HE Keyboard Showdown - Should You Buy a Wooting?

hey th star it's your favorite key bro Scott today we're diving head first into the electrifying realm of Holk keyboards we're going Way Beyond just the surface level and exploring the absolute Nitty Gritty let's get ready to nerd out on this Ultimate keyboard satisfaction buckle up have you ever wondered if you ask AI to write you a YouTube script how that would sound like exactly that yeah um let's move on Welcome Back to the channel guys this is Scott K we're not quite there to rely solely on technology to help me like with scripts but

we are definitely seeing more hall effect keyboards enter the market yes today we're going to pit a bunch of different H keyboards against each other and against the rigning champ out there I think everyone knows wooting and see if inde woing is still the best option out there for H keyboards although H keyboards are mainly known for their like gaming Advantage right I do also want to consider them for like daily usage for many people they only have one keyboard I mean they are still keyboards at the end of the day right even the gaming

ones well take a look at um the overall design their typing sound the feel their features and yes obviously their gaming ability as well and yes I know there are so many H Boards out there now and I cannot cover them all but hope this collection of boards I have to give you a good idea of various manufacturers the price range es and their approaches to help make a an effective hall effect keyboard we're going to look at obviously the quintessential woing 60 H the Enthusiast level melric boo 75 the more mainstream Kyron q1 H

and the more budget oriented melgeek cyber 1 and finally at the component level the raqqa H PCB which will be an Hy option for many mechanical keyboards out there like the holy 60 that I'm putting it into and soon to be the cycle eight and so on and so on doing this comparison I realized that most of the H keyboards now they have very very similar features I know woing keeps innovating but which makes them also like similar in terms of how the basic benefits are then what is all different about them right well that's

what we're trying to figure out today so let's get started okay so before we start I'm sure there are like many of you out there that are thinking what the heck is a hall of effect keyboard well for you let's do a quick recap shall we in a standard Leaf style mechanical keyboard switch as the stem of the switch goes in and out of the housing the little legs press up against the metal leaf and it makes or breaks contact this then closes and opens the circuit and sends a signal that a switch was pressed

the corresponding letter or number or whatever is then displayed on the screen it's a very simple concept once the switch is pressed it's either on or off one or zero hence this is a digital system so a a long time ago an American physicist named Edwin Hall found that a closed circuit system if you apply a magnetic field perpendicular to it it creates a voltage difference in that circuit he also realized that he can control this voltage Difference by putting the magnet closer or further away and as expected he decided to name this discovery and

phenomenon after himself to call it hall effect this phenomenon occurs because as the electrons are flowing through this circuit they get affected by the magnetic field that's applied to it and kind of goes on a detour like this this actually creates a charge imbalance this in turn creates a voltage potential difference which then becomes measurable if you think that this keyboard PCB is a closed circuit system then as the switch is pressed and this magnet is now getting close to the circuit and creating a voltage differential the keyboard can then recognize this as a key

press so instead of relying on a metal Leaf to make contact or not you're using the phenomenon of hall effect to trigger an action so a standard switch is digital on or off there is nothing in between however a hall effect switch is analog which means that the closer the magnet gets to the Circuit it generates a greater voltage differential so what this means is that there is a resolution to each key press imagine now you can actually measure how much the switch is pressed bottoming out at 100% halfway down at 50% % or just

a tap at 10% it can measure it all and see it differently the best example of this is if you look at like something like a PS5 controller the joystick can pick up whether you have it all the way to one side or halfway down or anything in between this gives you the ability to be very precise in your movements remember when iPhones used to have that weird fource sensitive touchcreen as well technically you can do the same thing with this keyboard then now that you're educated on the actual technology let's talk about the real

life benefits of a h or Hall of f effect keyboard apparently many of the benefits are around gaming right now so we will focus on that mainly all right as mentioned in the educational clip before we know that the hall effect switches they kind of allow for almost infinite levels of analog key press resolution so One gaming genre this can actually help a lot in in my opinion is racing games if you're playing something like Forza with the keyboard if you press the key to like accelerate that's like 100% acceleration likewise if you press the

