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Hands-On Review of the Cyber Snipa Warboard
by Ron Burke
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If you haven’t heard of Cyber Snipa, you aren’t alone. With so many hardware peripherial manufacturers out there it is hard to keep track of them all. Based in Hong Kong with offices in the USA, Europe, and Australia, Cyber Snipa has actually shipped quite a few well-received products ranging from high-end headsets and card readers to 3200 dpi mice and webcams. Recently we got the chance to take their newest creation, the Cyber Snipa Warboard for a spin for a few weeks. Those of you who have read this site for a while know that I’m quite particular about my keyboards as I spend a great deal of time using them for writing as well as gaming. It isn’t enough to stick 104 keys into a chassis, paint it fingerprint-magnet-black, and ship it out the door – I want to see something new. Looking at this keyboard, I braced myself for disappointment as I, like you, had never heard of the company behind it.
The Cyber Snipa Warboard ships with a goody you won’t find in many keyboards – replaceable custom keys. The Razer Tarantula did this with 10 keys, but the Warboard brings almost double that with 17 keys that can be swapped. Below you can see your options, as well as the included tool to complete the process. I found it to be relatively easy to remove the keys, but I did get a bit nervous with putting them back on.
The WASD keys are standard, and Q and E handling leaning is pretty clearly represented here. The R key for reload is also the most often use of the key in shooters. It is when you get into the other keys that you’ll likely scratch your head. I can’t wrap my head around a logical use for the PlayStation button set, and I’m not quite sure what the starburst key is supposed to designate. The weapons in games are fairly sequential, and the keys point out the obvious gameplay design flaw in the general flow of these weapons – every game is truly the same. Still, for those who like to remap their keys and keep a visual reference guide handy, you can certainly do much worse than a replaceable key (I’m looking at you paper overlays!) for the job. Your mileage may vary beyond the movement and lean keys – I found that I kept those and ditched the rest.
Just what is Ghosting?
I’m going to spare you the technical jibber-jabber on what ghosting is, but suffice it to say that when you press more than one key simultaneously (accidentally or on purpose) results in an unintended command or a battle with the Windows StickyKeys functionality. In short, a USB keyboard is capable of registering 5 to 6 simultaneous key presses but you’ll likely end up getting the wrong result. The idea behind anti-ghosting technology is to make each key register independently instead of running through a central membrane or bus. This ensures that the key you pressed is first is the only key that registers as it’ll block everything afterwards for a few nanoseconds. You’ll likely never notice this feature on something as pedestrian as an MMO, but you’ll certainly notice it in a game like Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.
I don’t wanna press those keys! Press them for me!
Many keyboards come with macro functionality nowadays. The Warboard ships with a software package called Macro Force (install footprint of less than 10mb) which allows you to set up key combinations that you repeat often. MMO players usually have a specific order for their buffs and equipment changes before they PVP or raid or whatever. The macro system on the Warboard allows you to set this up to be handled with a single keypress. The software is pretty straightforward – simply tell it you want to map a new macro, do the selected action, and then tell it which key you want that action set mapped to. You aren’t just limited to keyboard options – you can also map mouse clicks (but not movement recording) and keyboard combination functions, ensuring that you can pull off almost any complex command set with ease. Layering the commands sequentially and adding delays I was able to make some fairly complex functions that automated simple things like making a pet attack or anything else that I could pull off with key presses that didn’t require additional mouse movements. If you find yourself doing a particular action in that parameter often, you may want to invest the time to automate it. I suspect most players will use it to automate the tedium of crafting or pet control in their favorite Mainline Heroin Addiction (MMO).
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