Roccat Ryos MK FX Keyboard Review

Performance

Hooking up the MK FX is as easy as plug and play. All the major features work right out of the box and there are some nice colours already programmed in for you to enjoy and even the macro recording can be done on-the-fly directly from the keyboard.

“Swarm is the software incarnation of ROCCAT’s future ready philosophy. It’ll cover you for all relevant gaming platforms and devices. It’s the next-gen system that keeps on top all games, apps and ROCCAT products in one place. Computer side it’s a veritable gaming command HQ, smartphone side it’s a convenient app for an extension of the computer software. Full control at your fingertips.” – Roccat

Of course, if you want to get the absolute most out of it, you’ll want to download the software and that’s when the real fun starts. You can apply hundreds of macros, sync up commands and lighting with other Roccat products, control various aspects and get stats on your mobile and more.

The RGB lighting is certainly impressive, giving every key a colourful under glow and nice and clear lettering. Of course, you can tweak the colour till your heart is content, changing effects, per key combinations and layouts. The possibilities are endless here. For the sake of telling you what you can already see, let’s talk about the core performance of the keyboard as we flip through a few images of the lighting!

Gaming on this keyboard is quite simply amazing, although to have expected anything less would be crazy. It’s a premium grade keyboard and features those lovely Cherry MX Brown switches. If you’ve ever used MX Brown before, then you know almost exactly what you’re going to get here in terms of typing response. The only subtle differences I can pick out are that the keyboard is very rigid and quite heavy, this means that there’s less rattle or clank to the keys overall, and while MX Brown aren’t exactly noisy, they seem a little quieter here and the keys don’t bottom out on the chassis, so you don’t get as much of a “clack” from the key cap when you hit them hard.

The macro engine, thumbster keys, dedicated macro keys and the Easy Shift function open up a huge amount of possibilities for key combinations. For simulation gaming and MMORPG style gaming, you’ll no doubt want a lot of commands at your fingertips and this keyboard certainly delivers that. Recording and storing macros directly to the keyboard couldn’t be easier and with the Easy Shift function (a custom shift that can be set to any key), you unlock a second tier of functions for every key on the keyboard, giving you even more options to play around with.

The relatively flat design of the keyboard, as well as the built-in wrist rest, feels a little strange at first, but after a long gaming session, you can certainly feel less strain in your wrists thanks to the comfortable ergonomics. This does mean the keyboard is quite large, but the oversize chassis and comfortable key spacing have clear benefits in the long run; just make sure you’ve got enough room on your desktop for it.

While it is tuned to be a high-performance, feature-packed gaming keyboard, this is still just a great quality mechanical keyboard all-round, so using it all day, every day for work and gaming is not a problem. The ability to save multiple profiles directly to the keyboard means you’re only a button press away from your League of Legends lighting and macro setup, to something a little more refined and functional when you need to be the master of Microsoft Office.

Finally, we can round off with two quick videos which show off some of the more advanced lighting effects and features.