Roccat Studios launched on Thursday the Ryos TKL Pro, a tenkeyless mechanical keyboard built from the ground up for eSports. Tenkeyless means that the peripheral was designed without the number pad, making it somewhat lighter and narrower than other mechanical keyboards with the number pad intact.
"I'm in it to win it, so you'll never see us put gear in our eSports team's hands that don't give them an edge," said René Korte, CEO and founder of Roccat Studios. "Team Roccat uses the Ryos TKL in competition because it optimizes their play."
According to Roccat, the keyboard uses "best-in-industry" Cherry MX Key switches: customers can choose between brown, black, blue or red. The keyboard also provides per-key illumination, meaning you'll be able to see these keys better in the dark than if the keyboard merely had backlighting. In other words, the letters and symbols are all lit with their own individual LEDs.
The new keyboard includes 470 programmable macros and 2 MB of flash memory for storing those macros and other settings. The keyboard also includes two 32-bit ARM Cortex processors, a smudge-proof glossy exterior, three programmable thumbster keys, a built-in cable channel and five rubber feet so the keyboard doesn't move across the desktop surface during heated gameplay.
The specifications also show that the keyboard has an N-Key Rollover feature to prevent ghosting, a 1000 Hz polling rate, a 1 ms response time, and 91 total programmable keys. The keyboard also supports Roccat's Easy-Shift[+] tech, which allows the user to assign a secondary function to most of the keys. There's also a huge integrated wrist rest so that your hands are more relaxed while gaming or surfing the web.
Roccat indicated on Thursday that HyuN, the number one StarCraft II player in the world, had some input in the design, as did several other professional gamers. Having input from pro gamers is a good thing, as it means Roccat fans will have a high-quality product that gives them as much of an edge as Roccat's own eSports team.
The keyboard is available now at retailers and online shops for $139.99.
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