key to break that's like slamming down on the brakes there's really no in between right you're either fully in or fully out same thing with stering a key will like you know equal maximum steering angle in either direction lock to lock this is where Hall keyboards come into play a hall effect switch is analog which means that you can read the amount of key press not just whether the key is either on or off which is very digital right one or zero instead of like 0% 100% you can get everything in between which allows for

this more realistic input as you can see here this does wonders for games such as this now moving on to another very popular genre of gaming right probably the most for this kind of keyboard FPS or firstperson Shooters this kind of game you're looking for both quick inputs as well as the ability to spam multiple inputs in the shortest amount of time the quickness portion I think you could pretty much guess why that's important like when you're running around like the stage trying to shoot someone before they shoot you every little bit of time a

millisecond difference it's going to determine who's going to live and who's going to die plus there are like techniques in these games like peing or counter strafing that require precision as well as quick inputs to successfully carry out for that let's take a look at the hall effect Advantage right definitely is there through each of the your own software all five of these Hall of effect keyboards have the ability to kind of like set your own trigger distance right at what point or how soon the keyboard detects a key press as an input many can

be set from like something as small as .1 mm like blow on it it'll work like literally all the way to like 4 mm essentially bottoming out right so what happens if you make the Press detection as early as possible like that well take a look at this table this is a re life reaction speed test of me reacting to a prompt and slamming down a key so I compare like the five different H keyboards against a recent very solid MX switch variant which was a cycle 8 the cycle 8 was fitted with a quick

linear switch and is no slouch in the however you can easily see that when you have an H board at the shortest trigger distance a standard MX switch just really cannot compete against that pretty much all of the H boards here had very similar results given that the limit was actually probably with me as the inputter versus what the keyboard could actually pull off I'm sure them all having at least 1,000 her polling rate also it helped like it kept helped to keep everything Speedy so that was kind of you know not really the situ

case so this little study pretty much showed that an H keyboard on the fastest trigger settings can improve your input speed probably around 10 to 15% or so which is actually pretty critical for very fast-paced games on a side note the one HIV was actually with Kyron for some reason if you set the Kyron at Max sensitivity or like the shortest trigger actuation distance it has a tendency to like Auto press in my opinion it may have something to do with the heavier key caps that keyron uses or maybe something's you know with mine but

it did get annoying so I had to dial it back a little bit to prevent it from doing that hence why it was probably slightly slower than the others not really much of a big difference though something to keep in mind so we know that H keyboards are fast what about in-game performance right well this is where like features like the rapid trigger and stuff like that comes into play If you recall a standard MX switch needs to physically actuate a leaf like a metal to metal touch to register a key press which means that

the leaf needs to reset and then react toate which all takes time plus there's this whole thing about debound delay to prevent like Leaf accidentally bouncing against the contact you know which I'm not going to get into today MX switches are just slower to actuate and react toate okay so if you take a look at this gaming scenario this is me like strafing around from one side or to the other even if you spam the keys this is pretty much the maximum input you can get in game without just like s slaming it down now

with h keyboards like woing and now pretty much everything else that kind of copied it you can have rapid trigger which means that the keyboard will reset a key press as soon as it detects opposing motion so going the opposite direction take a look at the difference it makes when an H keyboard is getting spammed you're literally straping so much more given the same amount of time when it comes to a game skill like peaking or counter straping this kind of input Advantage can either make or break your round so this is actually a very

nice feature I know there are also many other advantages that people use H boards for but I'm not going to try to go into all of them I'm not the biggest gamer I can't give you all the tips like for example maximum button smashing for OSU or making a single key act like multiple Keys based on how far you press down they're all possible with this kind of keyboard and many of these boards have that feature now we know the foundational H boards can do mostly the same thing what makes one special over the other

well it's kind of like cars right they could all accelerate they could all break and turn but some do that better than others all right then let's jump into to the actual keyboards then shall we but before we do that a quick word from our sponsor today osami you may know osami as a vendor that sells super kawaii keycap sets for mechanical keyboards you're right they do however they do much more than that and their latest offering is actually this the minimal keyboard shelves once you start collecting or like amassing a bunch of keyboards like

