Roccat Ryos MK Pro Mechanical Keyboard Review
Roccat Software
Here recently, it seems that we are all beta testers. Even for software that supposedly has passed Q&A. For the hardware that requires installed software, such as drivers, or controller software, how well the software works can either leave a good impression or bad impression. If the software is full of bugs or overly complicated, the hardware won’t work correctly or it will be too difficult to use and drive the user away. If the software is stable, the user will shout from the rooftops and claim this product is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Unfortunately it seems, that most of the software made for hardware devices tends to fall in between the the two examples.
Roccat’s software for the Ryos MK Pro is fairly light weight, the download coming in at 21.9 MB. The Main Control tab of the software controls items such as Caps Lock (Easy-Shift+), brightness of the LEDs, and disabling keys. For a brief description of each of the controls, just hover the mouse pointer over the blue text in each area.
In the Key Assignment tab, the Macros can be configured. With 2MB of flash on board, Roccat claims up to 500 Macros can be saved to the keyboard.
The Key Illumination tab is where I found myself most of the time. This tab, as the name suggests, controls the per-key LED lights. There is both an automatic mode as well as a manual mode. Two predefined lighting effects can be configured here as well.
The Roccat R.A.D. tab is essentially bragging rights. Depending on the key presses you have done, you can win a trophy and share it on Facebook. Honestly, I could care less if this tab was included, it really seems like a waste.
The last tab is the Update/Support Tab. Here you can check for driver updates and update the firmware for the Ryos MK Pro. If issues arise, support is just a click away via the Roccat forums or an email to support.
There are five game profiles that can be loaded into the software at one time. The software doesn’t have any built in profiles, you will need build them yourself.
Overall the software for the Ryos MK Pro worked pretty well. There’s an optional piece of software called Roccat Talk. This software bridges communication between other Roccat software and hardware devices. Roccat’s Power Grid is a good example. Power Grid can control the lighting on the keyboard and set different patterns of light. However, with the latest version of Roccat Talk installed, getting the patterns to display was sketchy at best. Sometimes nothing would happen and other times it would just loop through all the different patterns no matter what I had selected. I uninstalled the latest version (v2.4) and downloaded and installed v2.2 and the issues seemed to have cleared up.
