This review was written on the Wooting Two HE.
Wooting came practically out of nowhere in <2017> with their Kickstarter campaign. The goal was simple; build an analog keyboard.
Some of you may ask why such a device is necessary. Keyboards have long been a standardized digital input device, which was done with several types of switches:
- Classic mechanical switches
- Rubber dome switches like Topre
- Hall effect switches which used magnets
- Optoelectric switches
Basically, the idea was to trigger a keypress and give some feedback as to what happened. Many designs came about, but none were analog, at least not in a sense of outputting and being considered analog.
Why is that? Well to start off with, the classic Cherry MX style mechanical switch is a 4.0 mm travel switch, meaning the total travel you can press the switch for is 4.0 millimeters.
The actuation distance - or the distance where the switch actually triggers the input, varies. Gamers prefer a shorter actuation, so Cherry MX Speed Silver and various Razer Libra Optoelectric switches hover around 1.0-1.5 mm of actuation distance. These, however, completely nullify any sort of comfort when used for typing unless you hover above the keys themselves (especially if you don't use a wrist wrest).
Then you have the switch type dilemma as well. Switches come by definition in 3 variants:
- Clicky
- Tactile (with no audible click)
- Linear
All of these are great and have their uses. For typing, a tactile switch or a clicky switch is pretty good. For gaming, the linear switch might be great for certain games.
The Wooting Two HE (standing for Hall Effect) comes in to 'save the day' with the Gateron Lekker switches, which are a hall effect switch. These are a type of magnetic switch where the design consists of a magnet in the switch, a second magnet PCB side, and a measurement sensor on the PCB. This greatly simplified design allows us to measure the voltage of the switch, from which we can derive not only whether we passed a certain threshold for the switch to be set, but also the direction of the movement.
Given that the analogue capabilities are available to us by using magnets, one of the best advantages is that we have full actuation range available to us. This means we can have sci-fi features like adjustable actuation points in the full range available to us.
Each feature on the Wooting Two HE uses the analogue nature to the full potential. The self-calibration ensures the keyboard is precise as time changes and the practically indestructible nature of the switches themselves ensure a longevity.
Combined with great software updates and new features that come every now and then, the keyboard truly is a service, more so than a regular one-time buy product.
I will try to go over the keyboard's various features in the next chapters.
Design
The keyboard itself is designed with a clean look in mind. The clean shape of the keyboard and angle ensures it is useable even without a wrist rest (although Wooting provides a wrist rest, which I highly recommend).
The shape itself is indented on the sides, allowing an easy pickup-and-move of the keyboard. Unfortunately, the only downside on the design is that it has only one-angle feet, not double angle, like many keyboards nowadays.
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| The side view of the Wooting Two HE with the indented sides. |
The key layout is a standard 100% 104-key layout + 4 profile change keys that are present above the numpad. Status lights are not present, but are handled by the RGB backlight by shining white on the respective lock key.
For some odd reason though, the Scroll lock and Pause/Break keys are swapped. This can however be rebound in the software, the Wootility.
I got the keyboard in ANSI variant which includes the new double shot Wooting PBT keycaps, however an ISO version with double shot ://Blank keycaps or ABS localized keycaps is available. The ISO version is also available without any keycaps at all, making the price EUR 10 cheaper.
The ://blank brand is a Wooting owned "B-brand" that offers quality keycaps for a cheap price, but without any Wooting branding whatsoever. It's not the Akko or other custom keycaps quality, but it does the job for a great price.
Keycaps
The keyboard currently comes with a PBT keycap set that is not yet completed (the analogue profile keys are not molded yet and come with stock M1, M2, M3 and MR keys instead of the Wooting branding), however they are pretty cheap (around EUR10 of the total price of the order) and are very coarse to the touch. The second ABS plastic filling is translucent, although the + and = keys on the numpad do not align well with the LED itself, making them a bit dimmer.
They feel nice, look very well (especially compared to the renders of the keyboard) and complement the overall design really well.