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you know it's going to be like pretty much forced ranked the categories we will be covering are as follows the overall design and finish of the keyboard the typing feel and comfort right the usability typing sound customization and compatibility gaming performance and the software and finally the price similar to how I did this before I'll be giving these keyboards a score from 1 to five which is essentially a Force ranking as I mentioned before between each other so no one's going to have the same score at the end of it all the highest score will

win but you know at the end it could tie before we start to give scores to things let me preface it with this at this point in time H keyboards in my opinion how the switches are made all sound pretty subpar versus their MX mechanical variants there I said it I would actually go as far to say that overall sounds of H keyboards is not good it's kind of bad at least in my opinion plasticky cheap light so we're looking for the keyboard with the least crappy sound in this case I don't I don't yeah

yeah next the switches unlike their MX mechanical switch cousins at switch keyboards they're fickle which means that there is no one common H switch type that fits into every keyboard and works okay if you remove the lequer from the wooting and stick it into the keyron doesn't work if you take the switch from the Boo and put it into the melgeek it won't even fit due to the stem difference of the two of them right the only exception is that the Rocka PCB can actually use the wooding Leer style switches and vice versa pretty much

you know just Benchmark the straight off so and from what I understand there are more manufacturers that are starting to cater to wooting compatibility more than anything because it's you know they're like the market leader so keep that in mind for future proofing all right so given the scoring system let's start with the last place I don't want to say put it that way but you know from a scoring perspective the raaka so in this specific case the raka and the holy 60 I know that the Rocka PCB will vary greatly in score depending on

what case you put it in so you know I tried my best to be as objective as possible here so as of right now I have the Holy 60 as one of the only options to see this in full Glory so that's why it's in there let me say this raqqa got the lowest score but remember this is against Pier so it's a very relative scoring system not an absolute so what happened with the raqqa and the holy 60 well let's start out with the strengths that design it's like the most eye-catching thing ever on

anyone's desk I can't even imagine the manufacturing challenge for making something like that it makes for one of the most unique products in the market but given the design intent you really won't fit much features into it it's very Spartan next to Rocka PCV development team they closely Benchmark wooting because how it uses similar switches as the wooting the Leer switches as well as the level of intense customization abilities of the software they absolutely had gaming in mind while the software is not as refined as utility is it actually excels even more in some areas

like allowing for ultra micro adjustments of the H switch like this all in all I had a great experience customizing the raqqa and playing games on it as well however if you decide to go with the raqqa and the holy 60 case you're going to pay for it definitely on the higher end of the pricing Spectrum here around $220 which feels very odd given the lack of material but it is what it is plus this lack of material also makes the Rocka and holy 60 sound pretty thin and like the treay mounting makes the bottom

out of this keyboard pretty harsh as well I would say out of the group the lowest sound and feel score for sure goes to the raqa and the holy 60 take a listen to the roqa and holy 60 all right next up is actually a tie so let me start with the Mal geek cyber 1 so what's interesting about the Cyber one is that it's the lowest priced keyboard of this Bunch yet it offers a good amount of features at this price it's a mid-range performer that does most things pretty well but just not the

best for the price though I don't think you can really go WR with this keyboard especially given its form factor as well this is subjective but I felt that cyber 1 kind of fell behind in the overall design area it's got like that cyber Punk kind of theme and it's in my opinion polarizing in addition the Cyber one is also another treay mounted keyboard and a pretty thin one at that from a case perspective so there really isn't much give or ability to absorb the typing Force as well so while the gaming features and performance

is great the cyber one is the only keyboard that out of this bunch at least that requires a software to be downloaded onto your computer and installed for you to use it while woodings utility can be installed as well or but you know woing also allows for online on the-fly kind of adjustments through webbased utility cyber one lacks that and it does get a bit annoying to be forced to download something and install it so for that it did lose some points there one area of the Cyber one actually surprised me the most was its

sound most likely the shape and maybe the plastic construction of this keyboard but melgeek actually sounds pretty smooth compared to some of the other keyboards which are kind of thin and sharp sounding finally while the switch is a bit different the Cyber one it actually accepted the Leer switches and managed to work with it very interesting so if you're looking for a good entry point into H with all the features but need something bigger than a 60% this actually may be a good option for you and you know what if it starts to accept more

