Roccat Vulcan Pro Optical RGB Gaming Keyboard

Best keyboard I’ve ever used. The way the keys move is so satisfying and it’s really quiet to type on. This is the second Roccat product I’ve purchased and I will definitely buy their products again

I needed a lighted keyboard for use in low light, not necessarily for gaming. A family member researched several different keyboards and ultimately ordered this one for me, based on reviews and the discounted price. It's perfect, and the instructions and software link provided by the manufacturer made it easy for me to set up the keyboard options to my liking. What I especially like is the ability to customize not only the key light colors but also their brightness and color intensity. Now I can finally see the keys in low light and the colors are pretty.

I was a little nervous making this purchase based on some of the reviews so I'm here to give my .02c to help other people that might be on the fence about this set.I was in the market for a new KB/Mouse setup for my office and chose to go with the ROCCAT AIMO Mouse (Kone), Keyboard (Vulcan Pro), and Mousepad (XXL Gaming Pad). I was looking at a couple of other competitive brands but ultimately decided to go with this set. The Keyboard is nice, the keys take a little bit to get used to if you're used to a clicky/tactile response. The button response is smooth and fairly quiet. Only issue I have with the keyboard is that when you've built up a little bit of sweat on your palms and it gets on the wrist rest and keys, it can leave marks quickly. Not a huge deal but I'm a bit of a neat freak and hate spots/streaks so I'm constantly wiping it down. The build is solid and the I love the look of it. My other choices were very nice also, but ultimately, the aesthetics are what made me chose this KB over the others. The exposed switches are unique and look awesome. Makes for easier keyboard cleaning too, nothing gets stuck under the keys because it's pretty open and a blast or 2 of air should clear anything out.I wanted to stay with the same brand mouse to sync the lighting. I have had wireless mice on all of my PCs for as long as I can remember but ROCCAT does not offer a wireless mouse that works with the AIMO intelligent lighting so I had to start looking at wired mice. The Kone was pretty much my only choice for what I wanted to do, luckily most of the reviews were good and it was about half the price I'm used to spending on a wireless mouse. It's very comfortable (It seems like it was made for bigger than average hands), and has a ton of programming options/settings. Tracking is on point and you can fine tune your DPI to your liking. The mouse also has an "easy shift" function that allows twice as much programming capability, which is pretty useful for gaming, but it will allow other PC functionality if you're not a gamer like media control, web browsing, etc.. I haven't gotten "the claw" from using it for too long but I haven't had any 16 hour benders since I've purchased this mouse so I can't comment on long-term comfort just yet.The ROCCAT Swarm software can feel a little overwhelming and confusing at first if you just dive in but it gets easier to use once you play around with it a bit, it's highly customizable and you could probably lose yourself in there if you love to tinker with settings. When you plug in a new compatible device, the software will let you know that an update is needed and it will run the update with the click of a button. You won't need to go to the web and get a driver for each device and the Swarm Software is about the only thing you'll have to install manually. The lights sync nicely between all 3 devices but can only be (truly) synced if you turn on AIMO intelligent lighting on each device. You can still set each device to it's own lighting, breathing, static, heartbeat, mixed, etc., but syncing all device is reserved for AIMO. One other thing about the software, I wish that there could be a hotkey setup to turn all lights on all ROCCAT devices off. If I'm playing a game, the lights can be distracting and it would be nice to just tap a hotkey to turn everything off instead of needing to alt/tab out of the game and open the software to turn it off. I'm still researching and tinkering with the software so I might be wrong about this claim but I haven't found anything yet that has explained how to do this, if it in fact, can be done.The Mousepad is the last item of the set. The mouse glides without issue but make sure to take those blue plastic things off of the sliders on the bottom of the mouse, that will cause issues with tracking if you don't. It fits under the mouse and keyboard well and it leaves the perfect amount of extra space so everything doesn't seem so crammed together and you have room for big movement with the mouse.Bottom line is, I'm impressed so far and love the way everything looks and functions. As I said early, a few reviews made me a little nervous but I'm glad I went with ROCCAT. I'm hoping someone reads this and makes their decision easier. $300/350 is a lot of money for a keyboard/mouse/mousepad but if you have it in your budget, give this set a solid thought. It's worth itI will update this review if I run into any issues.Thanks for reading!

