Look and feel
The keyboard looks and feels very impressive as soon as you open the box. It feels sturdy on its metal base and the embossed Wooting logo shows careful attention to detail. The included, optional, yellow carry strap lets the users choose how flamboyant they want to be.
The keypresses are smooth and give the perfect amount of resistance, letting you rest your fingers in place without an accidental press and also giving the smallest amount of extra pressure for immediate response.
It is surprisingly heavy for such a small piece of equipment, though still not too heavy to be cumbersome. This weight has the benefit of holding it steadily in place on your desk so there’s no risk of it moving from where your fingers expect it, leading to misspelling or even certain death in-game.
Based purely on feel the Wooting 60HE is a pleasure to type and play with.
Key tech
The real selling point of the Wooting 60HE is the incredible technology behind (or under) the keys. Using Wootings proprietary Lecher keys, the 60HE offers an incredible advantage over every other gaming keyboard – but be prepared, making the most of the advantages takes a bit of investment from the user. The keys operate without physical switches, instead carefully measuring magnetic resistance to check if the key is pressed 0%, 50%, 100%, or anywhere in between. While this might not sound impressive, the results certainly are.
Measuring resistance across the full range of motion means the keyboard can be programmed to register keypresses at any point in the travel from 0 to 100%, so the keypress can be transmitted to the PC the very instant the button is pushed if that’s your preference.
Key tech in games
The software used to program the Wooting 60HE can be installed on your machine or used through a browser and saves all the settings to the keyboard itself so even if you’re hot desking or travelling abroad for a competition, your settings will follow you.
As well as the usual colour profiles, being able to set patterns or colours for each individual key, there is a whole other layer to the customization.
This is where you need to invest to get the best from this keyboard. The customization of how the keypresses react and respond is so deep that finding the absolute best setup for you could take a considerable amount of time testing different options. Wooting explains it best themselves: the Rapid Trigger system dynamically changes the actuation and deactivation point. Your keys will activate when you intend to press them and deactivate when you intend to let go.
So in high-performance gaming when every millisecond counts, the Wooting 60HE will start exactly when you say start, and stop as soon as you stop.
Very few – if any – other gaming keyboards allow for this level of customization, and the advantages it can bring in competitive games has the potential to elevate you to the next level.
One of the best CS:GO players of recent years and HLTV’s player of the year 2019 and 2020, ZywOo, has been spotted using this keyboard in some of his biggest matches to date.
60% & full size
The slightly smaller-than-usual elephant in the room is the fact that this is what is called a 60% keyboard, which is pretty much what it sounds like. If a “regular” keyboard including numpad, ‘F’ keys and arrows is 100%, this is reduced in size by 40% removing the buttons listed above. This smaller form factor means you have a lot more space on your desk/mousepad for sweeping movements to flick from one enemy to another, but it does mean if you’re using it for typing, spreadsheets and other boring work you’ll feel like its missing something – the numpad in particular was sorely missed here.
The designers behind the Wooting 60HE have accounted for this in their software, allowing you to create layers – essentially remapping the keys such that when you hold down the function key all the buttons you’ve been missing are instantly assigned to the keys available, wherever you want them to be. Again, this takes an investment of time from the user to get comfortable with but this keyboard has enough benefits that the investment will definitely pay off in the long run.
If that sounds like too much and you want instant gratification, they also offer the full-size Wooting Two HE.
