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Most of the mechanical keyboards marketed as "gaming" boards don't accept many features that make them demonstrably amend for gaming. That's not the example with the Wooting One, an intriguing mechanical keyboard that was launched on Kickstarter before this year. Information technology looks like a fairly standard keyboard, but the switches are an entirely new pattern that feature optical analog input–it's non just on or off like other switches.

The Wooting Ane gives you more than control over move in games, like to the analog stick on a controller, merely with the added precision of a mouse. Y'all might see a real advantage in sure titles. Nevertheless, not all games play nicely with analog switches.

The Flaretech Switches

The designers of this keyboard have come up up with two switches: a red switch and a bluish ane. The stems aren't colored to match the names, but the properties of the switches are an approximate match for the standard Carmine Bed and Blue switches. The reds are linear, then in that location's no click or crash-land as you press. They have a 55g operating forcefulness, which is considered a medium-weight switch (information technology's slightly heavier than a Carmine Red). The Flaretech Blue has the same operating force, but there'southward a click afterwards about one.7mm of travel.

If you're not sure which of these switches sounds more than highly-seasoned, there's skillful news: The Wooting One supports swappable switches. Well-nigh keyboards crave switches to exist soldered into place, and even those with "hotswap sockets" often fail later on a few uses. At that place are no pins on these switches, and so they just clip into the plate and sit above the PCB. If you buy a Wooting One, you can cull red or blue for the board, but you go a kit of four extras of both types. So, you tin can bandy some of the other flavor on your board to test them out. In that location'southward also a premium bundle that comes with a set of both switches.

When you lot take a keycap off the Wooting Ane, it doesn't wait much different than a standard mechanical keyboard. The Flaretech switches use the standard Cerise-style cantankerous stem, which ways it tin can accept custom keycaps for MX boards. When you look within the switches, things go weird.

Other mechanical switches have a metallic contact of some sort inside that is triggered when you push the stalk down. The Flaretech switches don't have that. Within is just the stem, jump, and a calorie-free pipage. The light pipe is a nice touch equally information technology allows light from the RGB LEDs on the circuit board to polish up through the top of the switch and the transparent stem.

The inside of a Flaretech Red. Annotation the prism on the left side of the stem and low-cal pipe on the far right.

The jump appears to be a typical design you'd notice in whatsoever Cherry-red-mode switch, only the stalk is unique. At that place'due south a small prism protruding from the side, so information technology moves upward and down as y'all press the switch. The PCB does all the work with an infrared optoelectronic sensor. As the prism moves upwardly and down, the sensor registers the distance as analog data. Because this is all handled by the PCB and not the switch, y'all can do a lot of wild stuff with the Wooting One.

The Board and Software

To customize your experience with this keyboard, you lot'll need the cleverly named Wootility desktop client. It's available for Windows and macOS with a Linux version coming soon. This app lets you customize the colour of each LED on the board nevertheless you like, and multiple profiles can be configured for different games.

The keycaps are ABS with shine-through legends. The quality is okay—similar to what you get with other consumer keyboards.

The Wooting One has analog information from all the switches, so information technology can basically pretend to be a game controller–it uses either Xinput or Direct Input. So, y'all can press a key down a little, and it's like yous nudged an analog stick slightly in one direction. The nearly obvious advantage here is that your WASD cluster movements tin speed upward or tiresome down based on how hard yous press the switch.

There are some very cool options built into Wootility that are just possible thanks to the optical analog switches. You can change the analog curve of the gamepad output, which controls how much stick movement is emulated as you press. You lot can even modify the actuation point of the switches to be higher or lower.

The board itself has a tenkeyless layout, and so in that location's no number pad. The peak plate is aluminum, and the keys have a floating pattern. That exposes the edges of the switches under the keycap. You lot'll be able to run across some of the light spilling out under there, which is a fun effect.

On the underside, you've got flip-out feet and a micro USB port in a small recess. Removable cables are a overnice bonus on a keyboard. You can get fancy themed cables to match your keycaps or just bundle upward the stock cable when yous're moving the board effectually, then it doesn't get in the way.

Gaming

I tested the Wooting 1 in a few games, and it worked mostly equally expected. Analog input on a keyboard takes some getting used to, and some games won't work correctly. While many PC games do support controllers, they won't let you use a controller and a mouse at the aforementioned fourth dimension. I was unable to get Fallout 4 to work with the Wooting 1, but Doom and CounterStrike seem to work well. Rocket League works great after some fiddling with profiles.

The Wooting One is far from a plug-and-play gaming experience right now, simply it seems like you can get most games working. Is the analog input actually an reward? I'm not completely sold on that yet. You've got about 2mm of travel that can be used for analog sensing (about half the full switch travel), and that means y'all need to carefully control how much pressure you apply. Information technology'll take exercise to master this.

Then, is this the gaming keyboard you've been wanting? Maybe… if y'all don't mind tinkering with things to get them working. I don't know that you'll do good much in a FPS, but driving and flying games could be much easier to play on the Wooting One. The optical analog switches are likewise super-cool. Pricing starts at $160, which is similar to other high-end keyboards marketed to gamers.