Driver

There is no software driver support for the Rosewill RK-9300, with all functionality and programming being hardware based. As such, I have chosen to combine the Driver and Performance pages into one here.

Performance

There is full N-key rollover USB here by default, as Aqua's Keytest confirms. You can toggle between N-key and six-key rollover if need be, and the use of the latter is to help debug issues if NKRO proves to be incompatible with a system for some reason. Similarly, no key chatter was detected using Switch Hitter.


By default, the keyboard has constant blue backlighting at 100% brightness when plugged in. Rosewill tells me their marketing showed that their fans prefer blue backlighting, so if that works for them, it works for me. The legends are mostly visible, aside from the secondary legends on the numpad, which are located below the primary ones, and the laser-etched secondary legends on the arrow and function keys, as mentioned previously. The doubleshot legends are illuminated evenly and well. There are five steps of brightness control (0-25-50-75-100%), which are controlled by Fn + up/down arrow keys. Backlighting can also be toggled on/off using Fn + F9.



There are four lighting modes, with the first being the full keyboard static backlighting option. The modes can be toggled through using Fn + F10, and the second mode is a breathing mode. The video above has camera artifacts, so please note that the flickering you see is not actually present, and the keyboard LEDs breathe through the brightness scale. The third and fourth modes allow selective lighting on some keys only - be it TKL or WASD + arrow keys. That's about it as far as lighting goes. Blue backlighting is not a universally pleasing choice, but then again no single-color backlighting option is. Those who want a blue color scheme will like it, others will or will not.

Fn + F1 through F8, and F11, have secondary functions, including media functions and disabling/enabling the Windows key. The included manual does a good job of describing these.





As always, the sound of a keyboard is based on more than just the switch type. So when comparing sound clips, consider the keyboard as a whole. In this case, I have provided above two example sound clips of me typing on the RK-9300 samples at ~95-100 WPM. For context, you can find sound clips from other keyboards here, including those with clicky and tactile switches. I did bottom out both, although it is definitely possible not to do so, especially with the Cherry MX Blue switches if you practice. The thin aluminum plate used does cause an impinging sound that is more readily perceived in person, and I am working on improving the audio recording capability to better reflect things like this. In terms of actuation and bottoming out, there is not much to say here except that the usual Cherry high quality control carries over with an average actuation force of 45.30 cN for the MX Brown and 50.40 cN for the MX Blue switches, averaged across 20 keys on the two samples provided. Bottoming out seemed rather regular too, and nothing that was different from the rest jumped out at me.