Cooler Master Rapid Si - pre-release review

shrubbry · 10 Mar 2015, 22:16

tl;dr: This keyboard is either pretty uninteresting or is exactly what you've been praying for. [pics]

The Rapid Si (Rapid i/Stealth Edition) is the only keyboard on the market that's both backlit and front-printed. To some people, those are the two sweetest aesthetics - and it's exciting to finally have them in one board. If not, a Quick Fire Rapid is cheaper and exactly the same.

Actually, given all that's been written about CM's Quick Fire line, there's not so much more that's important to say here. Everything is precisely what you'd expect. Fit/finish is typical Cooler Master - which is to say unspectacular but very nice. Matte black case with ABS OEM-profile keys to match (Duzeyao@GH shows a white keyset too, but I haven't seen it). It's got fine lighting effects - tho no ARM processor onboard, which means nothing super-complicated like the Rapid i. The backlighting is crisp and goes from comfortably dim (I wasn't blinded in a pitch-black room) to extremely bright (visible in daylight - looks like crisp white doubleshot text.) Pulling off a cap, you can see that they just moved the LED to the bottom. That, with its unique translucent side-printed text = your Mom. Or this keyboard.

I hate brown Cherry switches - which is the only way it's being released, at least for now. With a little DIY you could either solder in different switches or move the caps to a different board that happens to have bottom-mounted LEDs, like the orange Monoprice TKL or the KPB V60 (CM's not selling the caps separately), and you could recoup some of the cost by reselling the original as a backlit-Rapid/ghetto Rapid i. But I definitely don't care enough to do this.

//edit: Quote from below -- "Cooler Master has confirmed with me that the SI will not be coming out in Europe."

_PixelNinja · 11 Mar 2015, 14:17

shrubbry wrote: So, I have no idea when they're actually coming out.

Cooler Master has confirmed with me that the SI will not be coming out in Europe. This is most probably due to the patent covering front printed legends, currently held by FILCO in the EU.

Muirium · 11 Mar 2015, 14:21

Aren't patents awesome! Yay innovation.

_PixelNinja · 11 Mar 2015, 14:29

In this case it is indeed silly since it impedes an innovation/evolution of front printed and back-lit keycaps.

zts · 11 Mar 2015, 16:50

Are the LEDs any more reliable than on Rapid-i ? -- I had LEDs under Z, 1, Print Screen, Scroll Lock, Pause die within a week.

_PixelNinja · 11 Mar 2015, 17:03

While I understand your disappointment and agree that LEDs failing so fast sucks, I am not sure we can talk about reliability based on one's sole experience. I know there was a batch of Rapid-is with issues (acknowledged by CM) but to the best of my knowledge it is far from being a consistent problem and as widespread as Corsair's second generation mechanical keyboards.

At this point, there is no way anybody can give any feedback considering the SI is not out yet. Keep in mind though, LEDs will always be a high-potential failure point on back-lit keyboards.

zts · 11 Mar 2015, 19:12

_PixelNinja wrote: While I understand your disappointment and agree that LEDs failing so fast sucks, I am not sure we can talk about reliability based on one's sole experience. I know there was a batch of Rapid-is with issues (acknowledged by CM) but to the best of my knowledge it is far from being a consistent problem and as widespread as Corsair's second generation mechanical keyboards.

At this point, there is no way anybody can give any feedback considering the SI is not out yet. Keep in mind though, LEDs will always be a high-potential failure point on back-lit keyboards.

Thanks. I think maybe there was a bad batch of LEDs (lots of them ended up on Amazon). Other than that no other problems. Gives me an excuse to turn off the lights and replace those keycaps with a better un-lit quality set

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