The recognizable luminous logo of asus's ROG Strix Flare mechanical keyboard has impressed many players, allowing everyone to see that RGB with additional parts can have unexpected effects. At the beginning of this year, ASUS took advantage of the victory to launch a new flagship ROG Strix Flare II Animate Flare 2 phantom mechanical keyboard, exploring more ways to play on the basis of a generation, first optimizing the keys of the multimedia part, and then increasing the return rate to 8KHz, and adding the same AniMe Matrix LED light display matrix screen on its own notebook, which is a killer level of functional design, through software settings, its playability far exceeds the previous generation of products.
Accessories at a glance
Plastic key puller
Metal puller
As a flagship mechanical keyboard, the ROG Strix Flare II Animate Flare 2 Phantom double-layer packaging is in place, and some of the characteristics of this keyboard can be basically understood through the outer packaging. The package contains the keyboard body, instruction manual/warranty card, ROG sticker, and a delicate key puller/shaft puller, as well as a wrist rest that everyone likes to hear. The custom key puller also has a cross pillar on top, which can be inserted into a keycap for decoration. There are also cross openings at the top of the shaft puller, but the cross pillar of the key puller cannot be inserted and will loosen. The wrist rest features a sponge with moderate softness, the leather surface is also printed with the ROG logo and Solgan, and there are 5 non-slip rubber foot pads on the bottom.
Exterior details
In the promotional map, we can see that this magnetic wrist rest not only acts as a support, but also has a translucent light guide plate in its mezzanine layer, which acts like a common light strip, playing a role in soft light and guiding light. So the correct way to use it is to remove the RGB light strip that comes with the keyboard and then combine the wrist rest.
The ROG Strix Flare II Animate Flare 2 Magic Mechanical Keyboard is equipped with standard 104 keys, and the upper cover uses a gray sandblasted metal top cover, small R angle, and wide forehead. There is a newly designed multimedia control area in the upper left corner, compared with the original, Flare II Animate achieves play/pause through two-way joystick and side buttons, the operation of the previous/next song, the three-way scroll wheel mute/volume increase or decrease, its operation is more intuitive and convenient. The layout is optimized, the place is compact, and it is absolutely necessary to give a big praise. The two function keys next to it are still Win lock and LED light brightness adjustment buttons, adjusted from flat to erect, and their micro-motion buttons feel hard and crisp. It is worth mentioning that all the keys on the module, every time the operation is triggered, the light display matrix screen will be animated and is an instant response. Even if you are not familiar with the module function for a while, you can see what you have performed on the matrix screen, especially after changing the key, the intuitive prompt will bring a better experience process.
One and two USB cables
Single-leg foot support
The ROG Strix Flare II Animate did not use a key-wire separation design, which was also considered to keep the USB Hub, but the position of the USB Hub was adjusted and placed on the left rear of the USB cable. In addition, in order to ensure the power supply of USB Hub, so the use of a one-minute two-point cable, it is relatively large, and the cable management is relatively troublesome. Including the wrist rest, a large number of ROG elements are still seen at the bottom of the keyboard, and the huge logo sets off the sense of luxury through twill. The foot brace is a traditional one-piece style, stable as a dog. By the way, this foot brace also deliberately made a large hollow, considering that some players may use this Hub to connect wired peripherals, to the foot brace interspersed with the headphone cable or mouse cable can effectively do a neat cable.
The ROG Strix Flare II Animate Flare 2 Magic keycap is an original highly two-tone injection molded PBT keycap with a rough matte feel. Another point to note is that the general keyboard will have two or three anchor points (F/J/number area 5), flare 2 magic out of one more, on the W key.
Because the independent multimedia key module in the upper left corner undertakes the most important FN key combination function of the general keyboard, so the default FN key combination of this keyboard is not much, FN+1 to FN+6 are used to switch configuration files, FN+Esc is to reset the keyboard, FN+ arrow keys are divided into switch keyboard and light matrix screen lighting effect.
Keycap shaft body
Fully upgraded with PBT two-tone injection-molded light-transmitting keycaps, replacing the first generation of ABS laser-coated keycaps. Obviously, it is more wear-resistant and durable, and it is not easy to leave fingerprints, sweat stains and oil. Keycaps closed characters, ROG brand iconic VI font style, the degree of recognition is still relatively high. In addition, the keycap has a relatively special touch, a relatively strong matte feeling, and a very dry touch.
