There’s one reason I come back to this one rapid trigger gaming keyboard over the rest, and that’s great software
Jacob Ridley, Managing Editor, Hardware
⬇️ This week I’ve been: learning to run emulators on Android with the Ayaneo Pocket DMG. Now that it’s up-and-running, I’m having a great time with it.
⬅️ Last week I was: Testing the Asus ROG Flow Z13, which contains an incredibly interesting Strix Halo chip from AMD with a massive iGPU onboard.
Too much software on your computer? I know the feeling. Even fans have software packages these days—just what is the world coming to? Wait, this isn’t the point I’m trying to make here. No, actually, software can be pretty good, sometimes.
Gaming keyboards have fundamentally changed over the past few years. Simple mechanical switches have given way to those using various electromagnetic effects to offer more in-depth control and rapid response. At least for the most competitive slabs on the market, anyways. Hall effect, induction, tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR)… fancy names for fancy sensor technologies based on fancy principles. They all strive for the same thing when it comes to keyboards, however, and that’s offering more control to the end user.
But how do you go about delivering this control? Through software.
Gaming keyboard software is nothing new. It’s been around for a decade and has been a helpful tool for adjusting macros and RGB lighting. It can also be a nuisance, at times, but software is only set to play a larger role in the latest and greatest gaming keyboards. It’s make or break for many.
I’ve been using two modern gaming keyboards on two very different sides of the software equation over the past few weeks.
I’m typing this on the Wooting 80HE. Wooting was one of the first gaming keyboards to employ analogue switches with the Wooting One, which I tested way back in… 2018. I gave it a 10/10 at the time, though the company’s keyboards and software have come on leaps and bounds ever since. Does that make it deserving of that mathematically elusive 11/10 score today? Well, the market has shifted with many more competitors for Wooting, which means there’s more to it than that, but it is absolutely one of the best on the market today.
It’s all about the Wootility. That’s not a typo, and no, I haven’t slumped face-first on my keyboard—that’s the name for Wooting’s specialised software and we’re convinced on the team that whoever came up with it at Wooting is very proud of themselves. They should be, not for the name (though it is quite good), but the utility of the Wootility.
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I’ve timed this well. There’s no better example in my mind of a great bit of software for keebs than the Wootility v5, which just came out of beta this week. This web-based application contains a wide range of options for customising your keyboard’s every function, from how far a key needs to be pressed to register a press to what the little light bar on the keyboard does.
The standout feature is just how easy everything is. Analogue keyboards can be confusing, especially for the new user, but the Wootility is absolutely the best of the bunch for making that set-up process easy. Tooltips guide your way through the Wootility, and you can hover over the question mark icons for more in-depth explanations.
Actually, if you hover over a specific setting and the keys light up to show which keys are set or not, and there are clearly marked profiles that are easy to customise and even easier to switch. It all makes for a smooth and straightforward experience using the Wooting 80HE, even for my dual life of writing about PC gaming for most of the day and PC gaming in the evening.
The reason I’ve thought about the role of software with competitive gaming keyboards is because I recently reviewed the Ducky One X. This is a competitive gaming keyboard out of the Taiwanese company, with all the trappings of a Hall effect keyboard but using a slightly different principle to power its switches. That’s induction, and while I’ll leave my Ducky One X review to go into the details, just know that it’s essentially similar to Hall effect with prongs.
The Ducky One X is a lovely keyboard to type on, but where it falls down is the software. I go into this in greater detail in my Ducky One X review, but essentially the software package (duckyhub.io) isn’t up to the standard of Wooting’s Wootility, and in one important aspect it hurts the gaming keyboard in a pretty significant way.
Ducky’s software has the main bases covered, such as rapid trigger, adjustable actuation, and ways to set-up multiple actions per key press. It’s also web-based, much like the Wootility, but that’s about all the similarities I’d care to make. It lacks many helpful tooltips, and some of the functionality was tricky to parse even for someone with a good deal of experience with competitive gaming keyboards. It also lacks profiles, and this is a huge detriment to the board.
As I noted in my review, it means you have to go into the software (which requires a wired connection on this otherwise wireless keyboard) and manually change your key assignments, actuation settings, and more. It’s a tediously slow process, which does not make for a good experience if switching between multiple games, or gaming and typing.
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And this is the importance of the software coming into play. Bar a small issue with switches coming away too easily, the Ducky One X is a great wireless gaming keyboard. It’s largely the software that’s its Achilles’ heel.
Luckily for Ducky, and unlike bad hardware, bad software can be solved. It can be updated, patched, hotfixed—you name it. And that’s the plan over at Ducky, I’m told by a company representative. It’s even eyeing up profiles, which could turn the One X into something much more fully-functioning than it is today. Though, for the time being, I’ve warmed to the Wooting instead.
The 80HE is not as affordable as some of its competitors, such as the Keychron K2 HE, and it doesn’t feel as nice to type on, either. It’s wired, and the see-through casing has my editor up in arms, though I admittedly like it quite a bit. Its legs aren’t adjustable on-the-fly, and you might have to wait a while for your order to turn up. Yeah, there’s a lot you could dislike about the Wooting, though I keep finding myself coming back to using it over all others.
My reason? The Wootility, baby. Great software is shaping up to be a must-have when choosing a new gaming keyboard.
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