Introduction

I first heard of the Wooting brand and their proposed Wooting One keyboard in late 2015. Looking into it more, I was skeptical about two people, Calder Limmen and Jeroen Langelaan, who no one had ever heard of before and who sought to bring to market a keyboard with analog control. It seemed like a pipe dream at the time, and when they added a third person, Erik Stakenborg, to manage the website, my opinion did not change. They then showed off a prototype design and.. it looked good. A few months of good marketing and publicity followed and lead to a Kickstarter campaign in the summer of 2016 that was funded within seven hours and went on to exceed its goal by 450%. This was a lot of money to work with, and it was at this point that I was perhaps the most skeptical on how things would go next. A continually updated blog, video logs on YouTube, open Discord channels, and Q&A sessions meant they were being very transparent about the whole venture, as the backers had wanted and hoped for. As such, despite delays in finalizing the switch design and final production hassles, they had convinced me about the legitimacy of the company and brand when it was finally time for mass production. When keyboards started shipping to backers recently, and with the product now up for pre-order globally, I figured I simply had to get my hands on one to see how well it works, and here we are today. Thanks again to Wooting for providing the review sample.


The Wooting One is the keyboard name, and it is a safe choice for the first product of what is essentially a start-up company. Wooting is going big on brand recognition here to where even the software driver is called Wootility. The name aside, the Wooting One is a tenkeyless (TKL) form factor keyboard with a singular black color scheme at this time. Based on the image above, we see that there is RGB backlighting as well. The unique selling point is no doubt the implementation of analog control, and we saw an adaptation of this in the Roccat Isku+ Force FX that used piezoelectricity on a 6-key zone, which was the only way they could get it to work on membrane switches. That implementation worked alright in all but fast-paced gaming situations where actuation and the amount of pressure applied both added time and reduced the actions per minutes. We will definitely dig deeper into what Wooting did here, but having it on all 87 keys is already a good start. Let us begin the review with a look at the specifications below.

Specifications

Packaging and Accessories

Wooting put a plastic wrap over the product packaging to make sure you get a box that is mostly free of dust and in pristine condition out of the shipping container. The box is quite subdued in color, which goes with the color scheme of the keyboard itself, as we saw on the previous page. On the front is just the company logo and product name in white on a completely black backdrop, and the back actually has even less with just the company website near the bottom. On the sides is a small print of a keyboard and the product tag sticker. There is a double flap in the middle that keeps the contents inside in place.


Opening the box, we immediately see the keyboard with a cardboard cutout underneath separating it from the accessories Wooting provides here. A heart smiley has been printed onto the cardboard here, and, more practically, there is a cutout in the middle that will help lift it up. The accessories come packaged very well also, either inside a plastic pouch for paper items or inside cut compartments in a thick foam sheet. Wooting provides a quick-start guide, language help kit, and an actual postcard should you want to write them. The guides are handy, but Wooting has also released useful tutorials and support documentation on their website that are all worth reading/watching. The keyboard's cable is also removable, braided, and goes from a male micro-USB to male USB Type-A connector. There are also a few spare screws to use should you happen to have lost a few when modding/replacing/removing the top plate.


The next set of accessories is all to do with the so-called "first aid kit" consisting of four spare Flaretech Red and Blue switches each. The names are misleading, however, as both switches have a clear stem and the blue switch has an orange-red inset inside instead of the red. We will cover the switches in more details later, but the point of including these is for you to be able to replace switches that are perhaps not working as well or to try out a linear or clicky switch if you happen to have picked the keyboard with clicky or linear switches respectively. Wooting provides a two-sided, orange-colored tool that is a keycap puller on one side and a switch puller on the other. As with most other optical-switch keyboards, the Wooting One has swappable switches thus.