Asus ROG Azoth Extreme Review: $500

Asus' previous ROG Azoth was already pretty extreme with its impressive build, fantastic typing experience, and nod to keyboard enthusiasts and customizers. While it's one of my favorite keyboards, it's not currently on our best gaming keyboards list because, at $250, it's just a little too pricey. 

The Asus ROG Azoth Extreme is even more... extreme, somehow. We first saw this premium version of Asus' already-premium gaming keyboard at Computex 2024, though we didn't get to spend much time with it in Taiwan. The Azoth Extreme manages to improve on just about everything in the original Azoth, with a full aluminum alloy chassis, a carbon fiber positioning plate, an adjustable gasket mount design, and refinements to sound dampening and stabilizers. Its OLED screen is slightly smaller, but is full color and supports touch gestures, and instead of coming with a DIY lubing kit, it comes with a wrist rest and two sets of magnetic metal feet. 

The one thing Asus didn't improve on, however, was the original Azoth's price. The original Azoth was already pretty expensive at $250, and the Azoth Extreme is, understandably, more expensive. Twice as expensive, in fact. That's right, the Azoth Extreme will set you back a whopping $500, which is, frankly, an insane amount to pay for a mainstream gaming keyboard. But maybe that's Asus' bid — that the Azoth Extreme isn't just a mainstream gaming keyboard.

Design and Construction of the ROG Azoth Extreme

Everything about the ROG Azoth Extreme is extreme, including the packaging. I usually don't pay too much attention to packaging (I'm constantly battling a mountain of boxes), but the Azoth Extreme comes in a premium multi-level cardboard box that opens smoothly and weighs nearly 3 pounds by itself. Unboxing the Azoth Extreme definitely felt like it was designed to be an experience — or, well, more of an experience than unboxing most mainstream gaming keyboards.

The Azoth Extreme is not a particularly unique-looking keyboard, especially compared to models you'll find from smaller, boutique, enthusiast keyboard makers — but it does look and feel like a premium product. It has a 75-percent layout, which means it doesn't have a 10-key numberpad and it has a four-key navigation line instead of the six-key navigation cluster found on TKLs. The keyboard features a full aluminum alloy chassis in dark gunmetal gray, with some added detail in a bladed metal "buckle" that wraps around the sides and top of the keyboard. It has black doubleshot PBT keycaps with shine-through legends, and a color 1.4-inch OLED screen with a three-way control knob and button in the upper-right corner.

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It looks a lot like the original Azoth, with some minor differences. The Azoth Extreme's top plate is a darker gray, and its OLED screen is a little smaller — Asus says it went with a smaller screen so it could partition the function row for a better typing experience. The Azoth Extreme's OLED screen also supports touch gestures: Swiping side to side scrolls through different display modes, while swiping up and down scrolls through each display modes' different options. Double-tapping brings up a status icon overlay that shows things like current profile, connectivity, and battery life.

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The Azoth Extreme is a little larger than the Azoth (mostly due to the bladed metal buckle), measuring 13.07 inches (332mm) wide by 5.47 inches (139mm) deep, and 1.57 inches (40mm) high. It's also about a half a pound heavier — 3.22 pounds (1,460g) versus the original Azoth's 2.61 pounds (1,186g), but that makes sense as the original Azoth has an aluminum top plate and a plastic chassis.

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Unlike its non-extreme counterpart, the Azoth Extreme comes with its own wrist rest — a solid piece of silicone with an aluminum alloy base that sits flush against the keyboard. The wrist rest has a soft-touch matte rubbery finish with Asus' ROG eye logo etched into its surface. I don't think silicone makes for the most premium-looking wrist rest, but it's comfortable. It also fits the keyboard, and it's not going anywhere thanks to the excessive number of rubber feet on its base.

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The bottom of the keyboard has a decorative metal cutout pattern (with the same bladed pattern as the buckle) and four tiny rubber feet. The center features a removable mirrored backplate, which hides storage for the keyboard's USB-A dongle and the adjustable gasket switch. There are also two round cutouts for the keyboard's magnetic feet — it comes with two sets that let you adjust the keyboard's typing angle from the standard 5 degrees to 9 and 11 degrees. The feet are a nice touch — most metal keyboards don't come with any way to adjust the typing angle (whether you should be adjusting your keyboard's typing angle is a different story). I don't adjust my keyboard's typing angle but the feet are so nice I kind of wish I had a reason to use them.

