Cyber Snipa Warboard Gaming Keyboard - Thoughts, Testing and Conclusion

Thoughts\Impressions:

I don't think that keyboards should be flashy with super bright colors, back lighting is nice which is something this keyboard lacks, but as for the design on the keyboard Cyber Snipa has taken plain black or gray color and has done an excellent job in making it interesting to behold.  The Warboard has no really special features other than the macros and interchangeable keys, I remember the old IBM "clicky" keyboards back in my school days and I would change around the keys to write messages within the keys for the next person who came along.

Warboard Extra Keys

The board has a few very large keys on the top of the keyboard and has 5 keys to each side with two modes for each key. There are the standard multimedia controls on the top as well as the mode switcher for the macros and a very large button to suppress the windows key. I've always heard about this key but never actually used a board that had it.

Testing:

As I am a big gamer it took no effort to sit down to play some games, and obviously being a reviewer it wasn't long before i had used it extensively. It wasn't as smooth as some keyboards such as the Microsoft ergonomic stuff, but it was comfortable to use for hours and some gamers prefer to have heavier keys anyways. The windows lock key came in handy when that fast prone job in cod4 slips and hits the windows key by accident, it doesn't happen too frequently but when it does it is very annoying.

The removable keys were definitely cool but largely redundant, they are pretty much for show and not to help out the gamer. A gamer knows his keys inside and out and doesn't need any visual aid. I'll admit it does add some flashiness to it and will impress a lot of people but in the end it is just a gimmick.

Warboard Full

Software:

When I first installed the software I had a lot of trouble getting it working, the buttons were all wierd, they did functions that they weren't supposed to do that were way off base. Also, the program constantly had errors when it started up. I reinstalled several times and after a few installs and downloads from the site I got it working perfectly. I assume that this won't be a problem for most computers but since I am running a 64-bit OS I expect a bit more issues.

Aside from that the software for the Warboard looked pretty cool, I was able to assign macros to both mode one and mode two pretty easily and intuitively. It had some nice options to save custom configurations for different games and label them appropriately. I mostly used the macros for control groups in RTS games; FPS is just way too fast paced to be able to reach over there to hit a button. But I assigned mode two of the macros to assign the control group and the mode one to select the control group. It worked pretty well and I actually liked it better than the old "ctrl" groups.

Conclusion:

Overall the Warboard is a very good keyboard, perhaps a bit simple as there is nothing that really major that differs itself from other keyboards. The design is different and cool, if you are looking to upgrade from a very old OEM keyboard that you got with your Pentium 4 system years ago, then this is definitely an excellent choice. It is not worth upgrading from a z-board or any other brand name keyboards that are already good in their own right. As a keyboard it has some nice functions on it, multimedia controls, windows key lock, 20 customizable macro buttons... and the software does what it is supposed to do in an easy way, I cannot give it a full rating because of the trouble I had to start out. The only thing that I can see as a down side to it is that there is nothing really special about it that sets it apart from everything else.

Pros:

• Macros
• Windows key lock
• Comfortable

Cons:

• Nothing special

I'd like to thank Cyber Snipa for giving me the opportunity to look at this keyboard, questions, comments, and even constructive criticism is welcome and encouraged in the forum.