Gadgetory

hey guys this is Dimitri and welcome back to another harp Knox review now today we're going to take a look at the Rocket sq FX gaming keyboard which at $99 may be questionable considering it's not mechanical but let's first take a look at how it performs before making any conclusions now the first thing you notice is how large the keyboard is that's because the armrest is already built in and we have a relatively large bezel that will take up a lot of real estate on your desk now it may be what you're looking for but this is certainly not a compact peripheral the main coding is piano gloss which after use definitely shows fingerprints while the armrest has a more textured surface and because there's a slight ridge between the built-in armrests and the body we experience discomfort while typing and I actually developed a blister which completely defeats the purpose of an armrest and the fact that you can't take it off might question your purchase now below the space bar is where you'll find three T buttons that are well within reach for your thumb and you can quickly adjust using these buttons in-game for faster response it is also very common to find M keys on gaming keyboards so s Q is certainly not lagging on that front with five M keys that you can either assign the macro or choose a variety of built-in functions in the software we have a total of five profiles that by default are switched using the t keys below the spacebar and we have plenty of multimedia controls in the center this keyboard is also backlit with many color options to choose from and we are happy to see brightness is uniform between the keys and that should be the expectation if you are paying $100 for keyboard of course we have brightness variance and this breathing mode which looks pretty cool now it's not a mechanical keyboard but we were very surprised at how well it performed for typing and obviously gaming the keys aside from having standard rubber dome switches have really fast bounce and response they almost feel like Cherry MX red switches but with a little less travel time but that's also partially because the keyboard is so low profile throughout our experience not once that we have any key gems which is very surprising for a non mechanical keyboard of course trouble dome switchers regardless of how good they are are going to be a deal-breaker especially because mechanical keyboards are very well priced however let's not give up hope for rocket yet as the keyboard features what's called easy shift plus which allows secondary commands to be assigned to your M Keys T keys below the spacebar and to this easy zone which is an additional 20 buttons that can be accessed without problem using a thumb and your point finger so this really is a treat for MMO and strategy titles and really for users who can take advantage of this workflow improvement feature the problem is the gaming profile is built into the drive software are a bit older and miss some of the most recent triple-a titles but one extra cherry is this rocket talk feature that allows two compatible rocket devices in this case a mouse to be in sync with these secondary controls for example holding the easy shift button on the keyboard allows you to perform second recommends on your mouse and vice versa now why is this useful considering you have to play around button assignments and record macros well because it's super easy to do the driver software is intuitive and provides a lot of flexibility for precise control of what each button does instead of navigating to your most used applications for example simply map them onto any of the programmable buttons for improved workflow there are really many options available for desktop and game use that definitely can improve the user experience so to summarize with the positives we think the best thing about the sq FX is the user flexibility that allows key mapping and dual button assignments with this easy shift plus that even works really well with other compatible rocket peripherals we have backlit keys that should be expected at this price point and rubber dome switches are actually very satisfactory during gameplay now this keyboard would have been an amazing deal in addition to your gaming setup about two years ago before mechanical switches became the dominant feature in any gaming keyboard also we're not fans of its large size there are definitely corners that could be chopped for a more compact design particularly the built-in arm rests that creates blisters so there's really no way around and priced at $100 the SQ FX is a little pricey and there's no denying that easy shift bus and rocket talk are features that are definitely useful so a mechanical version is soon to be available named ryos so perhaps wait around until that arrives so what do you guys think do you think rubber dome switches are dead or not leave your comments down below and we'll see you in the next one