Despite some of my concerns with the Wooting 80HE’s plastic encasing, the keyboard’s software support and magnetic switches are as good as they come. Heck, they’re even better. Every inch of the keyboard is easy to customize, and it looks great once you set it up. Don’t let the critics fool you, though: Things like Rappy Snappy and Snappy Tappy will make your inputs more precise and efficient, but it’s no Game Shark for mechanical keyboards.
The Wooting 80HE has finally arrived to my office, and I could not be more thrilled. I, along with other consumers, have patiently waited for the 80HE to ship after Wooting found (and corrected!) a critical manufacturing defect that would have rendered our keyboards unusable. While it may be worth questioning if it’s been worth the wait, there’s probably a better set of questions to ask:
What is the value of a Wooting keyboard? Under what circumstances should their newest keyboard, the 80HE, be considered for those on the market?
I’ll answer both of those in a moment. I’ve had my eye on Wooting for quite some time. They’re a small group of around 30 mechanical keyboard enthusiasts in the Netherlands who have made it their duty to challenge the gaming keyboard industry by creating products that users want, designing products that defy norms, and innovating in the space to push keyboards to their limits. Most of what they make is in-house, ranging from their Lekker switches all the way to the keyboards themselves. It’s a bold step in the right direction of owning every step in the design and manufacturing process.
The Wooting 80HE was teased back in December of 2023 and formally announced one month later. I know, I know – waiting eight months for a keyboard?! What gives?! It’s okay to wait for those who are willing to wait. Wooting was transparent every step of the way, updating the keyboard’s design and fixing issues (mentioned earlier). This degree of transparency between a keyboard manufacturer and their fans is unprecedented. Now that I have the keyboard in hand and I’ve used it for a hot minute, let’s chat about it. What is the Wooting 80HE? Why the hype?
Dear reader, I’m going to save you the trouble now. What the 80HE lacks in premium construction it makes up for in customizability and software support that simply unrivaled in a space where multiple manufacturers are attempting to create hall effect keyboards that are poorly supported and difficult to use to their fullest potential.
If I’m going to be most critical of the Wooting 80HE, it’s that it feels like most of the keyboard’s pricetag goes toward software support. The base model (priced at $199.99) is made of plastic and is incredibly light. If you want a metal keyboard, the Zinc Alloy model, but it costs nearly $300. I was sent the base model to review, and I was quite disappointed with how the plastic felt in hand when I took the 80HE out of the box.
The keyboard’s matte plastic feels relatively sturdy. While the keyboard’s frame doesn’t bend when firmly pressing down on multiple keys, I am able to slightly twist it in hand. When I hit the keyboard’s case with my finger, a slightly hollow sound emerges. I would have preferred a different plastic to have been used, specifically one with a slightly greater density along with some thicker foam to add some weight to this keyboard. It just doesn’t look or feel $200 at first glance.
The 80HE is gasket mounted. Wooting claims that the silicone gasket mount and the plastic PCBA with switch plate absorbs impact and results in less noise with a softer feel. I love gasket mounted keyboards, don’t get me wrong, but to claim that it’s a softer feel feels like a stretch. When I think of a softer acoustic setup, I often think of keyboards that have additional layers of foam to absorb more of the switches’ sounds and potentially emphasizing the thock. Wooting also claims that the keyboard aims to have a low-volume with a “thock” – I partially buy it. While the keyboard is produces a softer sound, it’s in no way thocky in the traditional sense. It has more of a plasticky hollow thock instead of a deep and meaningful thock.
I feel like I’m pulling hairs here in assessing the keyboard’s construction. Looking past the nitpicks of the plastic construction, I’m not the biggest fan of the materials used for the keyboard’s aesthetic, especially when the keyboard starts at $199 – swapping out the base black double shot PBT caps with an OEM profile for white keycaps or dye-sub PBT with a cherry profile is an additional charge.
