OCZ Elixir Gaming Keyboard

Test Set up
 
Now we move onto the section which could make or break a keyboard: the testing. First of all the specification of the machine it was tested on:
 
Intel Xeon 3070 @ 3.6Ghz
Abit IP35 Pro
Crucial Ballistix PC-5300 2GB kit @ 900mhz
Sparkle 8800GT 512Mb
WD Raptor 150GB
Dell 2407WFP & V7 L22WD
 
On this machine, the Elixir was put through its paces with the help of a few friendly programs. First up, it’s marketed as a ‘Pro Gaming’ keyboard, so naturally a whole bunch of games were needed. These took the form of the following:
 
Counterstrike Source
Painkiller
Crysis
Spore
World Of Warcraft
 
After the games, of course, a good keyboard needs to be comfortable to type with. To test this out, from the next section of this review on was typed with the Elixir. And lastly, the all mighty (*ahem*) Windows Media Player was called into combat to give the media buttons a spin.
 
 
Results
 
In a similar way to the OCZ Dominatrix I reviewed a while ago, summing up how a keyboard performs can be a tricky task. They aren’t quite as personal as mice, but then each individual has different tastes. So once again, all I can do is sum up my experience.
 
To make a start, the keyboard is quite low profile. Not to go as far as saying it’s laptop style, but it’s close. I found it quite comfortable to use for the everyday things such as surfing about and posting. To start with the, wrist rest felt a little in the way after years of using a very standard keyboard layout, but after a couple of hours I adjusted. The keys were just about right; they clicked up and down with just enough travel to let your brain know that you’ve hit it.
 
The biggest gripe I could level against it was the fact that it suffered from possessing a US layout. The shrunken enter key was quite frankly a pain, and typing the wrong symbols all the time is a tad annoying. But this comes down to the the fact that OCZ keep providing the same answer of ‘they’re on their way’ when questioned about the UK layout. If you live in the US or an area which uses their keyboard layout, then this will obviously be a positive point.
 
Gaming on the Elixir was a pleasant affair. After adjusting to the shape and key position, I wasn’t hindered from playing any of the games listed above. The bindable keys came into use in CSS, where they took the role of buy binds, allowing me to set up long macros from the Alchemy software that would buy everything I could afford that I needed for that round, in order of importance. There was, once again, only one major flaw I found here, and that was the Elixir crippled my ability to crouch-jump. I have no idea why, but it would just ignore one of the keys when hit at the same time. This could probably be overcome with more tweaking of the software to bind space to both ctrl and space, and then assigning it to a separate mode to the usual one.
 
Oh and the media and browsing keys do exactly what it says on the box. Not much more I can really say about them…
 
Flip the page for the conclusion…