The Azoth Extreme comes with several accessories, including the silicone wrist rest and magnetic feet. It doesn't come with the DIY lubing station that the original Azoth came with, because Asus decided a wrist rest was a more valuable accessory for most users (probably true). As far as customization goes, it comes with a keycap puller and a switch puller for hot-swapping switches, as well as a couple of extra switches and extra silicone pins for if you want to open up the keyboard. For connectivity, it comes with a 6.5-foot (2m) braided USB-C to USB-A cable, a USB extender, and Asus' ROG Polling Rate Booster, plus the 2.4GHz USB-A dongle.

Specs

Typing and Gaming Experience on the ROG Azoth Extreme

The ROG Azoth Extreme comes with Asus' own switches — ROG NX Snow ("refined linear") or ROG NX Storm ("refined clicky"). Our review unit came with ROG NX Snow switches, which have an actuation point of 1.8mm, an initial force of 40g, and a total force of 53g. The Azoth Extreme also has a hot-swappable PCB, so you can swap in any mechanical switches you like. While hot-swappability is always a nice feature to have, it's not quite as valuable in a keyboard that retails for $500 — if you're going to spend that much on a prebuilt keyboard, I think it's fair to expect to love the switches it comes with.

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Typing on the Azoth Extreme feels and sounds very, very good. I expected nothing less — the original Azoth offered an impressive typing experience, thanks to its gasket mount design and three layers of sound-dampening material. The Azoth Extreme also has a gasket mount design and three layers of sound-dampening material (two layers of Poron foam and a silicone pad), as well as a carbon fiber positioning plate that Asus says provides a "crisp typing sensation" while offering "excellent shock absorption." And that's not wrong: the Azoth Extreme does offer up a very crisp typing sensation with almost no case ping. 

The keyboard comes with doubleshot PBT keycaps, which have curved, textured tops and a "mid-height" profile that's lower than the traditional OEM profile you'll find on most mainstream gaming keyboards. They're fairly comfortable, and they do feel slightly more premium than the keycaps on the original Azoth, but they're not otherwise particularly noteworthy. 

Asus has done some fine-tuning with the Azoth Extreme's stabilizers and has paid special attention to the spacebar, and the difference is noticeable. I detected perhaps a hint of stabilizer rattle in the backspace key, but only after going through all the keys, several times, looking for something. 

The Azoth Extreme feels and sounds better than the original Azoth, which already felt and sounded great for a mainstream gaming keyboard. With the Azoth Extreme, Asus has definitely managed to hit actual enthusiast-level acoustics, no "for a mainstream gaming keyboard" tag necessary.

The Azoth Extreme also has a unique feature in its adjustable gasket mount, which can be adjusted via a paddle switch under the removable backplate. The gasket mount can be flipped to either a "hard" or a "soft" feel — the "hard" feel is crisper, while the "soft" feel offers more flex. I didn't expect the difference to be extreme, but it was big enough that I could immediately tell where the switch was as soon as I started typing, both from the sound and the feel. Of course, how you want the gasket mount to feel is mostly preference — it's not going to make a difference in performance, so this feature isn't necessarily particularly useful for a keyboard that has one owner (unless the owner doesn't know how they want their keyboard to feel). 

The ROG NX Snow switches that came on our Azoth Extreme were perfect for gaming, with smooth, linear keypresses and quick, consistent actuation (the lower profile keycaps helped, too). I don't love linear switches, but I'll make an exception for the NX Snows, which definitely do have a "refined" linear feel. I don't typically play games that require ultra-quick response times (except for testing), but the Azoth Extreme had a very consistent wireless connection regardless of whether it was plugged into the ROG Polling Rate Booster. The ROG Polling Rate Booster is an accessory that can boost compatible peripherals' polling rates up to 8,000 Hz (we also saw it bundled with the Asus ROG Keris II Ace gaming mouse). Whether you need a keyboard with an 8,000 Hz polling rate is a different question, however — unlike a mouse, which is constantly moving, a keyboard does not necessarily benefit from more reporting every fraction of a millisecond.

However, I will point out that these are still standard mechanical switches — not the magnetic Hall Effect switches we've been seeing in every other gaming keyboard released this year. So they do not feature things like adjustable actuation or support for Rapid Trigger — and if you are looking to push speed extremes, those are better features to chase than an 8,000 Hz polling rate.

