Ozone Strike Battle keyboard review

1. Introduction2. Unboxing3. Testing4. Final Thoughts5. View All Pages

To test a gaming keyboard, we feel that the best way is to put them through their paces in a real world usage scenario. With that in mind,  with the Ozone STRIKE Battle keyboard, we used it for a period of just over a week as our main work and gaming peripheral. That meant it was used in a variety of games across multiple genres, and was used to type upwards of 3,000 words a day for the duration. During testing, we took into consideration things like user comfort, gaming performance and typing ability and noted down our thoughts in as cohesive manner as possible.

When it comes to gaming, if you have used a mechanical board with Cherry MX Red switches before, you know what this one feels like as it is nothing new in that respect. They are light and fast and while I personally prefer the tactile feel you get on a board with Brown switches, they are one of, if not the best choice for high-end gaming.

Every key can be remapped to an alternative function, in up to five separate profiles

For those who have never used a mechanical board before and are wondering whether the jump is worth it: it is …. if you can afford it.

A mechanical board is not only faster than a membrane interface, but you have more precise control over a key press than you would otherwise. They travel linearly, without any wobble and you know exactly when you have pressed them. While a good scissor switch will give you a nice middle ground between the two, there really is no substitute for a mechanical switch keyboard.

Unsurprisingly, this is also a nice board to type on, though again, MX Browns are my personal favourite. Although smaller form factor, this board has an identical key layout to every other one out there, so there is no real learning curve to it. I did find some of the keys a bit squeaky when the board first came out of the box however, specifically the ones with metallic arms like the backspace, enter and space bar. To remedy that, I gave it a tiny shot of WD40 and the squeaks went away, but it is something to bear in mind if you are considering buying this board.

My average typing speed was around 115 words per minute, which is about average for most mechanical boards.

 
Macros are simple to record and set to one of the pre-determined keys. However you can not manually adjust the time delay between inputs. 

In regards to comfort this is a lovely board to use, with nice soft keycaps and a solid base that does not move around during use. You also never feel like you cannot give this board a beating if you want to. Get frustrated and smash it after a game? Not a problem. Type hard and fast when you are on a tear? The Ozone Strike Battle can handle it.

If you are used to using a full size keyboard, the lack of material in-front of you can take a bit of getting used to and can have you moving it from left to right to try and find the right spot.

I did find myself missing a wrist rest at times, as when you are typing all day it can be nice to just let them relax for a moment before moving on. Still, the fact that the STRIKE Battle has a uniform front means it should not be too difficult to add an after market one from a third-party.

Additional settings are a little on the light side, but there are a few

The lighting on this board has been well thought out, as though it suffers from the same issues as others, in that the LED's are not centrally mounted on the switches, Ozone makes a point of locating the indicators at the top end of the key, so the light that shines through is quite uniform. The fact that all of the keys are open sided too, means you get a nice ambient glow which is not present on most other boards.

Although there are no options to change the lighting colour, you can tweak its brightness on the keyboard itself, or within the back-end software. There are also options for solid, or pulsating lighting. Other back-end options allow users to tweak polling rate and key response time, which high-end gamers and super fast typists may appreciate.

I particularly liked the location of the media keys on the Ozone STRIKE Battle. They let you adjust the volume or perform other functions with a single hand. This is not possible if the function key and media keys are found at either end of the board, as they are on some competitor products.

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