Introduction

Rosewill is a known brand name in the North American markets. Although they started as a small company mainly focused on marketing budget-friendly products, today they have a large selection of technology-related products, including products that have been designed with advanced users in mind. One such example is their mechanical keyboard series, which stands out from the many non-mechanical keyboards that they also offer. In this capsule review, we will look at the Apollo RK-9100 and the RGB80, two of their most recent mechanical keyboards. Are they worthy successors of the famed RK-9000? We are about to find out.

Rosewill Apollo RK-9100 - Key features and specifications

• 100% Cherry MX Blue Mechanical Key Switches
• Custom Programmable Keyboard
• Five Profiles with Quick Switch Keys
• Up to 50 Marco keys
• Individually LED Backlit Keys (Red or Blue LEDs, depending on the model)
• Three Levels of Brightness Control: 0, 1, Breathing Mode
• N-Key Rollover
• Built in Headphone & Microphone Pass-Through Jacks
• Two Built-in High-Speed USB 2.0 Ports
• Detachable Wrist Rest for Maximum Support and Comfort
• Gold-Plated Connectors to Reduce Latency
• Includes Eight Orange Gaming Keys with Key Puller
• Multimedia Keys with Gaming Mode
• High Quality Braided Fiber Cable
• Soft Rubberized Surface

Rosewill RGB80 - Key features and specifications

• Customizable RGB LED Backlighting
• Six Backlighting modes
• Five Profiles with Quick Switch Keys
• Multimedia Keys
• Gaming Mode
• 6-Key or Full-N Key Rollover Modes
• 100% Mechanical Key Switches
• 512KB Onboard Memory

The lists above display some of the advantages of these two keyboards but reveal some of their weaknesses as well. For example, Rosewill makes clear mention of the Cherry MX switches of the RK-9100 but hardly mentions the mechanical switches in the features list of the RGB80 at all, hinting that the RGB80 is not using Cherry MX switches. We'll discuss the above in more detail on the following pages.

Rosewill Apollo RK-9100

The Rosewill Apollo RK-9100 is clearly the successor of the very popular Rosewill RK-9000 series. There are several versions of the RK-9100 available, varying by the type of the mechanical switch and the backlighting color. We received the RK-9100xR, the version with the Cherry MX Blue switches and red backlighting.

Aesthetically, the Apollo RK-9100xR looks almost like a standard old-school 104-key keyboard. Only the company logo and the design of the notification LEDs on the right side make a visual difference when the keyboard is powered down. This changes once the keyboard is connected to a system, bringing the backlighting on.

The backlighting is very well applied, illuminating the keycap characters without spilling out from the sides. There is only one slight exception, the spacebar key, where the LED light is focused at the center of the strip and unable to fill it with uniform light. Rosewill also provides two sets of four orange "gaming" keycaps, one for the arrow keys and one for the WASD keys. The orange keycaps are semi-transparent, allowing the LED to illuminate them entirely.

The chassis and the wrist rest of the RK-9100 are both made of corona-treated plastic, which gives a soft, rubber-like feeling to the touch and does not get dirty too easily. It is a relatively thin mechanical keyboard, as the chassis of most similar designs is nearly twice as thick. Two USB ports and audio jacks can be found conveniently placed at the top-right side of the keyboard. The two USB 2.0 ports are very close to each other however, and devices wider than a standard USB connector (e.g. certain flash drives) may be obstructed if either port is already populated. Furthermore, these two USB ports are not powerful enough to power devices such as external 2.5" mechanical disk drives.

As promised, the mechanical switches of the Apollo RK-9100 are Cherry MX Blue. The keys are firm, feeling very solid and consistent, even though Rosewill is using bar stabilizers instead of cross stabilizers beneath the longer keys. Under the hood, we found a very well assembled board, without soldering imperfections or mechanically weak links. A Freescale MC9S08JM16 microcontroller lies at the heart of the system, with a larger Genesys Logic GL850G USB 2.0 hub controller next to it.

By holding down the FN key, the F-keys offer additional functions. F1 to F6 keys perform sound and media control functions, while F7 to F11 keys will switch between the five different programmed profiles. FN+F12 will enable or disable "Gaming mode", disabling the windows key and initiating the gaming profiles. Finally, the FN plus the up/down arrow keys controls the backlighting settings.

