Packaging and Accessories

The Alloy Elite product packaging adopts a black and red color scheme that goes with the keyboard's color scheme and lighting and is filled to the brim with illustrations and printed features at its face, with the switch type and other salient marketing features being mentioned. This continues on the back and sides as well. There are two seals on the sides to keep what was essentially an outer sleeve in place over the inner cardboard box with the actual product inside.


The inner box is plain and has no markings at all, and there's a single flap on either end to help keep the contents inside in place. Open the box and we see the keyboard in a thick clear plastic wrap with its main accessories underneath in a separate compartment separated by a fold of the cardboard box. This way, HyperX ensures everything arrives as intended and nothing comes loose. There are a multi-language quick start guide and welcome note right under the keyboard, and a cutout shows what else comes with the keyboard - a set of replacement keycaps and the aforementioned wrist rest.


The wrist rest has a textured, rubberized finish on half of the side, which is a bit weird, and you can actually feel the difference when using the keyboard with it. I would have rather liked a consistent finish throughout, and this comes off as a design choice that may have missed the mark instead. The replacement keycaps and a plastic ring-style puller come in a vacuum-sealed pouch, so good luck putting them back in. A zip-lock pouch would have been much better here. Either way, we get a total of eight replacement keycaps - W/A/S/D and 1/2/3/4 - for a primarily FPS-style playthrough. These keycaps have a shiny metallic grey finish, but are thin ABS plastic (0.96 mm average wall thickness) in actual composition. The W/A/S/D keycaps have a textured finish as well, which allows for light to pass through and illuminate the legends.

I would have preferred a wire keycap puller instead, but have become accustomed to that not being the case. That said, there are a few things absent in the Alloy Elite packaging that the older, supposedly non-elite and lower-tier Alloy FPS came with - a braided two-tone detachable keyboard cable and very nice carrying case for the keyboard and its accessories. Those two cost more than the wrist rest that is included here, so we are off to a questionable start.