ROCCAT Vulcan TKL Pro Tenkeyless Linear Optical Titan Switch PC Gaming Keyboard with Per-key AIMO RGB Lighting, Anodized Aluminum Top Plate, and Detachable USB-C Cable, Black

Concerning the ROCCAT Vulcan TKL Pro: I am downgrading my review from 5 stars to 2. Why? In trying setup a default illumination scheme, I found this paragraph: Without Swarm you are still able to use your devices, but you are missing out on features such as illumination controls, re-assigning keys and buttons, customizing sensitivities or creating macros and profiles. A custom illumination (for say WASD etc. keys) can be setup only with Swarm running. Thats fine. If Swarm is killed/ended, the keyboard illumination (at least) persists. Thats good. But after power-cycling the keyboard, it is again necessary to run Swarm to reinstate the setup. Thats not OK. So its not possible setup the keyboard on Windows and then move the keyboard over to a Mac or Linux system to at least get a preferred illumination because Swarm doesnt runs on the latter systems and the illumination doesnt survive a power-cycle. This also means you cant use it on a Steam Deck (which is Linux). Thumbs down. I like the keyboard, but I dont really like the default animations nor the solid green. I can somewhat understand requiring Swarm to have keystroke programmable macros, but custom illumination should not require Swarm. I want a keyboard with persistent and default illuminations that will work on any computer; not having this is a deal breaker for me. There are other decent keyboards that do what this one does. Roccat support is terrible. In trying to contact Roccat, I notice that the support.roccat.con website is plagued with SSL certificate problems. So you have to either allow invalid SSL certificates or use lame browsers to view the support page.

I decided to get a TKL keyboard for my setup since i already own a G915 tactical and a NK65 V2 aluminum. I wanted to get another mechanical so I decided to pre-order a tkl pro. This keyboard uses their titan optical key switches but they remind me of linear red switches. I have never used such a loud linear switch before. Part of the blame is the key travel seems crazy long but i also think the short keycaps cause my expectations to be similar to the low-profile g915 which it is not! I was able to mitigate the issue by using o-rings/dampeners on the keycaps giving me a nice shorter stroke and less noise if I bottom out, but this did not fix the thunk when the cap moves back upwards so it is still loud and i hope break-in fixes this somewhat. The keycaps are oil magnets btw and to me they feel flimsy, slippery, and cheap (abs). The keycap is relatively small and cuts out part of the normal bottom, but I am not sure if I like this design as they make pudding keycaps to give more lighting if that is what they are trying to do. The switches are mounted directly onto the keyboards top panel which is nice for cleaning. The media controls are also the f9-f12 keys, but you can semi-permanently switch them with fn+del (turns the del key white to show it is switched/active). There is also a dedicated mute button and volume control both of which I do not believe you can re-map. Overall Im not sure why the vulcan tkl pro is so expensive. I wish it came with a magnetic wrist rest for the price like their full-size version, but my wood glorious wrist rest (TKL size) fits perfect. I am not sure if i would purchase a roccat product again as I dont believe there is much value for the money and that is saying a lot as a g915 owner. Edit: i decided to throw on some pbs doubleshot alpherior keys i had laying around, and the difference is huge! no more slippery buttons! Id highly suggest getting new keycaps, all though i kept the original F9-F12 since they are also the media buttons and i also kept INS, HOME, PG-UP, PG-DOWN, DEL, END and the arrow keys and the ctrl key.