Driver

The driver for the newer backlit Roccat peripherals, including the Suora FX, is called Swarm and can be downloaded from the product page. Installation is fairly straightforward and takes up approximately 220 MB for the entire package.


Ideally, this would be when you plug in your keyboard to use the driver, do a firmware upgrade if necessary, and start playing with the features. In fact, Roccat even advertises the Suora FX for those who simply want plug and play right out of the box. Unfortunately, such was not the case for me as Windows 7 and 10 both refused to recognize the device when plugged in while the system was running. It was only with the keyboard still plugged in and the computer restarted that it lit up and worked as it should, and to this day neither I nor Roccat have figured out what is going on. It is possible that all the drivers from all the keyboards I have tested so far may have left registry remnants that interfered with the installation of the Roccat driver, which then left a hybrid mess of a Windows default driver and the Roccat one. I did see some complaints online from other Roccat customers; however, I found just as many if not more identical complaints from customers of other brands. So I will just mention this here without actually penalizing the product as it does not seem to be a universal product/driver bug.

Assuming you have no such issue, you will get a prompt to first download the Suora FX module to Swarm, which should have been done automatically, and then update the keyboard's firmware. Here, I faced another issue wherein Swarm v1.92.00 has a bug and does not download the module at times, remaining stuck at 1%. It also detects updates that need to be made even though they have already been made. This bug is on Roccat, and they did mention it was caught and fixed but not yet updated online. They shared the fixed version with me, and it works fine, so if you have experienced this bug yourself, please contact Roccat as I did. Overall, it was not the best of starts to the driver experience by any means, but props to Roccat's customer service team that has improved tremendously from the last time I had contacted them, which resulted in a less than stellar experience (in 2014, when growing pains were admittedly a thing for the company).


Do not let me discourage you, however, as the bug or the USB recognition issue do not seem to be prevalent. With fixes done, I was finally able to take a look at the driver itself, and it is fairly well designed from a user experience point of view. Swarm has a mobile side of things which I will not talk about, but their Power Grid app has been a useful tool for me in the past few months, and I recommend a look. The desktop side of things involves modules for each device, with the Suora FX module having three subsets in it - Settings, Key Assignment, and Key Illumination.


Settings is the default page wherein you have control over some useful performance features, including key reaction time and delay and repetition, but no units are provided to help relate to other keyboards. A quick test window does help, though. Then there is the sound feedback part, which is, well, listen to it yourself:





Swarm creates a sound each time it detects a keystroke and passes it on as an audio signal to your speakers. This can be fun for about ten seconds before it gets annoying, and it is not even done well as the sound signals play over each other when typing fast anyway. That said, it is an optional extra, so use it if this sounds fun to you, or do not.


The Key Assignment and Macros page is where most performance and action options are, and notice there are five profiles to choose from at the bottom. The keyboard has onboard storage for these actions, not illumination effects, and there are several preset macros already built-in to choose from. You can also re-assign keys or use the six keys in the Home-Page down cluster as macro keys in game mode (a key toggles game mode on/off). The macro record button is a bit fiddly, and I would have liked it to be easier to edit recorded macros as well as add in more control over time delays and repetition between macro keystrokes.

Key assignment also means programmabilty of the keyboard, so if you do not like QWERTY and wanted to try out Dvorak or Colemak, you can most definitely do so. Just note that the OEM profile of the keycaps means the sculpting of the keycaps will differ if the rows are different.


The Key Illumination page has two options - preset and custom mode. Preset mode is exactly as you would think, where Roccat has some preset lighting effects to choose from, and you can edit them to some extent. By default, the keyboard comes with the Wave effect on, and you can change the direction of the wave, the effect's speed, and the effect's brightness, with 0% corresponding to no backlighting. The other preset options have similar controls, although I did find it odd that there is no toggle backlighting on/off option in the driver itself. Apply these effects and they are taken over near instantly before you see them on the keyboard, and the color fidelity was very good here in that the color on the driver corresponded to the one on the keyboard. Well, except for white, which suffered from a slight blue hue. I suppose RGBW backlighting should be next?


Custom mode is fairly straightforward as well, wherein you choose specific keys or zones to backlight or not, and if so, you can choose the exact color from a wheel or even set up a color gradient. But after having played with Corsair's CUE, this does seem lacking in options. At the same time, it is much easier for a newcomer to pick up Swarm and get used to it from day one without referring to any tutorials.

Overall, Swarm has the challenge to establish itself as a plus point ahead of itself still - there are still some scaling issues with high resolution displays, the occasional deal-breaking bug that has not been ironed out for weeks, and some more lighting effects and control options would be nice for the more advanced users. But it is easily among the better software drivers of the many I have used in the past two years, and the good UX design alone will help a lot.