GoKawiilThe ROG Strix Morph 96 Wireless sounds and feels good, and it would be a great deal if the ROG Strix Scope II 96 Wireless weren't currently on sale for less.
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Asus' ROG Strix Scope II 96 Wireless has been at the top of our best wireless gaming keyboards list for a while, and it's not hard to see why — it's a well-made, hot-swappable mechanical gaming keyboard with a compact but versatile 96-percent layout and fantastic battery life.
The Strix Morph 96 is a wireless hot-swappable gaming keyboard with a gasket mount design and a compact 96-percent layout. It features bright per-key RGB lighting with lightbars along the sides, a side-mounted customizable rotary knob and button, and three forms of connectivity — 2.4GHz wireless, Bluetooth, and wired (USB-C). It's available now, and it retails for $139.99.
Design and Construction of the Strix Morph 96
The Strix Morph 96 is a wireless mechanical gaming keyboard with a compact 96-percent layout, which means it has alphanumeric keys, a full set of function keys, arrow keys, a 10-key numberpad, and five navigation keys (Home, Ins, Del, PgUp, and PgDn). It's got almost as many keys as does a full-size keyboard, but everything is squished together. There's definitely a learning curve with the cramped layout (I, personally, have never been able to fully get used to the 96-percent layout, even after months and months of using one), but if you don't mind having your arrow keys practically on top of your punctuation, it can definitely save some desk space.
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The Strix Morph 96 measures approximately 15.67 inches (398mm) wide by 5.28 inches (134mm) deep, and is 1.54 inches (39mm) thick at its thickest point, including the keycaps. This is slightly larger than my favorite 96-percent Asus Rog Strix Scope II 96 Wireless , which measures 14.84 x 5.16 x 1.57 inches (377 x 131 x 40mm), but is still smaller than most full-size keyboards. The board weighs just under 2.5 pounds (2.48lbs / 1,125g), which is a little heavier than the Strix Scope II 96 Wireless (2.23lbs / 1,012g) but lighter than the original Asus ROG Azoth (2.61lbs / 1,186g).
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The Strix Morph 96 Wireless is a nicely-built board, with a machined aluminum top case in matte gunmetal gray over a black plastic bottom case. The top case has sharp, clean edges and covers the top, front, and back of the board — the sides, which have LED lightstrips, are plastic. Asus' Republic of Gamers branding is subtle(ish) — for Asus, anyway. "Republic of Gamers" and the ROG eye logo is printed in white on the black spacebar; "Republic of Gamers" is also integrated into the lightbar on the left side (but not the right). On the back of the board, you'll see a larger ROG eye logo incorporated into the decorative texture.
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