Wooting 80HE Review: Pinnacle of Hall Effect Keyboards

Wooting was one of the archetypal analog keyboard brands to interruption into the mainstream. When the archetypal Wooting One TKL launched, it was a large deal—optical power exertion was inactive caller to astir people, and the thought of a keyboard with hyper-fast, adjustable cardinal actuations was some caller and revolutionary astatine the time.

Later, erstwhile it debuted its Lekker Hall effect switch successful the Wooting Two, it was 1 of the archetypal companies to utilize the technology for gaming. Things ramped up successful 2020 with the merchandise of the Wooting 60HE: Wooting was taking preorders months successful advance, the keyboard was reselling with monolithic markups, and Hall effect wholly overshadowed optical switches arsenic the adjacent large thing.

Now, Hall effect keyboards are a dime a dozen. It kicked disconnected an arms race, and Wooting's 60HE fell behind. But with the caller Wooting 80HE, the institution returned to the tenkeyless (TKL) layout of its archetypal keyboard and made a keyboard that’s not lone competitory but impressive. The 80HE has each diagnostic I privation successful a Hall effect keyboard, without immoderate of the mistakes I commonly see. It’s robust, reliable, and casual to repair.

The 80HE has 2 versions, 1 with a integrative lawsuit and the different with a zinc alloy. The integrative mentation retails for $200 and comes successful opaque achromatic oregon transparent gray. The zinc alloy exemplary costs $290 and includes a carrying case. It comes successful achromatic oregon white. You tin besides get the keyboard successful ANSI, ISO, and JIS layouts. I tested the zinc alloy lawsuit successful achromatic with a modular ANSI layout.

Fantastic Functionality

For astir each Hall effect keyboard I’ve reviewed, bundle has been a sore spot. They’ve been buggy, awkward, poorly designed, filled with advertisements, oregon conscionable plain unintuitive. Even the champion bundle I’ve tested, from Keychron, has insignificant issues with connectivity and mounting functions.

This is wherever Wooting stands out. Its in-house app, Wootility, is great. It’s a simple, lightweight inferior that provides extended adjustments and customizations. It’s disposable some in-browser and arsenic a downloadable executable, meaning you tin entree it anyplace and usage it offline. More than that, each portion of its plan makes sense: The exertion is organized, casual to use, intuitive, and explains each setting. Plus, during my full clip utilizing the browser version, I ne'er ran into connectivity issues—the infinitesimal I deed “enter” for the URL, it recognized the keyboard. This isn’t the lawsuit for astir in-browser keyboard utilities, which don’t ever privation to connect.

Even niche features similar gamepad emulation worked flawlessly. I replicated the analog inputs of an Xbox controller’s instrumentality and triggers without immoderate hiccups oregon confusion, adjusting the settings connected the alert and inactive maintaining keyboard inputs for unmapped keys. I adjacent enactment down a half-decent thigh clip successful Art of Rally aft a spot of signifier (and a fewer crashes).