| Rosewill Gaming Keyboard RK-8100 |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Input Devices | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Written by Steven Hill - Edited by Olin Coles | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Thursday, 20 December 2012 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Rosewill Gaming Keyboard RK-8100 Review
Manufacturer: Rosewill, Inc. Full Disclosure: The product sample used in this article has been provided by Rosewill. Despite being a PC gamer since receiving MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries for my parents' ancient Epson back in 1995, I've never really had a keyboard specifically designed as a "gaming" keyboard. They've always been generic office things from Microsoft or Logitech. Prior to receiving this keyboard for review, I used a backlit Logitech keyboard that had a flat typing surface. I've been testing the Rosewill Gaming Keyboard RK-8100 (model RIKB-11003) for the past three weeks, and typing on it still feels different to me. The Rosewill Gaming Keyboard is not mechanical, so you won't be seeing a discussion of various Cherry-flavored inputs. It features a number of bells and whistles to appeal to a gaming audience. At a relatively low $24.99, Rosewill targets this well-featured peripheral at the budget-conscious gamer.
Features
Specifications
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Comments
To me this is one of the many that do not deserve it.
As a fanatic Shooter/RPG gamer I always ask "What have you done for me lately". In this case the answer is: "Nothing. absolutely nothing."
It is so frustrating to see so called 'gaming' keyboard after so called 'gaming' keyboard ignoring fps gamers like me.
Come on Rosewill is this all you can think of? A bit of rubber on the WASD? and a bit of programmability? jeeeeez.
I can't imagine any gamer thinking they need this.
At least it is relatively cheap.
You are right in that $25 is cheap for a gamer's KB. This is what Rosewill usually does though. A lot of what they make is good. Try taking a long look at their Blackhawk Ultra PC Case. It's One of the best that I have ever built with and has a ton of room inside, and lots of useable features too.
Don't worry I am not upset. Also I was not at all referring to mechanical keyboards. I personally feel they are overrated. I own many keyboards. None of them is mechanical. No, what I actually meant is that most gaming keyboards lack any truly useful adaptations for FPS/RPG gamers, like for example an improved layout of the WASD keys.
Ideazon had a go at that once, but for some reason nobody else gets that FPS gamers need more than some reprogrammability, questionable and mostly useless lcd's, and ridiculous fancy shapes.
Currently I use a Microsoft Sidewinder X6. It is a fairly well designed board. It is programmable, and features a modular design, but forgets to actually do something useful with that. I would have expected Microsoft to release some improved Ideazon Fang-like module for FPS gaming, but of course they did not. Such a waste of incredible potential. An ambidextrous designed 'Fang' FPS module could have been attached to the left and right side of the X6 board. It would have been my dream gaming board. Well at least it is backlit and looks cool.
This is the problem with all so called gaming keyboards. They don't add truly useful and practical options for FPS gaming. It is like FPS gaming does not exist for the kb manufacturers. Don't get me wrong, programmable keys are fine, but to be honest most of the time you don't need them at all.
A feature that could help a lot would be a modular keyboard, where you can arrange the main body, the arrows and the numeric keyboard left or right that way you want it would attend lefties and all the arrows users that hate WASD because they stumble over the other keys.
The Microsoft Sidewinder X6 is halfway there. It is backlit, it is programmable, and.... it is modular!
The only thing they forgot was to ad the WASD part. That is why I mentioned the Ideazon Fang (google for it). Imagine that device modernized and adapted to the modular Sidewinder X6. It would be perfect from my point of view.
I have been using the Fang for many years now and it is a wonderful peripheral for FPS gamers like me and I would welcome a new modernized and backlit version with full support for modern OS-es.