Roccat ISKU FX Gaming Keyboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
1,531 words · ~7 min read
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welcome to my unboxing and first look at the rocket rocket rocket rocket that's
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the way to say it rocket rocket iscu FX
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so this is a premium level gaming keyboard and before we get too far into
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this no it isn't mechanical but it does have a lot of features that do set it
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apart from other keyboards even at this price range so the MSRP is something
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like €99 but it's really the software that
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sets this guy apart as well as some of the design things that they've
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integrated that really do make it a tool for enhancing your gaming experience
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whether it's to make you better or whether it's just to make it more
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enjoyable and so we'll get into some of those in a bit more detail once we get
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it opened up so first there's a quick installation guide important document
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you know what we're not going to worry too much about that download the latest drivers off the rocket website and that
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was pretty much it so packaging is very minimalistic on this guy there we are
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and let's start going through some of the features once we get this uh
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covering sort of torn off there we
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go there we go all right so relatively low profile
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keys so you can see the key caps don't stand up very high so it's not quite
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like a like a laptop keyboard but it is uh there the idea is responsiveness so
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it features 1,000 Herz pulling rate so there should be pretty much no leg and
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then the idea with the low profile key is that you should be able to actuate
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them more quickly this is especially important for membrane key switches
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because you do have to bottom them out in order to activate them I'm actually
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going to pull this up as a cheat sheet because there's a lot of stuff to cover
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all right programmable keys so you've
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actually got a Zone here and I'm going to use this to illustrate it right here
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of 20 keys that can have macro
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functionality programmed into them and simply by using the rocket shift plus so
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you have a regular shift key and then you have another sort of see you can see
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it's got like a weird sort of graphic on it with like a downward shift and a plus
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so that's the shift plus so when you're gaming you put your hand there and then
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all of these Keys over here in this Zone that you can reach with your hand can be
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programmed to have macro functionality this to me is a way better solution than
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having something like a programmable key that's off to the side I mean we've seen
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ones with banks of programmable keys that are this big how you going to reach
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any you don't take your hand off the keyboard to go like fumble with a macro
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it doesn't work that way so the shift is a great addition not only that but with
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rocket talk so if you have a rocket Mouse as well you can press shift on
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your mouse and then activate a macro key
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on the keyboard or you can press shift on the keyboard and change the
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functionality of any of the keys on the mouse so the way that they work together
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is very very very cool you've also got some fully programmable keys so these
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can have a basic function programmed and then a shift plus functionality
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programmed into them so either those can be macros or regular functionality and
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they've added three thumb buttons here that they're calling like quick strike
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buttons or something along those lines so the idea is that they're things that you could reach with your thumb rather
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than spacebar and there's a little indent here so you can tell which one
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you're actually touching so that's very very cool stuff they've actually also
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added an indent on the W key itself so
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there's your regular home row ones your W and then this thumb one here as well
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as the five over on the number pad the layout is very standard so they haven't
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committed any cardinal sins the caps lock key looks like it's been replaced
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I'm not sure if they have a software functionality to turn that back on it's
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probably not the end of the world since most Gamers should have their cap slot
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Keys taken away anyway um long enter
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backspace and shift keys so nothing nothing wrong with the layout whatsoever
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quick macro recording so on the Fly you can record macros and use them this is
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kind of neat this is something we have seen before there are also media Keys up
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here at the top and and pretty soon it's going to be time to start talking about
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some of the other software functionality which I've kind of forgotten about ah
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yes so rocket FX is pretty neat so you
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can actually tell the keyboard you want it to have certain effects when certain
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things happen so if you get hit for example the keyboard could glow red it
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has fully uh adjustable colors so something with 16.8 million colors so
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you can light it up in whatever color you want 180 plus programmable functions
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and the macro live recording k25 Plus functions assignable to Media plus hot
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Keys okay yeah we got all that got all that six brightness levels ah it has
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anti- ghosting so you don't have to worry about uh so what ghosting is is if
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you press a bunch of keys then it can just register random extra key strokes
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so it does have anti- ghosting th Herz pulling rate we've covered already the
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rocket talk set bonus is neat so the uh cone pier and The Cone
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uh shoot xtd are the ones that actually
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support that functionality with the keyboard
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uh we'll be back in a moment so you can have a number of different game profiles
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and that can be indicated by the profile selector button up here so that'll shift
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to a bunch of different macros and all that kind of cool stuff the wrist rest
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is actually I think one of the stronger points of this keyboard not necessarily
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because it's like uh super heavy duty or anything like that but it's quite long
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so it actually gives you somewhere to rest your wrist unlike a lot of the
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gaming keyboards we've seen in the past that are kind of like this where you fall off them especially if you have
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long hands so it's a very natural it's a very natural shape to put your entire
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Palm down which is technically bad keyboarding form but let's face it a lot
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of people do it so it is what it is you've got cable management holes on the
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bottom here so you can route your mouse cable or sort of any other necessary
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cables around you've also got a nice rubber on the bottom all over the place
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so the entire under the uh wrist rest is here here here and here and then up on
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the top of the keyboard they're here here and here and then these
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unfortunately do not have oh do they I
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can't I can't quite tell it looks like it yeah these have the same rubber pads
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on them as well so that's actually quite nice to see because sometimes you put
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those feet up and they don't have rubber on them so they can actually move around
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yeah the whole keyboard is not going anywhere once we got it set up so I
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think that pretty much covers it for now thank you for checking out this unboxing
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and first look at the iscu FX from rocket don't forget to subscribe to Line
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Tech tips for more unboxings reviews and other computer
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videos actually it occurs to me now we should have done a uh a night shot of
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this guy so you can see we've got it on a cycling effect where it's changing the
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colors or it's breathing or it's doing something I don't know there's a bunch of different functionality that you can
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access just by pressing the there we go so there's some different brightness
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levels it's kind of neat the way they've done the illumination so the keys
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actually don't even look like uh like they're clear like they're seethrough
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for the uh for the buttons themselves you can see them quite clearly in the
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light but then they do illuminate once the keyboard is uh once the light gets a
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little bit darker in the room so now we're actually done