The double shot PBT keycaps of the Wooting 80HE are hotswappable, meaning that you can swap them out with just about anything else other than aluminum/ceramic keycaps. I wouldn’t want to swap these keycaps out with anything other than shine-through keycaps that let you take full advantage of the keyboard’s customizable LEDs which can be used to create marvelous LED designs using Wootility, which I’ll cover in a minute. When illuminated, the keyboard’s shine-through legends are easily viewable and able to be seen distinguished from far away.
Like all of Wooting’s keyboards, the 80HE comes prebuilt with their in-house set of Lekker magnetic switches. These are the Lekker Linear60 (L60) V2, an improved variant of the original L60 switches that were in the 60HE+. Wooting says that the L60 V2 switches feature less wobble, more lube, and superior sound. Most of this is true. The wobble in these switches is less pronounced than before, but it’s still not anywhere close to the stability I prefer. I compared these switches’ wobble to the Chilkey ND65’s Gateron KS-37B, and the KS-37B switches hardly budged while these switches felt slightly shaky. The L60 V2s are still usable, but they have some room for improvement in the stability department.
Additional lubing in each switch can prevent switches from creating a metallic pinging that results from the friction between the springs and switches’ components. Switch construction can help with that, too. I’ve seen and heard magnetic switches described as having a “chattery” (scratchy) sound profile, including the original L60s. To that end, it feels like the lubing in the L60 V2s has improved to the degree that they’re less scratchy, but the overall sound of the switches leaves much to be desired. From my own experience, I’ve seen the Gateron Magnetic Jades have an excellent sound profile, with the Gateron KS-37B being able to produce a muted but similar thock. The L60 V2s sound hollow, no thanks to the rest of the keyboard’s construction, but also due to the switches’ materials. Part of the keyboard experience is finding a switch that sounds satisfying, and these switches aren’t that.
It’s okay for the L60 V2s to lack that audible satisfaction, though. Wooting has firmly planted a flag in a territory that pro players and hardcore gamers desire. With additional manufacturers entering the magnetic switch space, they now have competition to be mindful of. If Wooting could put together a magnetic switch that is comparable to the deep and pronounced ceramic thocks of the Gateron Magnetic Jades, then they may appeal to more of the mechanical keyboard audience. Until then, I’ll continue to recommend the Magnetic Jades as being the best sounding and feeling magnetic switches on the market.
Let’s now talk Wootility, Wooting’s online keyboard configurator that let me adjust the keyboard however I desired. Right from the top, Wootility is one of the best-designed and fully featured keyboard configurators I have used thus far. When I say that, I think of similar hall effect keyboard drivers, I think of the simply subpar drivers that often come with them. In my reviews of keyboards like the Chilkey ND65 CS HE, the Melgeek CYBER01, and the CIDOO C75, I went so far as to come to terms with how their accompanying software suites are poorly constructed, hard-to-use, and in some cases, flat-out-confusing. There’s little consistency in how magnetic switch keyboards allow users to take advantage of the hall effect switches’ power, leading me to feel like they’re not worth the hassle to figure out.
Wootility is excellently designed. It’s as though Wooting took a gander at their competitors and opted into spending some of their development budget on user experience research, or at least chose to use these keyboards full-time and made a configurator that the average user could not only use, but take advantage of. Some folks might prefer Wootility to run on their computer instead of using a browser window – a downloadable package exists, but the fact that just about any browser can connect to the keyboard and configure it to have the customizations saved and fully operational even when the browser is closed is, quite simply, awesome.
Wooting has gone so far as to give users the power to granularly make it so that every single key’s RGBs can not only be individually customized on a per-key basis, but also granted a wide range of color effects that rival ROCCAT’s (now Turtle Beach) AIMO. For instance, I began by making it so that the keyboard’s colorscheme is a full rainbow gradient. Then, I added a layer of color that made it so that when I pressed a key, the key would temporarily turn white before slowly returning to its original color (this is the “Trail” effect, by the way).
On the right-hand side of 80HE is an LED strip indicator, which can be customized to a similarly granular level. Some folks might want to make it one step further, like me. I made it so that the led was off by default. Upon pressing a key, the LED strip would turn purple. Pressing a key further down would turn the strip a white-to-red gradient based on how hard I pushed down on the key. If I pressed Caps Lock, the LED would turn and stay pink to visually indicate that CAPS were on. All of these customizations are a result of three separate layers of color customization made through Wootility.