I myself however, use a custom Akko ASA profile double shot non-translucent keycap set, so I swapped the Wooting ones to my secondary HyperX Origins Alloy Core keyboard, and also got an appropriate TKL sized black wrist rest. I can say the HyperX keyboard looks absolutely stunning with the Wooting keycaps.
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| Changing the Wooting PBT ANSI set for the Akko PBT ASA set. |
Obviously, the Wooting Two Lekker Edition has the case color and keycaps that would look the best, however that keyboard was a limited edition, and as such the keycaps cannot be obtained. The black variant looks nice enough too.
The PBT set comes preinstalled on the ANSI model, the ISO models have a separate cover with the keycaps, and you must install them manually. The knowledge base page provides a useful layout picture for each layout, so that you can mount them without much difficulty.
If you want to get a Cherry profile keycap set though, be careful as one row of the switches needs to be turned 180 degrees to allow the caps to fit. This makes the RGB weaker on that one particular row. From my experience, the ASA profile I am using does not cause many issues, although the key feel may be different than with stock keycaps.
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| Wooting Two HE with Akko ASA PBT Keycaps in it's full glory. |
Build Quality, Sound and Box Contents
The keyboard is mostly plastic, and the top plate is aluminum. The weight is about 1 KG, which makes it surprisingly light. The sound is modified by the dampening foam inside the keyboard as well as with lubed stabilizers and switches. I heard of the spacebar stabilizer needing additional manual lubing, however, from what I experience, it sounds just fine.
In fact the sound is really nice, with a deeper "clack" sound that really resonates and is very very satisfying to type on. I think the plastic bottom of the case helps the sound much more than if it were aluminum.
I also think that the Akko keycap set I am using helps the sound a lot, with the sound being extremely close or same as the demo sound on the Wooting 60HE store page. That is what I hear and it is what I like. It doesn't sound pingy or high-pitched at all, which I prefer a lot.
The box itself includes the keyboard with a blister cover that doubles as a dust cover, 4 spare Lekker switches to play around with or replace any defected ones plus wire keycap puller in a really nice branded plastic bag, the removable USB-C -> USB-A cable and a postcard. The bottom of the box can be cut to a holder as well. All around, really nice details.
That said, the keyboard also includes a cable gutter for 3 possible configurations and the USB-C cable is braided, yet still pretty firm and hard to get around with. Definitely nowhere near as bad as Razer cables that could be used to hang someone. However, the locking pins on the keyboard for the cable are very hard on the cable itself, making the connection of the keyboard, especially frequent cable disconnection, very very cumbersome and annoying.
It's very hard to move the cable to the connected position while its being locked by the clamps, especially since the cable is pretty firm and does not bend well.
Lekker Switches and Stabilizers
The switches are extremely smooth but also a bit wobbly. The wobble effects the smoothness a little bit, which can be noticeable when trying to move analog by carefully pressing keys. They are also lubed, which probably is the reason for the deeper clack sound.
The stabilizers themselves are lubed and very smooth, especially the left Shift key, which has been very mushy and not comfortable for my fingers on my HyperX Alloy Origins Core.
The switch itself is based on the Omni-Point switch made by Gateron after their exclusivity deal ended, with a different stem color to reflect the Wooting Lekker branding and them being hot swappable. They lack guiding rails or any individual stabilisers, making them a little more wobbly, however during gaming or typing the effect is almost non-noticeable to me.
The Lekker switches are magnetic, meaning there are non-magnetic springs that are not interchangeable with any other magnetic spring, and are also a little bit wider than a standard MX spring. Wooting sells more spring variants, however, you have to open each switch up to change the springs. That is also a good opportunity to lube them further, as recommended by various video guides Wooting has.
The switches are hot swap, however the only other switch you can realistically use is a Lekker switch and as there are no other variants of the switch available, basically it means the keyboard is easy to fix or lube, but impossible to change the feel of the switches themselves. For now, the only exception to that is a spring bag Wooting sells, that allows you to replace the springs in the switches to make them a bit lighter.
The weighting is 40cN -> 60cN on the bottom out. This is important as the analogue features come into play.