woing uh base switches more future proofing as well let's take a listen all right so tied with the Cyber one is the melric book 75 let me start off by saying book 75 is the enthusiasts H keyboard if you like mechanical keyboards but want to dabble in H or you want a high performance gaming keyboard but want to also impress at keep meets then the bluk 75 is the one for you I know it's objective but for me hands down this is the best looking one of this Bunch the overall 75% design is amazing it

also has the most detailed intricate case finishing of the entire Bunch the circuit theme going on here with the case is actually very appropriate for this keyboard as well right the color scheme is great and the matching double shot Cherry Key caps they look and feel great also this is one of the two keyboards that are actually gasket mounted in this group it's not like a very flexible keyboard since you probably can't even have a flexing PCB with the sensitivity with the hall sensors but you can definitely feel that the B 75 also dampens the

keystrokes much better than some of the others in addition to that melric being a custom Mech company they used all the phones and sound mods in the book 75 trying to recreate that mechanical keyboard like sound profile that a lot of us really love it's still on the quieter side overall because of the switches but that has like that refined sound signature you'd be expecting from a keyboard like this now the biggest weakness of the B 75 is that it actually uses a very different kind of H D switch honestly all these switches are made

by Gaton but I'm just so confused why there are so many variants well I digress the one in the Boo has an odd long St below and it actually requires the PCB to have a hole in it to accommodate which most of the other ones don't which means very different from everyone else also means that how the keyboard senses it is going to be a little different too this also means there's no way there's any another switch switch to be used in the future even if there is software calibration available so that's a bummer in

addition the book 75 is the most expensive keyboard of the sponge at $230 I mean for what you get though I don't think that's unreasonable this thing when you have it in your hand it just feels very different from the others if you're looking for the best gaming option you may find the software for the book 75 a bit lacking it's is that a good word um the software has some good features built in but it does feel very clunky compared to the other ones and things are like buried into another section I'm not quite

sure what I'm supposed to be doing it's pretty clear that this keyboard what this keyboard does well and it' be that bridge between the custom Mech and a true gaming oriented keyboard a goodlooking board that focuses on being that being a being good-looking more than some of the others let's take a listen all right let's move on to the final two now right coming in at the second highest score is the keyron q1 H so key crons are great at being a good keyboard without much fuss right and the q1h is the same it's readily

available it's expensive but not unreasonable has all the features most people are looking for and overall comes in a very palatable by most kind of design plus this is the only keyboard of this entire group that also offers Wireless function which may or may not be important to you since if you're seriously gaming you're probably not going to be using the wireless but if you're using it for other purposes hey you know what it's a good feature also the only keyboard with a knob if that matters to you you know it has some of these

features that the other ones don't so where the keycon excels versus the rest is in my opinion the feel so this is one of the two keyboards like I mentioned before that's gasky mounted but at the same time it definitely feels a little bit more it has a little bit more give versus the B 75 the combination of that and all the Foams the qon H does have a very nice dampened feel especially when you're like you know regularly using it to type perhaps heavy fat key caps also work in its favor but what is

interesting though is that beyond that the q1h is literally the middle of the pack performer it does everything pretty much well without like standing out in any way so maybe that's what you want it looks like an office keyboard kind of right while the feel is definitely a strong suit the sound is kind of meh not the worst but it actually sounds like how it feels like more dampened and quiet perhaps it may sound different with the set of like Cherry Key caps but the stock setting is very okay the q1 H also is one

of these keyboards that uses a different kind of Gaton magnetic switch so it's different inside it's actually a dual rail design I believe keyron to said this provides the smoothest the most stable kind of typing feel which is not untrue it does feel very smooth does like you know feel very solid also means that you may be missing out on the future switch options that are like catering towards more of the gamers and the wooting crowd this takes me to the next topic of gaming as well so the main keyboard software for the the keyron

is qmk based and the q1 H also has a very nice online customization software for the h functions specifically does have a lot of built-in and it's fairly intuitive to use I would probably say that this is probably the second best only to the utility however the reason why I knocked it down a bit is that all the functions it had I don't think they're all yet optimized the biggest one was the the actuation distance right like I mentioned before like for some reason if I set it to too sensitive it kind of Auto presses

what is the point of having that feature if you can't really use it so I hope this is an area that keyron can optimize further in the future or maybe something to do with the the key cap weight and all that I don't know finally the key key Crown q1 is the more costly end right it's like around $219 a dollar cheaper than the actual rqa and the holy 60 and you you get the Bare Bones Instead at a lower price and perhaps that's a better way to go avoid and maybe avoid that stock key

