Roccat's New Mechanical Keyboard Geared For eSports
Roccat Studios launched on Thursday the Ryos TKL Pro, a tenkeyless mechanical keyboard built from the ground up for eSports. Tenkeyless means that the peripheral was designed without the number pad, making it somewhat lighter and narrower than other mechanical keyboards with the number pad intact.
"I'm in it to win it, so you'll never see us put gear in our eSports team's hands that don't give them an edge," said René Korte, CEO and founder of Roccat Studios. "Team Roccat uses the Ryos TKL in competition because it optimizes their play."
According to Roccat, the keyboard uses "best-in-industry" Cherry MX Key switches: customers can choose between brown, black, blue or red. The keyboard also provides per-key illumination, meaning you'll be able to see these keys better in the dark than if the keyboard merely had backlighting. In other words, the letters and symbols are all lit with their own individual LEDs.
The new keyboard includes 470 programmable macros and 2 MB of flash memory for storing those macros and other settings. The keyboard also includes two 32-bit ARM Cortex processors, a smudge-proof glossy exterior, three programmable thumbster keys, a built-in cable channel and five rubber feet so the keyboard doesn't move across the desktop surface during heated gameplay.
The specifications also show that the keyboard has an N-Key Rollover feature to prevent ghosting, a 1000 Hz polling rate, a 1 ms response time, and 91 total programmable keys. The keyboard also supports Roccat's Easy-Shift[+] tech, which allows the user to assign a secondary function to most of the keys. There's also a huge integrated wrist rest so that your hands are more relaxed while gaming or surfing the web.
Roccat indicated on Thursday that HyuN, the number one StarCraft II player in the world, had some input in the design, as did several other professional gamers. Having input from pro gamers is a good thing, as it means Roccat fans will have a high-quality product that gives them as much of an edge as Roccat's own eSports team.
The keyboard is available now at retailers and online shops for $139.99.
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Kevin Parrish has over a decade of experience as a writer, editor, and product tester. His work focused on computer hardware, networking equipment, smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, and other internet-connected devices. His work has appeared in Tom's Hardware, Tom's Guide, Maximum PC, Digital Trends, Android Authority, How-To Geek, Lifewire, and others.
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amk-aka-Phantom ReplyId never go without a numpad especially not at this price.
Then this isn't a product made for you. I am in the market for a mechanical backlit TKL KB and this one almost made me reconsider buying CoolerMaster Rapid-i, but they kill the whole point of not having NumPad (gamer here, never use it) by including this large ugly frame, and the price is the same as Rapid-i.
Why did the swap the Y and Z keys around?
This is clearly a German layout, which other keys prove as well. Isn't RC a German brand anyhow?
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DokuroKM Regarding the switched Y and Z keys and the small L-Shift key: Roccat is a German brand and this is the German standard layout. Just checked 3 keyboards here, that is a normal size for the L-Shift key here.Reply
Interestingely, I never thought that the L-Shift would be too small for gaming, as my little finger is automatically there when I use WSAD. Never heard someone complaining about key size here... -
cypeq The headline seriously says that it's now 'geared for e-sport'? So previously roccat products were not?Reply
Dang it I like their range and I strongly prefer TKL size but I think million macro gimmick and Independent lightning aren't meaningful enough to drop another 40$.
And I don't know... CM did awesome move providing tkl with a numpad at the cost of 5 more switches.
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twztechman As a lefty, I use the Numpad area for almost everything. This would not work for me.Reply -
magicandy While it's true the numpad is almost always not used in games (even for macros it's not best to use since you have to take your hand off either the mouse or use your WASD hand to use it), I use the numpad outside of games all the time, whenever I have to input a number - it's just so much faster than plugging away at the top row numbers.Reply
Sure it's a "gamer keyboard" but even competitive gamers use their computer for other things outside of games. Once you lose the numpad you'll start realizing just how much you actually used it.
I get it, Roccat is trying to cut costs by cutting down the number of keys and the expensive cherry mx switches that go with them. But as others have said this is unacceptable for a $140 keyboard. If they brought it down to sub $100 I could see it, but that's just too much to sacrifice the numpad.