Features and Software of the ROG Azoth Extreme

The ROG Azoth Extreme is configurable with Asus' universal peripheral software, Armoury Crate. Armoury Crate is my least favorite peripheral software, but you'll need to use it if you want to remap keys, customize the OLED screen and control knob, or change the keyboard's lighting. It also lets you access a handful of power and performance options, firmware updates, and Aura Sync, which lets you sync lighting effects across multiple Asus peripherals.

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All of the Azoth Extreme's keys are programmable (except the function key) — most, up to two layers deep. There are several secondary keybinds that are fixed and can't be reprogrammed; these are printed in white on the sides of the keycaps. You can reprogram keys in Armoury Crate by clicking on a key and selecting a function from a list, which includes keyboard, mouse, and multimedia functions, shortcuts and program launching, preset input text, and macros. The keyboard also has on-the-fly macro recording, which lets you record and set macros without going through the software.

The OLED screen and control knob are customizable, but in a somewhat limited way. You can set the OLED screen to display a static or animated graphic, either from Asus' preloaded options or by uploading your own graphic to Armoury Crate. I'm not sure what the graphical limitations of the screen are, but it took me approximately 17 attempts before I was able to successfully load the Tom's Hardware graphic to the keyboard — and even on my last (successful?) attempt, Armoury Crate spit out an error message:

In addition to custom graphics, the OLED screen has four other modes: Date and time, laptop battery (only available if you're using a laptop), hardware information, and keystrokes per second (KPS). Only the graphic and KPS are turned on by default; the other modes you'll need to turn on in Armoury Crate. Once turned on, you can switch modes by swiping left/right on the screen, and you can switch through individual modes' menus by swiping up and down. Double-tapping on the screen brings up an overlay of keyboard status icons that show the caps lock and scroll lock status, current profile, current connection, battery status, PC/Mac mode, and the current functions of the three-way switch.

The control knob has several functions, which you can scroll through by tapping the side button. All functions are active by default; you can turn them off in Armoury Crate if you'd rather not scroll through functions you'll never use. The functions are: System volume, media track, keyboard brightness adjustment, OLED brightness adjustment, switch lighting effect, and customize. The "customize" function is a custom function you can configure (you can set scroll up, scroll down, and scroll click to perform any of the same functions you can set keys to perform).

Wireless Experience & Battery Life of the ROG Azoth Extreme

The ROG Azoth Extreme offers three forms of connectivity: 2.4GHz wireless, Bluetooth, and wired (USB-C). It comes with a 2.4GHz wireless USB-A dongle as well as Asus' ROG Polling Rate Booster, which ups the keyboard's polling rate to 8,000 Hz in both wired and wireless mode. While you can make a reasonable argument for why an extremely high polling rate might be important in a gaming mouse for a very small fraction of gamers, I don't think you can make the same argument for a keyboard.

Asus rates the ROG Azoth's battery life at 92 hours with both the OLED screen and the keyboard's RGB backlighting turned on and over 1,600 hours with both turned off. I'll assume this is also with the polling rate set at 1,000 Hz, not 8,000 Hz. Still, this is excellent for a wireless keyboard, and what we've come to expect from Asus' gaming lineup — the original Azoth was rated for 2,000 hours with its OLED screen and lighting turned off, and Asus' Strix Scope II 96 Wireless offers 1,500 hours with its lighting turned off.

The Bottom Line

The ROG Azoth Extreme is a fantastic keyboard, no question. Asus is now solidly in enthusiast territory with this keyboard, and I won't pretend like I haven't been waiting for an actual enthusiast-level keyboard with a full suite of gaming features (even if I will always be at odds with Armoury Crate). But $500?!

You know how I said that $500 is an insane amount to pay for a mainstream gaming keyboard? Well, it's also an insane amount to pay for a prebuilt enthusiast keyboard. So the fact that Asus has managed to transcend the mainstream gaming category with this keyboard means nothing: for $500, you can just get your mainstream gaming keyboard and your enthusiast typing keyboard.

The prebuilt Meletrix Boog75 feels and sounds fantastic and has magnetic HE switches, and costs $230 — less than half of the Azoth Extreme. My favorite gaming keyboard, Asus' own ROG Strix Scope 96 II Wireless, is currently going for $150. If you get both of those, you can also pick up the great-sounding magnetic HE switch Arbiter Studio Polar 65 for $125, and you'll have spent $5 more than buying one ROG Azoth Extreme.

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