The greatest feature and the weakest link of the Apollo RK-9100 is that the keyboard is fully programmable. You can literally program any key to perform any action at all, from simple layout changes to actuating macros. You can program up to fifty macros (ten per profile), with each macro being capable of registering up to 27 keystrokes.

Limiting each profile to ten macros is a bit odd as well; while it's doubtful most users would actually need 50 macros on a single profile, there are certainly some that will want more than ten. As usual, there are software packages that provide a better macro experience if that's what you need, but the built-in macro support does travel with the keyboard.

While the provided macro programming software does work and has a simple interface, it really kills the potential of the keyboard. The interface looks as if it came from a 1980s Windows 3.11 machine and really needs an update. As this is one of the main new features of the RK-9100 over the previous generation RK-9000, if you don't need macro support you can save $20 or more by sticking with the tried-and-true RK-9000 series.

Rosewill RGB80

We received the Rosewill RGB80 inside a very simple, black cardboard box, and the main artwork is a picture of the keyboard itself, highlighting its capability to change the backlighting to (theoretically) any color of the visible spectrum. Do not be misled by the picture however, as the keyboard does not feature individual key backlighting; only a single color can be set for all of the keys. Unlike with the Apollo RK-9100, there is just one version of the RGB80 at the time of this review, with Blue switches.

Similar to the Apollo RK-9100, the RGB80 is a relatively simple looking keyboard in ten-keyless format. It has a detachable USB cable that can be routed to exit from the center or near either of the sides of the keyboard. Rosewill also provides six clear "gaming" keycaps and a keycap extraction tool.

The RGB80 sports a very sturdy, thick and tall plastic chassis that gives a feeling of robustness. Once again, Rosewill is using corona treated plastic for the chassis, the textured surface of which feels soft to the touch and does not get dirty easily. Ten-keyless keyboards are designed with compactness in mind, so naturally there's no wrist rest supplied. The series logo is etched on the sides of the chassis but, despite the very tall body, there are no USB ports or jacks. It has a very low current requirement of just 500mA though, making it compatible with virtually all systems, even with low-power tablet/notebook USB ports.

Beneath the Rosewill RGB80, we can see the cable routing channels, four large anti-slip pads, and two tilt feet. The anti-slip pads are more than enough to keep the heavy RGB80 stable on nearly any surface. We can also see that the cable jack is a typical Micro USB port, meaning that the user can replace the cable with any Micro USB to USB cable if desired.

As we suspected when looking at the specifications of the RGB80, Rosewill is not using Cherry MX switches but Kailh switches instead. As we mentioned in previous articles, Kailh switches are basically "perfect" copies of the Cherry MX switches, which the company started producing after Cherry's patent expired. There is a lot of chatting around in forums and billboards regarding the quality of Kailh's products, with complaints about their consistency and quality. Unfortunately, to test the quality of the switches we would have to perform millions of keystrokes, which is not possible within the time frame of a review. However, as we have access to a texture analyser, so we can at least test the consistency of the keys.

The blue switches have a rating of 50cN ± 14cN, so the Rosewill RGB80 gets a borderline pass, with the weakest actuation force being 37cN and the strongest being 60cN. This difference typically wouldn't be apparent to a user while typing, but it is discernable if you identify the weakest and strongest keys and test them using the same finger. This is perhaps the biggest drawback of Kailh: the quality control is not at the same level as Cherry MX. How much that truly matters is going to be more of a personal preference, with the primary advantage being Kailh switches cost less than Cherry MX switches.

The FN key works similarly to the Apollo RK-9100. By holding it down and pressing the F1 to F6 keys, the user can perform sound and media control functions, while F8 to F12 keys will switch between the five different programmed profiles. The "game mode" has been changed from FN+F12 to FN+Pause/Break. Finally, the FN plus the up/down arrow keys controls the backlighting settings.