Analog features
A gimmick? Perhaps. Yet it feels natural from the first moment I picked up a game and configured it for analog input. It feels very nice. Is it something you need? No. Is it something that feels like it should be on every keyboard? Yes.
That is how I would describe the analog functionality of the keyboard in short. It is not only the ability to fine-control movement in games, but also a basis for all the additional software features the keyboard has. And it has plenty, especially when compared to it's direct rival SteelSeries Apex Pro, and even against the Razer Optical Analog keyboards.
Debounce
The ability to use analog signal means we can offload the actuation of the key to software itself. This means 0 debounce delay, making the keyboard one of the fastest possible the input can get (though, optical switches probably come on top speed-wise by a millisecond or so).
Adjustable Actuation
The keyboard itself has a customisable actuation point, per key. This means you can make the actuation of WSAD very sensitive (up to 0.1mm), the actuation of annoying keys like Caps Lock very deep (4.0mm) and spacebar, left shift and such medium (1.5mm). Or, when you go back to typing instead of gaming, you can instantly switch the settings in 2 seconds to something more type oriented.
Rapid Trigger
Another feature is Rapid Trigger. This allows the keyboard to measure not a precise actuation point, but the direction of the key moving. Moving up means reset, moving down is actuating. This makes it so that you can for instance bottom out spacebar in a game, then slightly moving your thumb up and again down to re-actuate. It works really well especially with a sensitive sub 1mm actuation distance as you won't have to re-actuate the key to the very top.
You can also specify the distance between reactivation. The feature will be available on a per-key basis soon, but right now it's enabled or disabled globally.
Dynamic Key Stroke (DKS)
DKS is another feature that uses the analog sensing to "split" the key into two distances of your choosing, and then binding up to 4 other actions depending on where in the actuation distance your key is located. Pressing a key slightly means for example to press W to walk in a game, but bottoming it out means pressing SHIFT+W to run. The possibilities are almost endless, however the specific chip memory that handles this is, so you can have only 20 of DKS keys active at one time. The DKS feature is also configurable for the tickrate it uses, making it compatible with tick-based games like Minecraft.
This limitation is to be remedied by the upcoming ARM chip versions of the keyboards, and along being able (but not planned to be implemented) to use RGB effects in Tachyon Mode, is the only 2 differences currently known between the ARM version and the AVR version. The Wooting Two HE is currently only available in the AVR version.
Tachyon Mode
Speaking of Tachyon mode, this mode allows you to put the keyboard into "overdrive" and scan keys with a sub-1ms delay. It however disables all RGB effects so the CPU can keep up with the scan rate of 1000 Hz. While the RGB effects are disabled, the lights themselves still work and can display a static color of your choosing.
Analog Output
The prized feature of all is the analog movement. The keyboard allows you to register as a HID Gamepad device (for legacy compatibility) or Xinput Xbox controller. You can also disable the registering completely to not interfere with other gamepads you might have, or games that can't handle gamepads and crash with them while using a mouse.
You can bind any controller button or stick to the keyboard itself, while also being able to change the shape of the joystick from round to square (for Source engine games for example) and being able to use a snappy joystick, meaning instead of subtracting axis from themselves, the most actuated axis is used instead.
This, of course, does not work in every game. Many games do not support combining gamepad + mouse inputs, however from my testing, so far I have been successful in making the profiles work.
There is also an option of allowing the gamepad keys to output regular letters (making the keyboard useable for typing, or to completely disable the digital keys all together.
Fortnite Double Movement
Last, the keyboard has a native integrated Fortnite double movement system right as an option in each profile, meaning if you are a die-hard Fortnite player and you want are already using their double-movement utility, the keyboard integration makes it much simpler and more pleasant.
RGB and Chroma Connect
The RGB is nice and bright, though nowhere near as bright as the HyperX Origin Alloys Core (though that keyboard is an equivalent of a street light. The effects available are extremely smooth, much more so than I've ever seen so far. There are plenty of creative effects that take advantage of the analog nature of the switches. White does look nice and white, and there are no perceivable "blinking" issues.
