MSI Strike Pro Wireless review: whisper-quiet and comfy, but it hogs your desk

The MSI Strike Pro Wireless is a very quiet keyboard, and its wrist rest is one of the best we have ever used. Still, it did not make us forget the two boards we measured it against: the Logitech G Pro X TKL we use every day and the MSI Forge GK600 TKL Wireless, which earned a 9/10 from us. The Strike Pro gets an 8/10, mostly because it is a full-size board that eats up desk space and its software does the job without standing out.

MSI's US store lists it at $169.99, but it was sold out on November 4. That is a lot to ask next to the Forge GK600, which Micro Center listed at $89.99 in October.

MSI sent us the keyboard for this review. We used it for a week on Windows, both as our everyday writing keyboard and for gaming in The Guild 1 Remake, Baldur's Gate 3 and 007 First Light. We connected it over Bluetooth and by cable. We did not try the 2.4 GHz receiver, and we did not measure noise or latency with instruments, so any such figures below come from MSI.

Tactile switches you can barely hear

Every key sits on a switch, the part that registers the press. The Strike Pro uses Kailh Midnight Pro Silent Tactile switches, which the box markets as Silent Sensation. Tactile means each key has a small bump halfway down that tells your finger the press has counted. According to MSI's spec sheet, they actuate at 45 grams of force and 1.9 mm of travel, with the bump peaking at 55 grams.

We really like these keys, and they feel fairly smooth, but they do not beat our favorites. We liked the Forge GK600 more, and our Logitech is hard to top.

Silence is what sets the Strike Pro apart. MSI promises less than 35 decibels and gets there with a dampener inside each switch, a foam layer underneath and internal gaskets that kill the metallic ring of the plate. Typing on it sounds like a low, muffled tapping instead of the clack of a regular mechanical board. If you type with other people in the room, that is the best reason to buy it.

The switches are hot-swappable, so you can replace them with other 5-pin switches using the puller in the box, no soldering needed. Our guide to hot-swap keyboards explains which switches fit.

A full-size board that takes over your desk

The Strike Pro is full size, with a number pad, a volume roller and media buttons. MSI lists it at 17.4 inches wide and 2.6 pounds, and the wrist rest adds even more depth. The Forge GK600 is 13.7 inches wide because it drops the number pad, so the Strike Pro takes up 3.7 more inches of desk.

The size is our biggest complaint. We are used to tenkeyless (TKL) boards without a number pad, and here the mouse ends up farther away while the keyboard claims a big chunk of the desk. If you use a number pad every day, for spreadsheets or flight sims, the size makes sense. If you do not, it is wasted space. The weight did not bother us, though, since this is a keyboard meant to stay put.

MSI says the top plate is gray aluminum, and the keycaps are PBT, a hard plastic that resists the shine finger oils leave behind. The legends are dyed into the plastic, so they will not wear off, but they are opaque. As our cover photo shows, the RGB lights up the edges of each key and the plate while the letters stay black, so in a dark room the lighting will not help you find a key by its legend.

The wrist rest is the best part

The wrist rest is outstanding. It snaps on with magnets, comes off in a second and is filled with memory foam that gives under your weight and slowly springs back. It stayed really comfortable through a full week of writing.

Roller, media buttons and macros

In the top-right corner there is a metal volume roller and four media buttons. On the left, three keys labeled M1, M2 and M3 switch between saved profiles and fire macros, which are recorded sequences of keystrokes you can replay with a single key. Everything worked well. We set up several macros in MSI Center, the company's app, and they fired every time.

MSI says the roller can also adjust screen brightness, but only on displays Windows can dim, like a laptop panel. On an external monitor without that control, nothing happens.

MSI Center does the job and nothing more. It delivers what it promises and never failed on us, but nothing about it impressed us, and lighting effects live in a separate module called Mystic Light. The board also skips features aimed at competitive shooters, such as the rapid trigger found on magnetic keyboards, which resets a key the moment it starts to rise so you can press it again sooner.

Bluetooth, USB-C and a battery we never worried about

It connects three ways: a USB-C cable, a 2.4 GHz wireless receiver and Bluetooth, which remembers up to three devices so you can jump from your PC to a laptop or tablet with one key. We used it over Bluetooth and wired, and it worked perfectly both ways, with no dropouts or lag we could notice while typing or gaming.

MSI does not publish the polling rate, which is how many times per second the keyboard reports to your computer. In slower-paced games like Baldur's Gate 3 and The Guild, that makes no difference. If you play online shooters, use the cable or the 2.4 GHz receiver rather than Bluetooth, which tends to respond more slowly.

The battery holds 4,200 mAh, a figure that describes how much charge it stores, not how long it lasts. Battery life depends mostly on the lighting. MSI quotes up to 1,500 hours, but only over Bluetooth with every light switched off, and gives no number with RGB on. The battery never gave us any trouble during our week of testing, but the keyboard was plugged in part of that time, so we cannot turn it into an exact battery life figure. A full charge takes about seven hours, according to MSI, and you can keep typing while it charges.

Our score: 8/10, one point behind the Forge GK600

We give it 8/10. It is quiet, its tactile keys feel good, the wrist rest is one of the best we have tried, and everything from the macros to Bluetooth worked without a hitch. Its size and software that merely gets the job done hold it back, and we never liked it as much as the Forge GK600 or our Logitech. The opaque legends also waste the lighting.

We recommend it to anyone who needs a full-size, wireless and discreet keyboard for working around other people. At $169.99, though, it is a hard sell when the Forge GK600 costs far less and won us over more. If your desk is small or you never touch a number pad, get the Forge instead, and keep an eye out for a Strike Pro discount.