Of course, the 80HE’s claim to fame is the magnetic switches. This means that every single switch’s actuation point can be customized from 0.1mm (if you want a super-sensitive key) all way to 4.0mm (if you want the key to be fully pressed before the board registers the input). I personally prefer an actuation point between 2.0 and 2.4mm, and changing all of the switches’ actuation was quick affair.
If I wanted to enable Rapid Trigger, all I had to do was to go into the Rapid Trigger menu and learn how it dynamically actuated and reset my keys based on the actuation point. I could go so far as to enable continuous rapid trigger in the event where I wanted to spam a key over and over again without being concerned about the specific key’s actuation point.
Wooting has gone all in on two specific advanced keysettings, Rappy Snappy and Snappy Tappy. You may have heard about these software features making controversial waves in the competitive FPS circles, but if not, here’s a rundown. Rappy Snappy monitors pairs of keys and only activates the key that’s pressed down further. Snappy Tappy (Wooting’s variant of SOCD – simultaneous opposite cardinal direction) also monitors pairs of keys and allows the user to tell the keyboard to prefer the previously pressed key overriding the first pressed key, one key always overriding the other, or making it so that the pair of keys are NOT registered if both are pressed at the same time.
These two features were easy to set up. I tried them out on my keyboard and had some combinations set to Q and W (for League of Legends) along with A and D (for VALORANT and Counter-Strike 2). I consider myself an average player at best (unless it’s TFT, then I’m proud of ranking in the top two hundred or so players in Hyper Roll). Rappy Snappy led to me making slightly more precise inputs when I was pressing Q and W at the same time, but that precision led to me incorrectly pressing Q instead of W because of how I would naturally press Q further than W, resulting in Q being registered more often than not. Snappy Tappy, on the other hand, made it slightly easier to peek in playing a precise FPS like VALORANT, but…I still wasn’t good enough to kill more enemies than normal.
I can understand some users’ concerns about features like Wooting’s Rappy Tappy and Snappy Tappy violating competitive integrity, but…most players won’t get the full use out of these features in the form of massive shifts in their rank and performance. While there may be instances of some players being more accurate in their pressing of some buttons over others, it’s still up to the player to aim, shoot, and use their resources wisely, be it spending money or character-specific powers.
Should you purchase this keyboard to become a better player? Hell no. You should not be spending $200 on a keyboard with the idea that it will make you “better” at your favorite game. The magnetic switches’ value makes inputs more efficient, sure, but that’s not the most value of the switches. It’s their actuation customization, their durability, and their linearity that makes them worthwhile. Everything else like Rappy Tappy and Snappy Tappy are icing on the proverbial cake.
The Wooting 80HE is a phenomenal gaming keyboard, though. It handled higher-intensity games with ease, along with the medium- and lower-intensity games with no issue. Pressing some keys in the lower-intensity games did not feel as “impactful” and satisfying as a traditional mechanical switch that’s been constructed with acoustics in mind, but it’s one of those things that I personally look for thanks to my personal quest to find the most satisfying thock in a switch.
I see the Wooting 80HE being an incredibly compelling purchase for three types of consumers. First, if you’re wanting a hall effect keyboard that just works with very little confusion, the 80HE is perfect for you. Second, consumers looking to switch from a mechanical keyboard to magnetic with a high degree of customization will enjoy the sheer number of customization options found in the 80HE. Finally, there’s the final group: Those wanting a premium gaming keyboard (go for the Zinc alloy build, though).
Despite some of my concerns with the Wooting 80HE’s plastic encasing, the keyboard’s software support and magnetic switches are as good as they come. Heck, they’re even better. Every inch of the keyboard is easy to customize, and it looks great once you set it up. Don’t let the critics fool you, though: Things like Rappy Snappy and Snappy Tappy will make your inputs more precise and efficient, but it’s no Game Shark for mechanical keyboards.
