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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