

What this means is that the audio experience is dampened somewhat, but I actually fell in love with a typing experience that didn’t make my eardrums feel convinced that they were in an active warzone. The Asus Red keys, which are in essence the same as your regular Cherry red keys, feel fantastic and rest on top of the sound-dampening foam.


If I can’t accurately program it to transmit “UP YOURS, GEOFF” reliably, then I’m not interested.īut where the Flare II misses the mark on niche-interest LED gimmickry, it more than makes up for it with a superb selection of keycaps. It’s honestly something I preferred to switch off or leave in default mode, as the novelty wore off quite quickly. This kind of undercuts the entire point of this feature, as customizing it is an absolute pain.
#Asus strix flare 2 software
There’s only so much that it can display, and not consistently either, plus it’s handicapped by the software only allowing a single mode to be active per profile. It’s fun, but it is a gimmick with limited use and it’s in desperate need of more fine-tuning in the software department. Then there’s the aforementioned animation display, comprised of 312 LEDs that can be used to blast your face with custom text, images, and animations. Otherwise, they’re great for watching media on your PC. N-Key rollover, anti-ghosting, and per-key RGB lighting round out the package, with the media keys in the top left coming in particularly useful for my Photoshop work once I’d done some fine-tuning and assigned functions to them. There are dedicated media playback buttons and PBT keycaps, but it’s slightly held back by the lack of a detachable power cable as the Flare II uses –understandably for power needs–USB 2.0 passthrough via a pair of cables. This is a good-looking keyboard, one where the RGB effects are highlighted by a brushed steel aesthetic and added mechanical extras. Out of the box, it’s certainly an appealing piece of tech thanks to its rugged design, enough RGB lighting to tastefully illuminate an entire aircraft hangar, hot-swappable PCB to make changing switches a breeze, and a dot-matrix LED light panel to add a flair of customization to the package when using Asus’ Armoury Crate or Aura Creator software.
#Asus strix flare 2 full
The hardware genre is full of quality products, and if you’re planning to offer your own line of satisfyingly click-clacky keyboards, you’re going to need a little something extra to stand out.Īsus reckons that it has that special sauce with its ROG Strix Flare II Animate mechanical keyboard. Between Logitech, Corsair, and Razer, fans of mechanical keyboards are spoiled for choice these days.
