Yes, another keyboard in the house. Everyone wants your money in the keyboard realm, and I would say the hardware ecosystem is the most significant contributor to buying influence today, at least when it comes to gaming.
Linking together your hardware and money well spent is a big selling point because everyone wants their setup to be cooler than the next. The HyperX Alloy origins does just that by spicing up the desk, but don’t get overly excited about using the hardware—time to read this review.
Style / Feel / Build / Hardware
Unboxing the keyboard is underwhelming, as you are only left with a wire, keyboard, manuals, and cheap cardboard. I enjoy the process of opening some packages, and there wasn’t much here. Other than manuals and warranty cards, the only other thing to unpack is the braided USB-C to USB-A cable, which is about 2 meters long; the standard. Further, the cable is thick and durable, not flimsy, so it will hold its shape.
Regardless, upon looking into the general look and feel of the board, it stands out as very laid back and minimal. I don’t think it does so in a good way either here because I find this keyboard can benefit from some textural design somewhere. It is just a bit too slippery and buttery for my taste. The smoothness also seems to take away from the feeling of high quality, as the brain associates plastic with smoothness rather than a specific material.
The keyboard doesn’t seem very thought out in terms of aesthetics. The removable wire is neat, but it’s a bit boring at the same time. You only have this tiny hole at the top right of the board, and the top is so plain looking.
Quickly flipping the board over, the HyperX Alloy Origins has a nice pair of legs, if I do say so myself, offering two different heights for your wrist. Adding to this, if the small kickstand is being used, you must put the small kickstand down before you can raise the taller set of legs. Nevertheless, it’s neat how the locking system works, and I like a good set of legs on a keyboard.
Back to the keys, the feeling of the keys comes from the “blue” HyperX key, referring to a tactile feel rather than linear or clicky. Additionally, the keyboard’s sound is clicky yet mild. It’s quite the in-between of quietness and mechanical obnoxiousness.
Continuing the key talk, this keyboard is loaded with macro keys built into the function and arrow keys. These keys include keyboard brightness, keyboard color presets, media keys for music, muting, volume, pausing, and even a gamer mode key.
Function key 12 is Gamer Lock, locking Windows key activation. The Alloy Origins has a digital display for caps, numbers, and even Gamer Lock, which is nice to see, but again, I find the presentation disappointing after seeing the display on. It’s too minimal, and we need more style.
You can use F1 to F3 to auto-change your keyboard color presets. Granted, these keys can be changed to anything via the HyperX Ngenuity software; it’s a nice default for the board. I have much to say about these color keys, though we will save that for later.
Next, the backlight brightness via the directional keys works in 5 steps. Sometimes brightness settings can be tricky, and I find HyperX did well here, as the lighting is bright and illuminates well. I loved the RGB of this keyboard, and I think it is the best part of this piece of hardware. The lights brighten the room, and the keyboard seemingly has an underglow. The placement and brightness of the LED just seem right in the daylight or at night.
Regarding the media keys, you can change or pause your music on your preferred platform, but you can’t raise or lower the volume. You can only mute. If you change the volume, you will be reducing the master PC volume, not the music software being used. I find that to be normal, though.
The HyperX Alloy Origins basically has a right click or options buttons next to your function key. This is sort of neat, but who is actually using this key?
Performance / Hands-on Use / Features / User Experience / Analysis / Etc.
When it comes to user experience with the HyperX Alloy Origins, I have plenty to say. Let’s start with a predominant bug. If you go from computer to computer, restart the PC, turn on the PC, or even sometimes unplug the wire, you have to restart your PC altogether to stop this insane, uncontrollable light-blinking problem. The keyboard lights turn on and off, and the light also changes randomly. So after restarting, the keyboard handles well. These issues likely have to do with BIOS. Unfortunately, not every restart will fix this issue either.
Let me explain this bug by adding another into the conversation, illustrating how this keyboard is a bit jank. The preset color function 1-3 keys simply don’t work, even after saving multiple color tones to different presets via Ngenuity.
Also, the software doesn’t explain anything or make it easy to customize the keys built into the keyboard. I cannot double-check if my function 1-3 keys are set because the software doesn’t explain, and I don’t know if I am doing something wrong or if my keyboard is broken. I tried to reset my PC after saving presets and thought, maybe that’s how I get these keys to work, but NOPE! The keyboard glitched out and did that blinky problem I previously brought up.
Now I have to reset this board again, and unplugging and replugging the USB isn’t enough. After my second restart, the keyboard glitch is fixed, but the keys still don’t respond. Essentially, restarting your computer can actually cause this keyboard to glitch, thus requiring additional restarts.
Speaking on the software side of things now, these features didn’t impress me because I have seen them all already. Still, I must say, I was caught off guard by the effect of layering and how easy it was to do, especially in Ngenuity. I like my static blue, but I gave a small wave layer under it to give it a slight color change—points for user-friendliness and a good set of RGB lights and features. I already mentioned how the user-friendliness of setting keys could be a bit more explanative, yet it does work nonetheless. Freely customize any key of this keyboard to do anything, even macro sequences, to save time in gaming or creative work.
Moving on, after your fingers get used to the spacing of this board, I found the typing to be fluid and breezy. Something about how these keys push back at your fingers makes typing seem more defined, allowing me to get in the typing groove. Yet, I find it too straightforward to lose my fingers in these blocky keys, and it seems I am constantly accidentally hitting caps lock. I’m unsure why this is the case, though. The keys feel nice to type on, yet perhaps they’re slightly too large, as they took me time to get used to.
With gaming, the Alloy is simply alright. It merely feels like you are playing on any other gaming keyboard. That’s the thing with this keyboard; nothing other than the RGB stands out. It’s just so simple, toooo simple if you ask me.
You can set your key binding profiles via the software if you like different macros for your games or software such as Creative Suite. Anyway, if you can get over the slippery nature of the HyperX Alloy Origins, this keyboard will be fine for you. It performs with no detectable latency and will get the job done.
Conclusion
After all is said and done, the HyperX Alloy is so simple that there isn’t much to really sink your teeth into. The RGB and its features are awesome, but that’s about as hyped as you’ll get about this product. It’s also quite expensive at $109.99 MSRP, though I am sure you can find it at a discount. I spent more time trying to figure out the color change profile situation and the light glitch to even enjoy this keyboard. Plus, I am tired of caps lock.
Noisy Pixel is giving the HyperX Alloy Origins Full Size Keyboard a C-. Sorry to say there are too many things I’m not jiving with here to give it a higher score. Lastly, get a wrist wrest if you buy this; you will thank me later.
