Thought I’d share my feelings on the Roccat Valo with you all.
First impressions great packaging, 2nd impressions big keyboard but the keys I wasn’t to sure about. I also thought at first I had been sent 2 bags of light blue keys until I noticed one set was ever so slightly darker….certainly not dark blue.
Lets plug this baby in……why is so dull and what’s that awful whining noise?
So as a few people have said the keys do not light up particularly well and certainly doesn’t seem to be the same ‘roccat blue’ you find on other products. What was worse was the noise which appeared to be coming from the keyboard, after some mucking about I discovered it was key backlighting, turn it off and all is quiet, turn it on and it annoys. Now maybe you’re a kid playing games in your room with the tv blaring, you will then certainly never notice. But I have my pc in the bedroom and if the wife is sleeping or watching tv I have to keep things quiet that’s when you notice how annoying this whine is.
I too have contacted Tibor at Roccat and he replied they know about the fault and they’re looking into it…mmmmmm
LCD screen – doesn’t do much but I wasn’t to bothered.
Keys, the layout IMO is overkill but I suppose some gamers may appreciate this but I agree with custom pc the keys feel cheap and plasticy and not that pleasant to type on. In contrast to what XSreviews states.
Then I had the final nail in the valo coffin. When you plug in the keyboard u have to install the software and after a reboot it states update firmware, at which point it fails and says I should contact Roccat customer care and the keyboard is unusable.
I won’t bore you with all the details but suffice to say I eventually worked out why…………it was conflicting with the Roccat kone. When I unplugged the kone the valo updated firmware and worked but if I plugged the kone back in the valo insisted on running the firmware upgrade again and of course failed.
So from a Roccat fan I would say the following, for a product that has taken so long to come out, that was delayed so they could produce the ultimate gamer keyboard it’s a massive disappointment. It’s looks are average (not as good as online photo’s) to use it feels cheap, it has an annoying whine, it doesn’t light up as well as it should, the software is buggy (states u have an older driver installed even when u have the new version) and of course it conflicted with the roccat kone. Obviously with the last point this won’t be the case for everyone there must be something about my set up which conspired to cause this but it happened anyway.
Seriously if your after one of these keyboards please give it a try before u buy because I found it a massive disappointment.
P.S. There’s a new Roccat keyboard coming out, it’s part of the QRMS or whatever it’s called system so it’s very small and doesn’t seem to have a number pad on it. I can post a link to a pic if anyone is interested.