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| The various effects that you can use (Tachyon mode disables these) |
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| The RGB also has an option to be dimmed after a certain time has passed, and also automatically turned off. |
While I really don't use the RGB, it is very useful when trying to identify the profile you currently have selected.
Chroma Connect
Unbelievably, if you have Razer Synapse installed, you can integrate the RGB via Chroma Connect feature present in Wootility.
Wootility, profiles and OS Compatibility
The Wootility is the tool to configure the keyboard with, as well as manage profiles and firmware updates. It is available for Linux, macOS and Windows, but also in any Chromium browser via the browser version. You can manage various things from RGB to disabling the NKRO for compatibility reasons.
The utility itself is very responsive, lightweight, does not need to be running in the background and very pleasant to use. You can also export any profile you make using a simple string, and use profiles.wooting.io to share it with other people, or download the optimal setup for your game as well.
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| You can have up to 3 profiles on the keyboard + an always present digital only profile. |
The keyboard can have 3 analog profiles at one time in the onboard memory, but you can have more in the software and swap the profiles into the on-board memory as you wish. Switching between the profiles can also be done by the 3 analog profiles buttons above the numpad, and you can always switch back to the digital profile, or to the last used analog profile via the 4th button.
Of course, you can also rebind every key. For some reason the keyboard came with a switched Scroll Lock with Pause/Break and incorrectly bound Menu key (instead, there was Win key bound to the Menu one), but these are a very quick fix in the rebinding area of the Wootility.
There are also pre-made layouts for ABC, DVORAK and you can also create your own function layers.
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| You can rebind virtually anything, including media keys and create custom layers. Also macOS hotkeys. |
Pricing, Support and Wooting
The keyboard itself costs EUR 199. When you buy the keyboard, you get a wrist rest discount of 10% and when you go over EUR 200 on your order, you get free shipping to select EU countries. That is indeed a great price and I surely hope it will remain at the golden EUR 200 price point.
This price point beats the now-obsolete SteelSeries Apex Pro, and completely massacres the Razer Analog Huntsman lineup that goes up to EUR 280.
Obviously, paying EUR 200 for a keyboard seems a lot, but taken the support, care and updates + quality each of the products from Wooting gets, with the smaller and controlled roster, it is a seriously good and fair price to pay.
My shipping experience did suffer - DHL stole or lost the keyboard package, however the support has been stellar and I shortly received a replacement order. Communication was fantastic and I wish more companies were so transparent, open and helpful. The entire process of getting the keyboard felt almost like a group-buy hype wise, but also very friendly and community based. Definitely check out the official Discord server of Wooting, where you can ask any questions and where everyone will gladly help you.
I really can't stress how glad I am that I waited for the Wooting and didn't get the Apex Pro instead. While it is a really good keyboard too, it lacks the updates, features and care that make it inferior in the long-run. That is where putting EUR 200 for a keyboard shows - you purchase a service, you have a community and you always feel like you belong to the development process. You see every step the product is made, the company tries to stay ecological, putting care to details few other companies can achieve. Sometimes the wait times are longer, but it never ends up in development hell and the finished product is worth it. This has been proven time and time again with multiple keyboards Wooting developed.
Conclusion
My expectations were set Jupiter-high with Chyrosan's YouTube review of the lekker edition, and the hype was real. When the keyboard arrived, it put me on Neptune. That almost never happens. Yet it did. I can't wait for more products and updates from Wooting.
Wooting Two HE is a standard to measure other keyboards by
In the meantime, I think the Wooting Two HE does almost everything perfectly as it should be. This is a standard to measure other keyboards by. Yes it lacks VIA support, but the Wootility software is amazing. Yes it can't be swapped for any other switches right now, but these switches are so perfect it's hard to not like them anyway.
Pros:
+ Fair price
+ Finally good software
+ First class switch feel
+ First class updates and support
+ Great community
+ Adjustable actuation
+ DKS
+ Analogue output
+ Many more features coming with firmware updates
+ Good and smooth RGB with a good white color balance
+ Keyboard self-calibrates when replugged
Cons
- Wait times for the order
- No tactile or clicky switch options
- No TKL or 75% exploded layout currently available
- Only one angle for the feet position
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