Have you ever needed to take your keyboard somewhere with you, be it to a gaming tournament or a LAN party and hated dealing with the mess of cables and bulky keyboard? Well so do HyperX and they have entered into the keyboard market to tackle this. You may know HyperX for their line of Cloud headsets or their high performance RAM, but they want you to know them for so much more. Enter the HyperX Allow FPS, a low profile, low footprint keyboard geared towards competitive FPS players who need a keyboard that doesn’t take up much space, is easy to tote around and is packed with features. The Alloy FPS hits the mark on all of these requirements with aplomb.

The first thing I noticed when I took the Alloy FPS out of its box was just how small it was, with almost no side trim of bezel around the keys themselves. This results in a keyboard that still contains on the standard keys and a number pad, but also cuts a lot of the fat from the sides and keeps its footprint low, allowing you to have more room to manoeuvre your mouse, perfect for people with a relatively limited desk space. It also means that fitting it into a satchel or backpack is completely doable, unlike with larger keyboards. Personally speaking, I love the fact that I can easily take it to work to use it and fit it in my locker with ease. It was also amazing that I could plug it into any computer and have it work straight away without being asked to install any pesky extra software. I’m looking at you Razer.

This portability is also helped by the fact that the Alloy FPS doesn’t have any hardwired cables, instead using a detachable braided USB cable that plugs into a mini-USB port in the back. This means that instead of potentially bending the cable’s joint into your keyboard and damaging it, you can simply unplug it, wrap it up, and put it in the handy travel cover that comes with the keyboard. The cable also provides USB passthrough to a single USB port that can be used to charge your phone. The only disappointment here is that there is no audio or mic passthrough, but these could have potentially meant a larger size and footprint.

As with any gaming keyboard, the tale can’t be complete without some gaming specific features. The Alloy FPS comes with a couple of additional hardware and software features that are there to help you make the best of your gaming talents. The biggest of these is its ‘Game Mode’ which can be toggled on or off at your discretion. Game mode disables the Windows key, ensuring you don’t accidentally hit it, and also toggles on anti-ghosting and full N-key rollover, allowing you to press every key on your keyboard simultaneously and have every keystroke respond as quickly as you can hit them. The best gaming feature though, is the customisable backlight mode for the keyboard, allowing you to have backlights appear only for the specific keys you want. This is amazing for playing games in the dark, allowing you to have only the keys you want to use in a game light up and prevent them all blurring into each other in a sea of light.

While these features are all excellent, they would mean nothing if the keyboard was flimsy and poorly built. HyperX uses a solid steel frame in the Alloy FPS, ensuring that this isn’t the case, and creating what is possibly the most solidly built keyboard I have personally ever used. The trade-off here is that it means the keyboard is also a little heavy, but it’s definitely not enough to hurt your back carrying it. The Cherry MX Blue are also wonderfully clicky, with each keystroke responding well and no issues with key sticking. It also comes with a 2 year warranty, showing that HyperX expect this keyboard to last a long time without issue.

Overall, the HyperX Alloy FPS isn’t just a great first try at building a keyboard, it’s just a great mechanical keyboard in general. It comes with some great features for gaming, is easy to lug around with you on your gaming adventures and feels incredibly solid and well executed. It does lack a few extra features, like audio pass through and macro-able keys that other keyboards in a similar price band have, instead trading that for a steel frame and minimalistic design. At $159 I can easily recommend the Hyper Alloy FPS as your next gaming keyboard, especially if you need a solid keyboard that you can move around with is.

The HyperX Allow FPS releases on August 29 and is currently available for preorder at MWave.