2021 is halfway through, and if you’ve been working from home for more than a year now - longer than many of us expected this to go on for - then you’ve probably got a good setup. A nice keyboard, smooth mouse, plenty of screen real estate for your documents and Twitter, and a headset to pump Spotify into your ears 24/7 in an effort to stave off madness until an ad starts playing. At least, that’s the minimum level of comfort you should be dealing with.
The fact is that many of us are not living with the basics. Without a generous IT team stocking a plethora of mice and keyboards for us to pick and choose from, our home setups are often using the bare essentials. A keyboard with a sticky shift key, a mouse with a broken scroll wheel, and a headset that farts whenever the bass gets a bit too intense. This is the reality for many of us working from home, and you shouldn’t put up with it.
I’ve been using three essential Roccat products for all my work and play needs for more than three weeks now, and I’m going to run down the pluses and minuses for all of them below. If you’re looking for an upgrade to your usual setup, whether that’s because you’re working from home or you play hard at your PC, then these accessories might be exactly the thing you need for the comfort you deserve.
Roccat Pyro Mechanical Keyboard
The Roccat Pyro is a solid mechanical keyboard, and one that offers pretty much everything you need at a fair price. It’s full size - no TKL model here - and it offers a very humble set of media controls, by which I mean it has a volume knob and a few of the F keys can pause and fast-forward if you hold the Function button.
As far as mechanical keyboards go, this is hardly the nicest one to type on, but it doesn’t expressly have many negatives. The travel distance between keys is fine, and the travel distance when pressing a key is good too. The feedback feels pretty immediate and responsive, though the anti-ghosting technology could be entirely absent for all of the practical difference it appears to make.
The wire on this keyboard is a bit cheap too - it’s a straight black plastic housing with no braided cable to prevent fraying. Still, if you’re keeping this still on a desk and not moving it around, that shouldn’t even really be a consideration. The keyboard is still solid to type on, and I have to say that the removable palm rest is wonderful. I noticed my wrists feeling a little tired after raising my fingers over the keyboard like a crane for a full day, and with this palm rest that issue has pretty much entirely subsided. If you’re typing a lot, please get a keyboard with a palm rest.
Roccat Kone Wireless Mouse
I’ve been using the Roccat Kain 202 mouse for a while, and I have to say, I have a lot of love for it. The RGB logo under the palm, the glowing scroll wheel, and just the simplicity of it - who needs a mouse with a dozen function keys when most of us only use two clicks, two extra buttons, and a wheel? Well, the Roccat Kone wireless mouse follows the same kind of design philosophy - for the most part.
It’s built with simplicity in mind and it’s brilliantly light, allowing you to glide it around a mousepad. This is great whether you’re just clicking through a dozen browser tabs, or if you’re going for clean headshots in Apex Legends. It’s also got a slightly more ergonomic feel than the Kain, allowing my thumb to grip and slide into place easily - you don’t even need to look before grabbing the mouse and you’ll still find your fingers and thumbs effortlessly sliding into the correct position.
This mouse can be plugged in with the included “phantom-flex” USB-C cable, and you can either connect it to a USB dongle - which can also be inserted into the mouse itself - or connect it directly to a device through Bluetooth, which is a lovely touch. On the whole I really like this mouse, but the fact that it’s RGB feels practically pointless when it’s just the click buttons, which you will rarely actually ever see from a normal seated position. The scroll wheel is solid aluminium, which feels nice to the touch, but it’s also hollow to keep the mouse light, which means it has no flashy RGB (boo). Worse still, it has a gaping hole that goes through the wheel, allowing you to see inside the mouse. This is definitely going to get filled with crumbs.
Roccat ELO Air 7.1 White Headset
When it comes to a good quality headset, there’s not all that much I’m looking for. Decent sound quality, a microphone that my friends in the party won’t complain about, and minimal pressure applied to my big ears. It doesn’t seem like too much to ask, does it?
Well, the good news is that the ELO Air headset ticks all the boxes - and yes, I really like the white design. The audio quality is good - while I did encounter a small handful of audio dropouts, they were incredibly brief and rare, so I’m not willing to admonish the headset for that quite yet. But not everything is perfect. For one, the RGB - it might look good on a stream with everyone watching you, but otherwise the lights on the sides of your head are going to look a bit odd.
There’s also no direct Bluetooth connection or aux port, which is a bit of a shame. But functionally the biggest issues with the headset are that the microphone is exposed, meaning a heavy breather or a nearby fan is going to have the party chat complaining, and the metal headband that goes over the top of the headset can resonate when touched or knocked, like a tuning fork - once again, your mates won’t be very happy about this. Not the most convenient factor, but also not necessarily a deal breaker. However, what is going to prevent this headset from being a regular item for me is the fact that the foam ear cups are coated in a soft rubber, which inevitably makes my bald head sweat and stick to the headset after hours of use - not a problem for my haired friends, mind.
Summary
All of these Roccat products are perfectly good, and well priced when compared to the competition. If you are dealing with the bare minimum in terms of your PC accessories, you deserve better, and these make for a compelling offering. But if you already have some mid-range PC gear that you’re perfectly happy with, then the only true selling points this Roccat range has left is the RGB lighting, as well as the Roccat Swarm tool which syncs it all up - admittedly, this is a nice touch. All in all, the Roccat range is solid for the right gamer or at-home professional, but doesn’t really set itself apart from the rest of the market.
You can find more on Roccat products via the official site.
