In 2013, I was fortunate enough to be one of the first people to experience Nvidia’s G-Sync display tech. Engineers from the company personally delivered one to my home office and demonstrated it for me.
At the time, it was a prototype. An ASUS monitor that had the first G-Sync module wired into it. They slapped it down on my desk and invited me to play anything from my PC game collection, promising that it would forever change how I’d want to experience PC gaming.
Fast-forward to today: G-Sync and FreeSync are literal game-changers, providing both a competitive advantage and a much smoother and more enjoyable visual presentation.
Our monitors a crucial gateway into our games, and it’s refreshing that variable refresh rate displays are becoming the norm.
On laptops, the keyboard hasn’t received the same kind of revolutionary treatment, despite being an equally important component. Whether we’re gaming, working, or chatting, the keyboard is a constant and necessary interface.
For the most part, laptop keyboards still suck, with ThinkPads being a notable exception. Are they passable? Sure. Do I want to voluntarily type on them all day? Absolutely not.
While they’re not all as terrible as the infamous 2016 MacBook Pro, they don’t exactly make our fingers tingle with delight.
CHERRY MX, a name that has become synonymous with mechanical keyboards for desktop PCs, has been doing something about that.
For the past 3 years, CHERRY MX and Alienware have been working together to create a “binary mechanical switch experience” for a laptop form factor.
They burned through a bunch of materials and a whopping 160+ prototypes, and the final switch was inspired by, believe it or not, the iconic DeLorean because of its unique “upward-opening gull-wing doors.”