How can you make such a nice board and then label all the keys with that font. Oh Cooler Master, you wonderful, terrible people. It could almost be called classy – that is, if you look past the font. Being Tenkeyless (meaning it lacks a numberpad), it is somewhat compact, if chunky, which does add to its appeal. However, from a design perspective, it is not offensive to look at, and can be found in both Matt Black and Silvery White versions. The QFR is not a looker in the same way that a Poker II, or a 300 dollar Happy Hacking Keyboard is. From the oft, the Rapid leaves you in no doubt as to its high-end mechanical pedigree. It isn’t hewn from a solid chunk of aluminium, but you could easily convince someone otherwise. Weighing in at nearly a kilogram, it is a serious piece of kit, and the board feels very nice in the hand. And on this point, the QFR gets off to a very ahem solid start. When reviewing you have to start with the basics, and in the case of keyboards, the basics are undoubtedly build quality. If you’re still reading, than you’ve probably decided that out of all the QuickFire boards, the rapid is best for your needs, like I did when I got my first mechanical board. Is it really worth the leap up in price? 85% of the time, the answer will be no. If you need a backlight, then you might want to upgrade… but please, I beg you, ask yourself if you need a backlight before you take the jump. As for the Pro and Ultimate models, it really is a story of diminishing returns – each step up you pay more for less and less additional features. Same story with the XT really, has a few nice touches, but for a first board you probably won’t need them either. It’ll waste your money and your desk space. Do you need the numberpad – for that matter, have you ever even used a number pad? If the answer is no, then don’t bother with the TK. When you choose a QuickFire board, you have to do so by process of elimination. After investigating the TK and XT boards, many people end up settling with the bog-standard Rapid, purely because it had all the bells and whistles I needed. There are many boards in the QuickFire range – but the Rapid is the original and the most popular. Many of these people will be looking at Cooler Master’s QuickFire Rapid (commonly abbreviated to QFR) – with its multitude of users and tempting entry level price. But for a person new to the world of mechanical keyboards, it is very bewildering and hard to decide on a first board. It may seem a little useless to do a review of such a popular and common keyboard.
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