MSI Strike 600 Gaming Keyboard Review - The Sound of Silence

TweakTown Rating: 86%

Our Verdict

The MSI Strike 600 Gaming Keyboard might be better suited for productivity thanks to its near-silent tactile switches and performance, but it's also a fantastic all-rounder that's built to last. A silent but deadly strike, in mechanical keyboard form.

Pros

• Silent, smooth, tactile switches
• Excellent built quality and keycap feel
• Vibrant RGB lighting
• Full-sized makes it great for productivity

Cons

• MSI Center is not great for keyboard customization
• The USB cable is hard-wired to the keyboard
• Gaming feels secondary to productivity

Should you buy it?

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Introduction & Specification Details and Close-up

The MSI Strike 600 Gaming Keyboard has been designed for silent performance, delivering a typing or gaming experience where you don't hear the mechanical switches. This is achieved through a combination of Kailh Midnight Pro Silent Tactile switches and multiple layers of sound-dampening material beneath the hood, including latex and silicone foam, as well as a "muffler pad" integrated into each switch. The result more than lives up to its promise; the MSI Strike 600 Gaming Keyboard is, without a doubt, one of the quietest mechanical gaming keyboards that we've tested.

It's one of the first things you notice when unboxing the MSI Strike 600 and giving the keys a spin (and by that we mean pressing a few to gauge the acoustics and feel of the switches). Now, there's a lot to like about the MSI Strike 600 Gaming Keyboard, with the near-silent performance being front and center. Silent switches aren't necessarily better, and when it comes to switch style and feel, acoustics often come down to personal preference. Some love the click and clack of a mechanical keyboard that makes its presence known, even in a relatively loud environment. Some want quiet switches, while others want something more in the middle, neither here nor there.

However, no matter where your own personal preference sits on this scale, one thing is true no matter what: a mechanical keyboard's acoustic should be clean and free from rattle or echo. The good news is that the MSI Strike 600 Gaming Keyboard's near-silent performance is also pleasant-sounding, which is impressive given that the Strike 600 sits on the more affordable side. And with that, even though the build quality, acoustics, switches, and overall performance of this full-sized keyboard make it an absolute winner for the price, there are some shortcomings, drawbacks, and a general sense that the Strike 600 might be better suited for productivity than PC gaming.

Specifications & Close Up

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Kosta's Test System

Design & Software

Design

The MSI Strike 600 Gaming Keyboard is a full-sized keyboard that includes a NumPad, dedicated media controls, and a wide range of on-board functions so you can adjust the lighting and other settings without having to fire up software. Although the shine-through keycaps feature MSI's gaming-focused font, the Strike 600's overall minimalist aesthetic gives it a sleek, clean look that can be as understated as you want. And by that, we mean using a more subtle white, orange, or blue lighting with the brightness turned down, rather than the over-the-top default rainbow preset that every gaming keyboard defaults to. The floating keycap design is also a winner, as is the varying heights of each row of keys, a design choice made to create a more ergonomic feel.

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The build quality is sturdy, with multiple layers of dampening, an aluminum top plate, and rubberized grips on the underside of the weighty frame. As outlined in the introduction, MSI has positioned the MSI Strike 600 Gaming Keyboard as a silent performer, thanks to Kailh Midnight Pro Silent Tactile switches. In addition to barely making a sound, these switches feature an operating force of 45gf and a tactile 55gf bump at the 1.9mm actuation point. These numbers mean the overall feel is cushiony, with a notable bump that takes some getting used to. At first, it can feel a little mushy as opposed to snappy because of the additional dampening, but it's mostly a different style versus the linear mechanical switches you'll find in most gaming keyboards.

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Rated for 70 million keystrokes, the Kailh Midnight Pro Silent Tactile switches, alongside the coated keycaps, are built to last, which is a good thing because one of the reasons why the MSI Strike 600 Gaming Keyboard is priced at around $80 is that the switches aren't hot-swappable. The only real physical customization option you have is to swap out the keycaps, but the good news is that the octagonal keycaps on the Strike 600 felt and looked the same on day 10 as they did on day 1.

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MSI made wise choices to keep the Strike 600's overall cost down while maintaining a premium feel. It features the sort of layered construction we love, though it can't be customized. It's also wired-only, so there's no wireless or Bluetooth functionality. These are the sort of compromises that make sense; however, it's a shame that the USB cable isn't detachable - it's hard-wired to the keyboard. Also, you miss out on features like wrist rests, but you still get nice-to-have functionality like dedicated media controls. Throw in three on-board profiles and per-key RGB lighting with MSI's Mystic Light compatibility, and the Strike 600 Gaming Keyboard is a well-rounded keyboard that mostly punches above its weight class.

