In Detail

Once you’ve broken out the keyboard from the box, you will be greeted with the cold feel of brushed aluminium. Around the keys there is an angular bevel which has been polished to a mirror shine. Also, running along the top of the keyboard is a polished strip going through the lock LED’s. The Enermax logo is also polished and sits at the top left of the board. Overal, the keyboard has a very professional design and appearance which is exactly what it should be as this keyboard is aiming for that niche; laptop keyboards aren’t great for gaming.

The weight of this keyboard is amazing, for a design that utilises mainly aluminium it’s surprisingly heavy. This means that it won’t move whilst typing and it also makes the keyboard seem very sturdy and well made, which of course, it is.

To make sure that you keep the vast expanse of aluminium looking its best, Enermax kindly supply the board with a small, and actually very useful polish towel. I found myself using this little towel a little too much to keep this baby looking its best…

On the back of the keyboard you will find the 2 port un-powered USB hub. Situated on the right of keyboard, it provides you with a place to easily stick in your pen drives and possibly your mouse. As its un-powered, more greedy devices won’t work in it and Windows will kindly tell you that there isn’t enough power. In reality, I didn’t really find these slots all that useful but others might; they are definitely a good idea.

Looking on the left side of the board, you will find the audio I/O slots for front audio (green slot) and the microphone (pink slot). Personally, I find that these are really not that useful as my headset has a lot of wire meaning that it can easily reach round the back of my rig with cabling to spare. Plugging it into the Aurora would add to the cable clutter. They would however be very useful for people whose speakers don’t reach their rig, or if you have a stand-alone microphone (e.g. with a webcam).

The keyboard feet are rubberised meaning that they will grip on any smooth surface and stay put. The whole keyboard is also surprisingly thin for such a feature packed board. It is a slim wedge design that will fit almost anywhere.

The Caps lock, Scroll lock and Number lock LED’s are blue and shine brightly when turned on. Unfortunately the shine from the nearby LED if turned on will bleed into the others, meaning that it looks like more than one lock is on. Not a major issue just that it takes away slightly from the professional design.