THE S.T.R.I.K.E. 7 PART 2

Let's move to the wrist rests. The first one is also the strangest one of the three due to its design.

This palm rest has a scroll wheel and a two buttons, one which can be configured for normal use and another which when pressed lowers the height of the palm rest (only when the palm rest is extended all the way).

You can adjust the length of the palm rest by just pulling it outwards (at full extend you can also lower it with the side button).

The same applies for the other two palm rests as you can see above.

The small glossy button panel can mostly be used with macro commands and i really suggest securing it with screws since it can get removed very easily.

As you can see the 3.2 inch Venom touch screen pretty much steals the show and is without doubt one of the main reasons behind the high cost of the S.T.R.I.K.E. 7.

There are a total of 8 rather small buttons around the Venom screen and a round knob-like area that houses just a LED and the Mad Catz logo over it. The downside with the Venom part of the keyboard is that most of those 8 buttons don't feel very sturdy (at least not for the price of the keyboard).

Behind the Venom screen we see the two keyboard connectors (the screen is the part which connects to your system and the power), two USB 2.0 ports and an extra leg/stand for increased stability.

Another one of the things that make the S.T.R.I.K.E. 7 a great keyboard is that you can configure it according to your needs so the Venom screen, glossy button panel and the small wrist rest can all get mounted on the number pad leaving the main QWERTY keyboard alone. Now remember the long connector cable i mentioned in the beginning? Well you will need to use that instead of the prefited one if you choose one such configuration as the one above.

Membrane keys may not be as sturdy as mechanical ones (for example MX brown or Red ones) but they are softer (for those who like soft keys) and almost inaudible when pressed.

I also decided to change both the WASD and arrow keys with the provided red ones since not only they look better but it's also easier to distinguish thanks to their red rubber lines.

All the cables found in the S.T.R.I.K.E. 7 are double braided and the USB connector is as expected gold plated.

Worth mentioning is that to secure the screws (for securing the parts together) you need to use the provided Allen key (you can ualso se a screwdriver but not as easy).

Since the G19 by Logitech has been up till this day my favorite gaming keyboard i thought it would be nice if we placed it right next to the S.T.R.I.K.E. 7 to see which one is larger and naturally the Mad Catz offering is slightly larger.

However we decided to take things just a step further (mostly out of curiocity) and weighted both keyboards with my high accuracy scale (also used to weigh CPU Coolers). I know this is not the best proof regarding build quality but i think it does matter even a little. So the S.T.R.I.K.E 7 weighs a total of 1783g while the G19 weighs just 1155g.