Roccat Vulcan Pro Keyboard Review – Attack of the Optical Warriors

Software

And speaking of Swarm, I of course took a closer look at the in-house software for bling-bling and advanced features. The setup is actually cleverly done, as first you download the general program from the Roccat website. In Swarm itself, the connected devices are detected and suitable drivers and libraries are installed via module. This way you don’t blow up the installation with unnecessary, non-existent devices and you only occupy 156 Mbyte with mouse and keyboard module.
Commendable!

And even with permanent operation in the background, the program makes itself lean, hardly any workload is generated.

If you don’t want to miss out on the sounds of your keyboard despite wearing headphones, you can have them played back virtually via the Swarm software. Sounds horrible in my opinion though and was annoying after just a few strokes. But for those who like to torture themselves, Roccat at least gives them the option.

Click:

Typewriter:

Sci-Fi:

Rays:

If you think the last two sounds are somehow familiar: Attack of the Clones sends its regards – hence the title, by the way.

Summary & Conclusion

Even though the keyboard could score quite well so far, there are a few points of criticism in the illumination. Most of the light comes from the transparent switches, the letters in the keycaps are rather passively illuminated. If you have buttons right next to each other with completely different lighting, the underbody lighting also mixes a bit. Especially when viewed from above at an angle, the LEDs are downright blinding, but this is absolutely no problem in the normal position in front of the keyboard.

Apart from a few minor issues, the Roccat Vulcan Pro proved to be very convincing in the test and will probably remain on my table for quite a while. Even if the new optical technology isn’t a literal “game changer” for me, the placebo effect of a fast keyboard should already help some people to have a better gaming experience. But even if you’re looking for a good input device with solid software rather than the latest trend, the Vulcan Pro is worth taking a look at.

If the full-size variant is too big for you, the Roccat Vulcan TKL Pro is a space-saving variant that is a good deal cheaper.