HyperX has found itself an enviable niche in the PC gaming peripheral space as a maker of surprisingly high-quality products that won't empty your wallet. From its , to its , the company consistently nails the budget to mid-range market across various product categories.
HyperX's Alloy keyboard line might not have the same level of recognition as the aforementioned series. But, the entry we're looking at today goes a long way toward cementing the company's position in the mechanical gaming keyboard space. It incorporates a rock-solid, fully-aluminum outer case, bright and saturated RGB lighting, and aesthetics that could fit in just as well as the office as at your gaming desk.
Unfortunately, all of this is held back by some problematic holdovers that other gaming peripheral brands have long since left behind, including low-quality keycaps, design decisions that pointlessly limit customizability, and occasionally frustrating companion software. Read on to find out how this handful of drawbacks took what could have been one of the best gaming keyboards[1] we've ever tested and turned it into a mixed bag, and why you might still want to give it a chance.
- Rock-solid aluminum case
- Sturdy, stable, and highly-adjustable feet
- Extreme keymapping flexibility of NGENUITY software
- User-replaceable USB-C cable
- Some of the worst keycaps I've tested in a long time
- Built-in USB-C port is needlessly restrictive to aftermarket cables
- NGENUITY lighting settings are unintuitive and frustrating
Configuration and features
The HyperX Alloy Origins Core is a tenkeyless keyboard. This means it has a full set of arrow keys and text editing keys like Page Up/Down, Home/End, and Insert/Delete, but lacks the right-side number pad included on full-sized boards.
In addition to this size, HyperX offers the smaller , which keeps the arrow keys and a few text editing keys, and the