Software

Okay, MSI Center, the company's catch-all Windows application for its hardware, isn't very intuitive or impressive when it comes to customizing peripherals. For a keyboard like the MSI Strike 600 Gaming Keyboard, you've basically got a single Macro recorder that serves as the catch-all screen for remapping keys across different profiles and setting up macros. It's a strange solution to have Macros handle key remapping, but it works for the most part. The only real issue is that there's no real way to customize a key's secondary function, so you are limited to what the Strike 600 already has out of the box on that front.

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Keyboard remapping is not something most people do with a mechanical keyboard, and the default out-of-the-box experience is the primary driver. Still, a robust set of tools is always great to see, and MSI Center sits on the lower end of the peripheral app list for keyboard customization. The only real upside is that Mystic Light is an excellent app for customizing the lighting on the Strike 600, which features an intuitive interface and a robust set of options and presets.

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And that covers all the options you have with MSI Center and the Strike 600, which is a little underwhelming given MSI Center's size and modular nature. Hopefully, MSI pays a little more attention to how the platform handles peripherals like keyboards, as robust software support is an essential component of any hardware release. Ultimately, we'd like to see the company adopt a web-based approach to peripheral customization, which more and more brands are adopting because it removes the need to install another app.

Gaming Performance and Productivity

Gaming Performance

Although gaming is right there in the name, how you ultimately feel about gaming with the MSI Strike 600 Gaming Keyboard will come down to how you feel about its silent tactile switches. Tactile switches, like the Kailh Midnight Pro Silent Tactile switches deployed here, feature a notable bump at the actuation point. This gives you feedback you can feel for when a key or switch is activated, requires a bit of extra force, and is often accompanied by a louder sound, which isn't the case here, as you've got one of the quietest keyboards on the market. The added dampening layers and cushioned feel of the Strike 600 set it apart from other gaming keyboards with tactile switches we've tested. Ultimately, my preference is for smooth, responsive linear switches, but there's a strong case for tactile feedback.

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This is a roundabout way of saying that the gaming performance of the Strike 600 is virtually flawless because it's a great keyboard to use, and we didn't come across any issues or hurdles when playing titles like DOOM: The Dark Ages, Battlefield 6, Arc Raiders, and indie hit Quarantine Zone: The Last Check. Once I got used to the Strike 600's relatively unique blend of silent switches and dampening, the result was smooth and impressive. That said, once you factor in the ergonomic variable-key height and full size, the Strike 600 does feel better suited to productivity.

Productivity

Although gaming is right there in the name, there's a case to be made for the MSI Strike 600 Gaming Keyboard being a fantastic productivity keyboard first and a decent gaming keyboard second. From the near-silent switches to the smooth, cushiony type-feel and the tactile bump, typing with the Strike 600 is more than a step or two above most gaming keyboards out there at this price point. And as it's full-sized with a NumPad and dedicated media controls, you can't go wrong with the Strike 600 as your day-to-day driver.

Keyboard Click Sound Level

To test a keyboard's overall sound level, we use the Ozito Digital Sound Level Meter, capturing the sentence "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" multiple times and recording the maximum dB level. This indicates how "loud" the switches used are for everyday usage. The following chart showcases where the MSI Strike 600 Gaming Keyboard sits.

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Final Thoughts

There's a lot to like about the MSI Strike 600 Gaming Keyboard, but it's one of the stranger gaming keyboards we've reviewed. And that's strange in the sense that ultimately, the silent tactile switches feel better suited for productivity than they do gaming. This isn't to say it can't be used for either; it's just that the Strike 600's branding and positioning as gaming gear doesn't make much sense. This is an all-rounder in the best possible way, a full-sized productivity keyboard with fantastic build quality and creamy, silent switches, that also happens to be a decent gaming performer.

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And the price is right, too, with the Strike 600 more than earning its value award - as long as you're aware of the handful of compromises and you're fine with tactile switches as opposed to the more gamer-friendly linear style. That, and MSI Center needs some work as an app for customizing peripherals. In the end, if you're after one of the quietest mechanical keyboards on the market, one that is built to last, sports great-feeling keycaps, and can effortlessly switch from productivity to gaming, the Strike 600 is worth checking out.