit their mark without
creating toomuch MX Blue-like noise,but
it’s even more expensive at £160.
SOUND PLANNING
The main keys are laid out in atotally
standard formation, which helps avoid
mistakes from muscle memory,and unlike
its Asus cousin, the TUF Gaming K7,there’s a
set of dedicated media controls. The most
immediately useful of these is the volume
wheel, which is alittle twitchy but still fine for
making quick adjustments, while play/pause,
stop,skip back and skip forward buttons are
positioned on the right.
That’s not all, either.Inbetween are a
button forlocking the Windows key(a
common accident-proofing feature on
premium gaming keyboards) and abutton
ASUS ROGStrixFlare
★★★★★
£120•From http://www.game.co.ukVERDICT
Comfortableandwellmade,theROGStrixFlareoffersanunrivalledrangeofcustomisationoptions
that toggles though different brightness
levels forthe backlight and side lights.
This system of more-is-more illumination
isn’t just notable forbeaming out on to your
desk, although we’ll admit it can look good
with the right colours. It demonstrates the
ROG Strix Flare’s greatest strength: not its
switches or bonus buttons, but the nigh-
obscene wealth of ways you can configure
and customise it to your exact liking.STRIX FLAIR
In the case of its lighting, you can do alot
more than change the brightness. Holding the
Function keyand hitting the arrow keys will
cycle through an impressive nine different
effects, ranging from gentle pulses to trippy
‘rain drop’animations. That’s not counting the
solid colour setting or just having it switched
off entirely.What’s more,you can adjust the
main colours (unless you’re using one of the
two effects that span the full rainbow) by
altering red, green and blue levels, again
entirely though the onboard keys.
Foreven finer control, you can download
and install the ROG Armoury utility on your
PC. On the aesthetic side,this lets you be
much more specific with which colour or
colours are shown, as well as set up to five
different custom lighting profiles and sync
the ROG Strix Flare’s lighting with any other
compatible Asus components you might
have in your PC system.
On the utilitarian side,the choices go even
deeper.You can customise individual key
inputs so that theyperform aWindows
shortcut or launch an application, record and
set macros, and disable keys besides
Windows –potentially helpful if you’re prone
to smashing the wrong ones while gaming.
On that note, once again you can add key
customisations to different profiles, which
you can then switch between with the
Function and number keys –soyou could,say, have one profile forgaming and another
forevery day. These profiles are saved on the
keyboard’s own memory,which is ideal if you
ever switch between PCs.
There’s even on-the-fly macro recording:
Hit Fn-Right Alt to start recording, punch in
your macro,then use the same combination
to stop.It’s another clever,customisation-
minded little feature –ifonly there were
dedicated macro keys.
The last, most unusual waytopersonalise
this keyboard is the little acrylic piece.Out of
the box, this is just alight-up ROG logo,but
there’s also ablank replacement piece
included. The idea is that you add your own
decal –beitasticker or,ifyou really want to
put in the effort, an engraving –then simply
pop out the ROG piece and slide yours in.
It’s acharming touch, even if we suspect
most users won’t take advantage of it.ADDITIONAL SKILLS
Despitebeing largely made from plastic, the
ROG Strix Flare is nicely finished. Most of the
bodywork has asmooth, matt, almost
soft-touch texture,with akind of brushed
aluminium effect on the right side.Inaneat
attention to detail, this angled pattern
continues downward on to the bundled
wrist rest when it’s attached.
This isn’t padded but, like the Thermaltake
X1 RGB’s wrist rest, is comfy enough. It’s a
worthy addition to what is an incredibly long
features list, which also includes aUSB2
pass-through port on the rear.
There’s no 3.5mm mic or headphone jack,
but this and the fact that the ROG Strix Flare
needs to connect to two USB ports instead
of just one are about the worst things you
can sayabout it. The higher price is more
than justified, by both the unrivalled
provisions to customisation, and astrong
grasp on the essentials of comfort,
performance and hardware quality.