Cougar's 700K Keyboard Is Built For Gamers
Cougar's latest number is an unusual approach to a gaming keyboard.
We've reached a point where basic mechanical keyboards are flooding the market and where vendors have to innovate in order to stand out. We've seen plenty of innovation, but we haven't yet seen a keyboard quite like Cougar's 700K, which is an aluminum gaming keyboard with a very rich feature set and a slightly unorthodox layout.
The 700K uses Cherry MX mechanical switches, which are placed on an aluminum backplate for a sharp typing experience. Around this plate Cougar has placed a plastic frame, the design of which is inspired by 'stealth warship technology.' It also comes with a wrist rest, and you can detach part of it to create a smaller wrist rest for FPS gaming. Each key is also individually LED backlit.
What sets this keyboard apart, however, is the gaming-oriented feature set. This time around, when we speak of gaming features we actually mean functions, not just form. The 700K comes with a total of six G-Keys, along with three macro profiles. Five of these G-Keys are placed where you would expect them, on the left side of the keyboard, although for the sixth key Cougar has cut the spacebar in two and assigned the right key as a G-Key.
Cougar omitted the left Windows key in favor of an FN key to access the keyboard's onboard functions. Gamers might like this layout, although we reckon that pure typists may think that there is space for improvement.
Other gaming-oriented features include N-Key rollover over USB, along with a 1000 Hz polling rate and an adjustable key repeat rate with 1x, 2x, 4x and 8x options. Driving the keyboard is an ARM processor, along with onboard memory and Cougar's UIX software suite.
Cougar didn't reveal pricing or availability.
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Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.
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apache_lives Already used one, didnt like it - keys feel too high/tall, the gap between the G function keys and the normal keys is too smallReply
Theres too many companies making "gaming" keyboards and mice that make just rubbish products with no real RND making the devices feel plain wrong to use or just annoying because of issues like layout/size/shape etc -
DarkSable I just... why would you pay extra for "gaming macro keys" when you can use Autohotkey and turn your number pad into a macro pad for free? Just doesn't make much sense to me.Reply -
wysiwygbill The darn thing looks downright painful to use what what it being so edgy. :-pReply
I do want a mini screen these days for my gpu/cpu/fps info though. -
10tacle Reply14195465 said:what kind of mech switches? reb/blue/brown?
Did you read the article? It's right there: "The 700K uses Cherry MX mechanical switches, which are placed on an aluminum backplate for a sharp typing experience."