Cougar Attack X3 review: An unpretentious board with genuine Cherry keys - spencercoccousturia

Nowadays, people look for literal Cherry MX switches might find themselves surprisingly short on options. Once the king of mechanical keyboards, genuine Cherry switches have become a rarity now that the design patent terminated.

So it's been a morsel of a relief for me to spend some fourth dimension with the Cougar Attack X3 (currently in stock from Amazon for $73). If nothing else, at least it's got my old faithful Cherry MX Blues under the hood.

Note: This review is part of our best gaming keyboards  roundup. Go there for details about competing products and how we tested them.

The layout

The Attack X3 is straight off identifiable, thanks to its polygonal shape shape. Though not on the dot innovational in its design, Mountain lion has at to the lowest degree figured out a way to unite some pretty basic keyboard ideas—exposed metal backplate, melanize impressible chassis—in a unique way.

Information technology's a nice-looking board, for the most region. The purist in me objects a spot to the way the sides stick out, since the bezel wastes valuable desk space just to come to a decorative point. That said, it's mostly just an illusion, brought on aside the Attack X3's unconventional designing. The X3's bezel actually takes rising less blank than that of, say, the Razer BlackWidow X, which has squared-off, and thus less noticeable, edges.

The typeface used for the keycaps also isn't the most attractive—it's a moment blocky and hard to read. But I like the way the metal meets constructive here (in contrast to the Aukey KM-G3 e.g.) and for a "gaming keyboard" it doesn't have an overly intrusive design.

Also, the Attack X3's gray aluminum backplate is a trifle better than Barbary pirate's K70 or Razer's BlackWidow X when it comes to hiding haircloth/sprinkle/crumbs/whatever you drop connected your keyboard. It doesn't get gross as fast as the black metal along those other boards.

My biggest issue is the lighting. Cougar sent us the basic red-LED version of the Attack X3 or else of the Sir Thomas More valuable RGB-helmeted variant, but the problem would exist unheeding. Since this a Cherry-equipped board, the Light-emitting diode on from each one key is set above the switch itself, towards where your monitor would exist. The result is problematic, with the ignition brighter at the top of each key compared to the bottom.

Now, Cougar isn't the only vender who uses this design—it's also present on Corsair and G.Skill's Cherry tree-equipped keyboards, too as boards using knock-off Ruddy switches from Razer and others. But IT's not worldwide. Logitech and SteelSeries switches, by line, eschew the traditional Red design and put an LED in the eye of each key.

Manufacturers typically even out for an off-centered LED placement by waving the text on each cay to the high. Cougar's done that, to an extent. You'll notice the letters on each key aligned vertically with the top abut, mostly.

Preferably than using stand-alone indicators for the Num Lock, Caps Lock, and Scroll Lock keys, Puma decided to set them into the key itself. To do this, the designers put the LED for each of these keys at the bottom—but even so clean a ace LED. This leaves three conspicuous concealed spots on the Onslaught X3, with no lighting for the text along these keys. IT looks unusual and equal a mistake.

Also somewhat off-the-wall are the secondary functions Cougar included. F1 through F3 are labeled As macro keys, which is jolly rule, and F4 cycles through light settings.

However, Cougar reserves F5 through F8 for on-the-fly polling-value changes, allowing you to change the board to 125, 250, 500, and 1,000 cycles/second, respectively. And so Print Screen and Interruption Break suffer secondary functions for six-Florida key and N-important rollover.

Some issues here: 1) These are typically set-and-forget settings. I can't imagine swapping these often enough to penury dedicated keys, or needing to make a change on-the-fly. 2) That goes doubly for "normal" users. Most hoi polloi just now need to set this to 1,000Hz and N-describe rollover (which is probably the default anyway), and then ignore these settings always. That gives you the quickest polling rate and means each of your keystrokes will be recognized.

I could delve deeper into keyboard polling range and rollover here, but there's non really a reason to. For 99 per centum of mass, IT bequeath never come into play. These are the most minute of minute details, and unless you're a specialist operating theatre a top e-sports player, you would ne'er need to conform these settings. So including them arsenic happening-the-pilot options and dumping every last that schoolbook happening the board? Baffling.

I do however love the Attack X3's volume keys. Mute, Volume Down, and Volume Aweigh each get a large, immediately accessible key in the top-right box. This layout isn't quite on par with Barbary pirate's standard volume roller, but it's definitely better than needing a function-describe combo to line up volume.

The proper parcel out

The Attack X3's Cherry keys are the intense draw though. As I said up top, finding keyboards with actual Cherry keys is much harder these years. As a longtime fan of Cherry-red Maxwell Blues, it's a relief to character along the genuine article or else of however another knockoff.

I'm not loss to evangelize too much. Chances are if you precaution sufficiency to read a mechanical-keyboard refresh, you also know your fashio around Cherry variants. If not, you can ever sound out our primer.

Suffice it to say, Ruby Blues are still my favorite tactile keyboard switch. They're a joy to typewrite on, and work just finely for the gaming that I do. Sure, you rear end get a shorter actuation point with Razer's Greens (a Blue knockoff) or Logitech's Romer-G keys (a not-so-great linear change over) only neither of those is quite as good for day-to-day typing necessarily—which is presumably one's primary activity on a computer.

I found myself a bit pissed with the Attack X3 though, despite its Cherry internals. Somehow Cougar decided to widen keys along the bottom row of the Aggress X3—most notably the left-hand Function key, which sits in the spot where the Windows operative would unremarkably go.

American Samoa a resolution, the spacebar is approximately a cm shorter than usual, and shifted slightly to the right. It's not a huge allot, but information technology did make a discernible difference to me, especially while gaming. With my fingers on WASD, my thumb just now barely rested on the left butt on of the spacebar. Normally I'd encounte it sitting well about a quarter of the way down its duration.

These sound like small issues, and they are. I just didn't find the Attack X3 as comfortable for long-wooled-term habit, nor was information technology atomic number 3 precise. And the only benefit is…a slenderly bigger Subprogram key? This design choice is very strange.

Nates blood

The Cougar Attack X3 is a fine entry-level keyboard, particularly if you privation sincere Cherry MX keys and a full-shrew-sized board at a somewhat ungenerous price. Full-sized boards often start at $100-plus these days, especially ones with actual Cherry keys.

That being said, some weird decisions grip it back from "Incomparable of" status. The lighting is neither as jolly nor functional as competing products, and the nonstandard layout of the bottom run-in is a needless misstep—ane that affects gamers (Cougar's target audience!) the near. The Attack X3 is a good keyboard, falling just shy of being great.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/410899/cougar-attack-x3-review-an-unpretentious-board-with-genuine-cherry-keys.html

Posted by: spencercoccousturia.blogspot.com

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