It makes perfect sense that an esports brand would make a best-in-class competitive keyboard. Fnatic’s most recent keyboard, the $109.99 Streak65, impresses with a stylish and functional approach to the trending compact 60-percent keyboard design. Even better, the Streak65 has all the fine touches that you’d want in a compact keyboard, plus something new in the 60-percent category: dedicated macro keys. If you’re looking to downsize your keyboard and upgrade your game, the Streak65 is an excellent choice and an Editors’ Choice pick.
On a Hot Streak
The Streak65 is a true 65 percent keyboard, which means it has 68 keys. (Remember: A full-size, “100 percent” keyboard has 104 keys). In addition to dropping the number pad, cutting down to 68 keys means ditching the function row, the utility keys you’d normally find above the arrows, and the menu key between function and right-control. Those actions have been relegated to function key shortcuts, along with common, shared keys, such as media and RGB brightness controls. The Streak65 requires a little more memorization, as many of those shared keys have sidecap labels describing their alternate functions.
The keys are laid out in a tight, rectangular block, with the arrow keys scrunched into the lower-right corner. Unfortunately, there’s no gap between the one, tab, and escape keys. Right-shift and a few other keys are smaller than their neighbors, and feel relatively out of position with the keys to their immediate right.
Measuring 1.03 by 12.31 by 4.34 inches (HWD), The Streak65 takes up little desk space. In fact, it’s slightly smaller the HyperX Alloy Origins 60. The keyboard weighs just 13.7 ounces, so it’s very light and easily tiltable. (For the uninitiated, many competitive players like to tilt the keyboards to a more ergonomic angle while PC gaming).
The general impulse to bring the keyboard in as tight as possible isn’t wholly positive, though. With no gaps between the keys, it’s easy to press the wrong one if you find yourself lost or out of position. The Streak65’s concave keycaps somewhat counteract this—if your finger catches the edge of a key, it tends to fall into place—but you may yourself making a few more typos than usual in your first few days using the keyboard.
The layout, while well-composed, isn’t especially impressive on its own. The typing feel, powered by Fnatic’s new, housemade, low-profile mechanical switches, make the keyboard stand out from the pack. It’s a best-of-both-worlds situation. The switches have a light touch, actuating at 1mm, but bottom out at 3.2mm, which is deep for a low-profile switch. You can lightly tap while gaming and press down hard while typing, but won’t feel the impact of having low-travel keys.
The Streak65 also has a few bells and whistles. Some, like its detachable USB-C power cable, are fairly commonplace for esports-minded keyboards (it isn’t wireless like the Happy Hacking Professional Hybrid 60-percent keyboard). Others, like its four, dedicated macro keys, are decidedly more distinctive. Considering the strong effort to make the keyboard small, it seems odd that the Streak65 has a set of open, “extra” keys, but it turns out that they’re worth the additional space. Whether you elevate a shortcut to a dedicated key or create a macro, you’ll like having the ability to tweak the optimized 65-percent profile without moving things around.
Make Your Streak OP
The Streak65 features software customization through Fnatic OP, the company’s configuration app. OP features an “early access” badge in the lower-left corner, which may explain, if not justify, the ups and downs of using the software. At a glance, OP is slick. It has a good-looking, clear UI. It’s easy to remap both the primary and secondary (Fn+Key) inputs for every key. Plus, it has a really nice-looking macro editor that visualizes your key combo in a highly editable way. These are all very good things.
There are also some…less good things. The Streak65 supports up to four keyboard profiles, which are stored in onboard memory. While four onboard profiles is a decent number, most configuration apps let you create an infinite number of profiles, keep the best ones in onboard storage, and stash the rest locally. Then again, there isn’t a way to tie profiles to specific games and apps, so having numerous profiles to sift through could be a hassle in this case.
On the lighting front, the Streak65 has RGB lighting under every key, but doesn’t support per-key light controls. OP has a lighting menu that lets you change the lighting’s pattern, but those choices apply to the full keyboard. It’s a small, but confounding misstep.
Feels Like Victory
Despite its software-related shortcomings, the Fnatic Streak65 brings together all the useful elements that you’d want in a compact keyboard, especially one designed for esports. It’s small, lightweight, and has a great typing feel. If you’re looking for a keyboard with excellent gaming and typing performance, Fnatic’s quick, deep switches find the perfect balance between hair-trigger performance and comfort. For $109.99, a price in line with the growing lineup of 60-65 percent keyboards coming from major manufacturers, such as the excellent HyperX Alloy Origins 60 and Razer Huntsman Mini, the Streak65 delivers incredible fundamentals and features you can’t find elsewhere (at least for now). The Fnatic Streak65 is just short of perfect, and an easy Editors’ Choice winner.
