Closer Examination

There is yet another plastic wrap to keep the keyboard as pristine as possible before you first hold it in your hands, and when you finally do, the first feeling will inevitably be - this is small. Given my experiences with the Ryos series, this is such a big change for Roccat's design team that I can definitely appreciate it, and I imagine many with cramped desks will too. There is next to no bezel to be seen here, and the keyboard itself looks fairly clean. It does not weigh a lot either, but is still fairly sturdy owing to aluminum alloy housing on top instead of the usual steel plate. I did get the UK ISO version as this was originally sent to TPU's previous keyboard reviewer, but they did send me an ANSI layout version later on as well.

The keycap fonts are not as "gamery" looking as others I have seen, with Roccat having struck a decent balance between making the fonts and legends of sufficient size to allow for backlighting while not appearing gaudy. However, the secondary legends are all underneath the primary ones and will not be evenly backlit if the LED is at the top of the switch as with just about every backlit keyboard. Note also that the legends on some of the dual function keys (regular and shifted) may appear to be in the reverse order to you in that, for example, the backslash is above the question mark. Different companies are adopting this approach more and more now, but they still function as expected.


Not much going on in the back, with functionality taking center stage here. There are four rubber pads on the corners to help keep the keyboard from sliding around on your desk, and the non-detachable cable has three routing channels built in, which is nice to see. There are two feet at the top for some tilting, and for good measure, these have rubber pads as well.


I am not a fan of the top-side advertising as it is not only going to never be seen by the user but takes away from the otherwise clean aesthetics. Not sure what Roccat was thinking here, but if you are the only one working on a desk with closed sides, this will not be an issue. Roccat is marketing this at gaming purists, whatever they are, but even so, I would much rather they just leave their logo on and nothing else. The non-detachable cable is the standard 6' in length and terminates in a USB Type-A male connector. USB 2.0 is enough to get this to work, although USB 3.0 (also known as USB 3.1 Gen 1) is always recommended when powering a full-size RGB backlit keyboard.


The keycaps themselves are no different from the vast majority of stock keycaps on Cherry MX mechanical keyboards today, with an OEM profile and laser-etched legends on thin UV-coated ABS plastic keycaps. They have a floating design, which allows for easier cleaning but causes more light bleed, which may or may not be a good thing for you. As seen above, even with a direct light source, the secondary legends are not as well illuminated as the primary ones, but this should not be a major issue if the keyboard's LEDs are bright enough. On the plus side, the bottom row is a "standard" one with 1.25u keycaps on either side of the space bar, making this compatible with a vast majority of aftermarket keycap sets.



As mentioned before, the Suora FX uses TTC switches, which are another Cherry MX clone similar to Kailh, Gateron, Greetech, etc. This by itself is not a bad thing; however, Roccat not mentioning this anywhere on their website is not a good start. We will see how they fare later on, and it is a good thing then that I received another sample with the TTC Blue switches to round off the collection for testing. One thing to note here is that the LEDs seem to be a hybrid of a diffused bar and a bulb in the middle, and they were fairly bright when powered on. Oh, the larger switches/keycaps use Costar stabilizers so do be careful when removing and installing them. The switches themselves are fine in that the keycaps come on and off the stem as expected, which is nothing at all like the Cherry MX Clear switches I tried out with the WASD CODE keyboard from earlier.