Crown Key cap thing well let's take a listen all right now it leaves us to the champ of this comparison the wooting 68 honestly this it's an older keyboard I went into this comparison thinking that the wooding would probably be dethroned right but boy was I wrong I looked at the final score differential and ran the numbers like two more times thinking that they probably was a mistake and there's no way that the woing scored so much higher well it did why because wooding does the best job of understanding its own job build the best

gaming keyboard make it be approachable and provide the best support around it yeah that's the 60h so I upgraded mine with the alam's case right to make it a little bit more premium you can get it with and it comes in around $175 which is a much more reasonable price too which is just second to the Cyber one in the situation when I said it that it knows exactly what it's for that's gaming the the woing 6h was designed for gaming it does that very well while the hardware itself may not be that different from

some of the others the fact that you are one of the first and the most prominent most other companies will kind of work around you hence why there are more switch options coming out for the utility compatibility or woing compatibility more than like some of the other keyboards it's the Benchmark now when it comes to H keyboards honestly they all have very similar basic functions right you got like the quick response and the adjustability and the rapid trigger single key customization but guess where most of these features came from yeah woing and woing utility helps

you take advantage of those features the best in my opinion hands down you can download it and install it to your computer or you can just use it from the website which is very easy either or it's the most intuitive the easiest to understand and also employ out of them all like very well in addition while some of the other keyboards kind of give off a I wonder how long they will update the software for Vibe you know woing will continue to update and evolve utility as time goes by they have been you're most likely

future proof W the wooding more than the others in my opinion now let's talk about the actual keyboard that right yes for gaming this thing excels yeah it has all the hyp features but at the same time I felt this was the keyboard that had the most consistent delivery of those hype features versus some of the others it was a rock solid keyboard when it came to that like you can take this to a competition and expect it to perform without worrying about it at all like what happens if it doesn't work what happens if

it auto presses doesn't have any of those issues I know that woing is not much of a looker it's a very plain Jane keyboard in addition it does have a strap that you can add or remove that can be polarizing and if you do remove it then you have like this big hole there as well not the biggest fan of it in my opinion what was interesting is that while the 60h uses the same kind of open switches somehow manages to be the loudest keyboard here in my opinion not like oh amazing loud but it's

just louder which also means that there's potential in the future to maybe shape that sound to make it a little bit more refined being a train outed keyboard though the wooding 6h is not the softest to type on but at the same time it does feel more substantial with the alume case and overall that's not a terrible typing experience as well the only thing you would run into is that the 60 HS is a 60% keyboard you do if you do need like the arrows or the afro then you're kind of stuck here without using

the layers yeah the layers are there but you know it's not the same when you're playing games sometimes but if you are looking for the best H experience for gaming I don't think you could really beat the 60h that makes me more excited for the 80 that's coming very soon which I will take a look at so hey finally let's take a listen to the wooding [Applause] [Applause] done all right so that pretty much sums up what I found out about these various H keyboards I have today yes H keyboards they're still at a very

early stage right they infancy and they will evolve and get better with time like the sound for example or the feel the only reason why I don't use H as a daily right now however the current ones that you can still get your hands on they make great strides if you're in the market for like the ultimate gaming keyboard right look no further than the wooding like I think that's still the best option if you want to like a solid gaming keyboard but you care about the Aesthetics or you're like keyboard Enthusiast the bluk 75

is that keyboard for you want a keyboard that screams business business in the front but party in the back that's the key Crown if you're looking for something on a budget but need more keys um than the woing does then the Cyber one could also be a good option and finally I'm very curious how Rocka boards and Boards similar to that are going to be incorporated into more cases in the future so that more mechanical keyboards could also be become H as usual if you enjoyed this video please like And subscribe and I'll have more

content for you in the future content is descripted by me and not chpt thanks