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The Roccat Isku FX is certainly an interesting keyboard. It ships fully loaded with an insane depth of macro functionality which will appeal to the hardcore MMORPG gaming audience. Yes, those people who need a raft of (30+) commands immediately at their disposal.
In my hands however, the experience was certainly less than memorable. While I can appreciate all the lighting gimmicks and even the Roccat voice system, I found the core product to be disappointing. When I say ‘core product', I do mean the quality of the keys.
The Roccat Isku FX is, for some bizarre reason not a mechanical keyboard.
When moving from any Cherry based mechanical product such as the Razer BlackWidow series, the keys on the Isku FX offer little tactile feedback and feel spongy under the tips of the finger. Exactly the same experience I get when using 95% of laptops on the market today.
The build quality of the Isku FX is quite good, and there is no doubt that Roccat have invested a lot of time and effort into the layout and design of the product. The software interface is snappy, fully featured and does exactly what it says it will do. There are no bugs we could find and it will appeal to the crowd who just love playing with hundreds of settings.
When playing first person games, I found the Isku FX to deliver a good gaming experience, although again it fell a little short of the best mechanical keyboards on the market today. I mean those flagship models from either Razer or Steelseries.
While the scoring so far will have to be lowered due to the lack of mechanical keys, we do need to analyse the price thoroughly. If the Isku is priced well, then it will make sense.
The Roccat Isku FX is on sale right now at OCUK for £84.98 inc vat. The latest version of the Razer BlackWidow 2013 Expert is £88.00 inc vat. So we need to measure the pros and cons.
The Roccat Isku FX has a much more complete suite of macro and configuration settings, and I also like the comfortable wrist rest at the front of the keyboard. On the other hand the Razer Blackwidow 2013 has a much superior mechanical keyboard implementation and is built to higher standards with a heavy duty metal chassis inside.
If you want a backlit keyboard with the same mechanical keys from Razer you would need to buy the Ultimate edition, which will set you back £119.98 inc vat. It is a shame that Roccat didn't fit mechanical keys to the Isku FX and raise the price a little higher, releasing it at around £100-£105 inc vat. If they had, then this product would score much higher.
As it stands I would be surprised if a large audience of gamers or enthusiast users would want to spend close to £90 on a non mechanical keyboard regardless of macro functionality or clever lighting gimmicks. MMORPG gamers definitely should give it consideration however.
Pros:
- Looks great.
- decent build quality.
- lighter than many of the high end mechanical keyboards.
- class leading macro software.
- 16.8 million colour options.
- 1000hz polling.
Cons:
- membrane keys at £85-£90?
- the price is high for a non mechanical keyboard.
- keyboard lighting is slightly inconsistent on some keys.
- single height return key.
Kitguru says: A great design but ruined by the use of lower grade non mechanical keys.
