Hands-on review: ROCCAT ISKU FX gaming keyboard
ROCCAT has long been a staple provider of great gaming hardware, and the ISKU FX keyboard is no exception. Customisation is what this keyboard is all about, offering an excellent customisable product that looks fantastic lit up at night. It's a keyboard gamers will enjoy, with many customisable features to suit your gaming style and easy-to-reach shortcut keys.
You have a choice of five game profiles, and the driver (downloadable from the Roccat website) customises everything from keys to the colour of your keyboard. There are macro keys, Easy Zone Keys, thumbster buttons and also standard media/function keys. These are all customisable to fit various functions from web access, multimedia players, and various preset moves for software, system functions and 19 games ranging from Bioshock 2 to World of Warcraft. I've never used macros before but I found it easy to create them from scratch for MMO, racing and RPG games. It's well worth the time to use or create macros as they can make move combinations in gameplay and much easier. Assigning secondary functions to keys is also possible and these can be toggled on and off using the EasyShift key. Switching game profiles is simple to do with the three thumbster buttons near the bottom of the keyboard, or they can serve other functions if you want them to. It really is almost all up to you.
The plastic keys are sturdy and of medium height, and the sound of that keyboard becomes part of the gaming experience. There's plenty of room down the bottom of the keyboard but, at the expense of ergonomic wrist support. The glossy plastic attracts dust and fingerprints so it will require regular cleaning but if you look after it well, it will look after your gaming experience. The customisable keyboard lighting can cater for almost all colours in the colour spectrum.
All media buttons are accessible along the top, but strangely they are left out from being illuminated by the keyboard backlight. If you're gaming with the lights off and need to adjust the volume, you only have the monitor's glow to tell you which button is which. Along the top is also a record button so you can easily record your keystrokes when creating macros. Like the media buttons, the record button is not lit up, nor is the brightness that toggles keyboard illumination on and off so make sure you turn your house lights on to adjust these.
ROCCAT Talk is touted as a revolutionary way to have the keyboard's lighting flash during game battles, in conjunction with compatible mouse equipment. Unfortunately I was unable to test this feature, but if you're in-game and are low on health, having your mouse flash red sounds like a good visual indicator of your progress, when put together with such a visually great keyboard. If visual and sensory immersion in your games is what you're after, the ROCCAT ISKU FX keyboard is well worth a look.