The ROG Strix Flare II Animate Flare 2 phantom no longer uses the Cherry MX axis, but uses its own custom NX axis. At present, the NX axis has launched three models, namely linear NX hawthorn red, NX mocha brown and NX glacier blue in the paragraph, and from the color distinction, we probably know what the feel of these three shafts is. This version is equipped with NX hawthorn red, benchmark MX red axis, with 45gf trigger pressure, 1.8mm trigger stroke and 4.0mm total stroke, and the key life has reached 70 million times. In actual experience, its smoothness, noise and shaft stability have been improved to a certain extent, and it belongs to a shaft body that performs better in standard cross shaft products.
In how to solve the problem of large key feel meat, ROG uses a special key structure, different from the satellite axis or balance bar we know, ROG Strix Flare II Animate Flare 2 illusion is a simple structure, through the dragon bean-like parts clamped the wire inside the keyboard to balance the role of the big key. The biggest advantage of this structure is that it will never produce any flesh sensation similar to that caused by satellite shafts, and it will not negatively affect compression/rebound. Moreover, it is easier to add lubrication and tuning later, or even without disassembly.
Then it should be said that there is finally a big brand with non-main peripherals willing to add hot-swap features to their keyboard products! Although it is only a three-legged shaft body, it is also a kind of progress, as for when to achieve better compatibility, adding support for the five-foot shaft body may have to wait for the new batch or the next generation of products. There is no sandwich pad between the positioning plate and the PCB, but there is a silenced bottom cotton, and the cavity sound will be significantly improved compared to the previous products.
Driver interface
Armoury Crate drivers integrate most of the control functions of the keyboard, if you need to customize the lighting effect, if you need to customize the lighting effect, you need to download aura Creator. In Armoury Crate, users can customize all the keys except FN, independent Win lock/brightness control keys, including independent multimedia buttons, which are so intuitive and easy to use, try not to move.
The lighting option comes with 10+1 kinds of lighting effects, if the PC used is asus ROG family barrel, simple one-click Aura Sync divine light synchronization is good. The easter egg in performance is the addition of 8KHz polling rate, which is also one of the few keyboards on the market that can reach the 8KHz polling rate, which is very useful for players who operate out of the magic but are not broken.
The AniMe Matrix is the top priority, the ROG Strix Flare II Animate Flare 2 illusion has 312 programmable lamp beads on the light matrix screen, which can be used to make a variety of custom patterns using the software. There are 6 types of animated lighting effects in the AniMe Matrix, but you can enter the secondary menu in the edit lighting effects, which is the most powerful thing about Armoury Crate. Not only can you adjust the animation mode parameters, but you can also add text lighting effects, but any lowercase letters will automatically appear as uppercase. There are more animation effects in the content library, and in the "Download More" go to the content platform to get more animation effects. But this is not all, users can also upload their own pictures, the display will adjust the animation effect according to the picture, displayed in the form of pixels, but because of the matrix screen resolution, it cannot be too fine. For those who pursue pragmatism, you may wish to enter the system mode in the upper right corner to display the time in the matrix screen.
With the powerful Armoury Crate, the ROG Strix Flare II Animate Flare 2 Phantom Light Matrix Screen allows for a wealth of custom animation effects, and this screen is even more playable than the key lighting effect. However, the use of the process also found some problems that can not be ignored, Armoury Crate's content platform page loading time is too long, occasionally after the page switch, the entire interface directly to pure English, the application of lighting effects may occur when the flashback, these are the need to update and improve the Ultron drive.
Lighting effects
In terms of keyboard lighting effect, the light strip was selected to be placed close to the user's side instead of the side light strip, and the desktop mirrored a very good atmosphere light without installing a wrist rest. After the wrist rest is installed, the brightness has a lot of attenuation, but the transition between the lights and colors is much smoother and more natural.
To sum up this ROG Strix Flare II Animate Flare 2 magic mechanical keyboard, it can be said that it has done what a flagship should do, and there are some surprises. Metal panel + suspension shaft structure, as well as through-type LED light strip, so that the RGB atmosphere sense ahead of similar products many positions. The light matrix screen gives this flagship a lot of meaning, allowing players to have more platforms to create. And for some discerning users, ROG has also added customized features such as hot-swappable and silenced bottom cotton, which have everything and deserve the name of flagship.