Has the perfect balance of actuation force and actuation distance. Keys register noticeably faster than any regular mechanical keyboard. It is not stupidly light like the Huntsman TE where the keys can't support the weight of a resting finger.

The media could not be loaded.  This keyboard is actually pretty nice, it's really comfortable to type on, not too loud, and the build quality feels great. The AIMO lighting mode looks AMAZING, and it's even better when combined with an AIMO mouse!The Num Lock, Caps Lock, Scroll Lock, and Game Mode indicator lights aren't too bright or distracting, so that's a big plus! I don't notice them at all while gaming.And now for some weaknesses:This keyboard does not have a USB passthrough and for a price of $200, this is unacceptable... Also, the wrist rest is an oil magnet.Before buying, I watched a couple reviews on this keyboard and the Vulcan 121 and they all mentioned a ringing coming from the keys while typing. You might be able to hear this ringing in the attached video. This ringing is especially apparent when typing quick or hard, and in quiet environments, but while gaming with a headset on or with some background noise, that ringing isn't audible at all. I bought this to replace my HyperX Alloy Elite RGB, and even with the ringing, this keyboard is actually a bit quieter than the Alloy Elite.(Note: For some people, this ringing can get pretty irritating but I might be okay with it, only time will tell though.)Also, coming from that HyperX keyboard, typing on this one will take some getting used to due to the different shape and slightly different positions of these keys, I keep finding myself pressing the wrong key or two keys at once. But in those reviews I mentioned watching earlier they said that it didn't take them long to get used to it and I'm sure it won't take me long either.In one of those reviews, the reviewer was testing the board's build quality and pointed out that when pressing on the top center of the board (with the feet out) it will bend a little. (But that's understandable due to the low-profile, thin design.) I tried that and it actually took a bit of force to get it to bend, more force than anyone would normally put on this keyboard. So build quality shouldn't be worried about, it seems pretty solid to me. (At least the body does.)Also, the rubber Mute, FX, and Volume buttons are just white and boring. Why not make them RGB too? It just seems obvious to me.And one more thing before moving on to more serious problems. When looking at the keyboard from a certain angle the lighting can become very harsh and intense due to the thin keycaps exposing the LEDs, I have a photo attached showing this but you can't really tell how bright it actually it is without personally seeing it. This isn't a problem at all though when sitting in front of the keyboard. You can also turn down the brightness in the Swarm software if needed.And now for the actual problems I have with this keyboard and the Roccat Swarm software:I also have a Roccat Kone AIMO and the lighting on that mouse is VERY intense at all angles so I have to turn the brightness down to compensate. The only problem with that is that if you use AIMO lighting on both the keyboard and mouse and you change the brightness of one peripheral it will change it for the others too... Meaning I either have to live with an unreasonably bright mouse or a very dull keyboard, there's not much of an in-between at all... But when using any other lighting mode the brightness of each peripheral CAN be changed independently. This is a MAJOR problem that shouldn't even exist! Roccat, if you're reading this please fix this issue! My mouse is WAY too bright!Another problem I have with the Swarm software is that you can't change the direction of lighting modes that move across the keyboard, like Rainbow Wave and Snake. This is a limitation that shouldn't exist either but sadly is common with most RGB software...Another problem with this keyboard is that the keycaps are ABS, meaning that they are oil magnets and after a lot of use the keys will begin to shine over time, if the keys were PBT this would not happen.But if you would like to replace these keycaps with PBT ones or just something else it will probably be hard to find something compatible. Let me know if you do though, I might want to try them! I saw in a video that said Tai-Hao PBT keycap work with little modification for anyone interested.Also, I have a box of HyperX's Pudding Caps and I can confirm that the long keys do not fit :( the other ones seem to fit well though.And that concludes my day one review. So, overall, though this keyboard does have its weaknesses and problems (most, I can live with), it still seems really nice and I'm super excited to use it more. But is it worth $200? With these problems, probably not. And the Titan Optical Switches (the main reason for this high price) don't really feel any faster than the Cherry MX Reds I'm used to. Or maybe I'm not seeing a difference because I'm not a competitive gamer and never had a real need for faster switches.