Ozone Strike Battle Mechanical Gaming Keyboard Review

Performance

One thing I love about mechanical keyboards is that no matter which brand I choose, from Corsair, Mionix, Cooler Master, Cherry and countless others, is that I can always expect 90% of the same experience from the switches that each of them use. Cherry MX switches are famous for their uniform performance and quality, regardless of which brands keyboards you use them in. What makes the biggest difference is that 10%, the little tweaks to the keyboard construction, layout and general features that sets it apart from the competition.

For Ozone, that difference is certainly found in the chassis of the keyboard, it’s one of the slimmest fully mechanical chassis I’ve ever seen, it’s also one of the lightest and without a doubt it’s the more compact, with virtually no trim around the edge of the keyboard. What this means, is that I get the regular key spacing of any other mechanical keyboard, but still have a TKL design that takes up very little space on my desk. This is great, as it leaves me with a huge amount of space to use my mouse, which is great for those times you’re using a low DPI and require the extra tracking space. The low profile design of the chassis also has another advantage, in that I can use it very comfortably without the use of a wrist rest!

The keys are MX Red, which means they’re light and fast, but I often find this means that the keys bottom out harder on the chassis, as I’m quite a heavy-handed typer. That’s not the case here, as the keys don’t bottom out on the keyboard chassis and this is one of the quieter mechanical keyboards I’ve used.

The macro functions are a welcome bonus, although they’re a little out-of-the-way to be practical for me. I’m used to using my left hand to trigger macros, while these ones are on the right side of the keyboard. They’re less practical for gaming, but I found them to be easily programmed to launch applications, tweak settings in Photoshop and other productivity apps. This is fine though, as I don’t use macros in games that often, but having the productivity boost while I’m working is no bad thing.

When it comes to gaming, the Strike really delivers the goods. Rapid key strokes are a breeze, the report rate can be fine tuned to suit your preference and the LED backlighting makes it a lot easier to see what you’re doing in a darker room, while remaining bright enough to look cool in a fully lit room.

This is a great gaming keyboard, it’s fast, nimble, easy to move around should you travel a lot to LAN gaming events and it looks and feels fantastic.