The backlighting of the RGB80 is its strongest selling point. Unlike with the RK-9100, the backlighting is not focused on the characters, spilling from the sides of the keycaps. The user can choose the backlighting color through the downloadable software, but it only allows you to set a single color for the entire keyboard, as the RGB80 does not support individual per-key backlighting. However, it is possible to cycle through three modes: full keyboard backlighting, gaming mode backlighting (WASD, Space, Arrow keys, F8-12 keys and Enter), and extended gaming mode backlighting (gaming mode + ALT/Ctrl, Swift, Tab and all numbers).

As we mentioned above, Rosewill also provides ten (QWEASD + arrow keys) clear keycaps. The keycaps have the character printed on the front side rather than the top. Their transparency however makes them very bright in comparison to the rest of the keys. Although this probably was the desired effect, it can also be annoying if the backlighting is not turned down.

Inside the body of the Rosewill RGB80, we found a well-assembled but dirty PCB, with an astonishing amount of powder on it, most likely from the soldering process or from the powdered gloves of the factory workers. A Freescale MC9S08JM32 microcontroller is the core of the RGB80, with an MXIC 25L512E flash chip next to it.

Once again, the weak link of the Rosewill RGB80 is the software. It is somewhat better and more detailed than the software of the Apollo RK-9100, but it still does not do this keyboard justice. The RGB80 is fully programmable and, once again, the user can program any key to perform any action at all. Aside from simple layout changes, the keys can be programmed to execute macros and launch applications. The macro recording of the software can register up to 27 keystrokes. Longer macros and or complex macros that require recording the position of the cursor are possible, but a third-party software that can compile .EXE files is necessary, and you then set the compiled files to be launched as applications.

Conclusion

With the Apollo RK-9100 and the RGB80, Rosewill proves that they can do a very good job when they want to design and market high-performance computer peripherals. Despite their simplicity, the quality of either keyboard does not disappoint. We do admit that the old school, heavyweight design of the RK-9000 feels more solid, but the RK-9100 looks and feels better without any actual disadvantage.

It also seems that Rosewill addressed the issue with the letters fading. The RK-9000 was notorious for this problem, with the letters fading within just a month of normal usage. We used both the RK-9100 and the RGB80 for 15 days each, with at least six hours of typing per day, and the keycaps of both keyboards remain like new. Unfortunately, we cannot perform much better durability tests within the time frame of a review, but at least we can state that the lettering is more durable than what it used to be. We could complain that the RGB80 is not using switches from Cherry, but we are aware that Cherry's products are more expensive and that would make the retail price of the RGB80 far too high for what it offers.

What left us with mixed feelings is the inclusion of the extra keycaps. Aesthetically, well, let's just say that we would prefer the stock keycaps to either the orange or clear "gaming" keycaps any day of the week. If a user's intents are purely practical however, these keycaps do stand out even in the darkest room, making it extremely easy for the eye to pick them up. Assuming that a gamer would actually look at the keyboard, they do make spotting the correct keys easier. If you ask around however, our experience is that you will be hard pressed to find an actual gamer who switches to clear/colored/beveled/whatever keycaps in order to game "better".

Easily the best feature of both keyboards is the ability to fully reprogram any of the keys. This can be as simple as a layout change for a few keys, or as complex as programming an intricate setup with tens of macros and complex commands. However, even though this gives both keyboards a virtually infinite level of parameterization, the current versions of the software severely hinder the actual capabilities of both keyboards. This is especially true with the software that Rosewill supplies for the RK-9100, which is rudimentary and archaic. Unlike with the RK-9100, the software of the RGB80 is acceptable, but it still could have been much better.

Unfortunately, the worst enemy of the Apollo RK-9100 is the price tag. Rosewill has always tried to compete with value in mind, offering similar products at significantly lower prices than the competition. This however is not apparent with the Apollo RK-9100. With a retail price of $95-$100 (depending on whether you want blue or red backlighting), it faces tremendous competition from numerous manufacturers. This price pits it against products such as the Corsair Vengeance K70 ($105) and the Roccat Ryos MK Advanced ($100), not to mention the many other similar keyboards not specifically targeted at gamers.

The Rosewill RGB80 is a different story, as very few RGB keyboards are currently available. The going price of $100 seems quite reasonable, even for a ten-keyless version. Of course you're also not getting Cherry MX switches, and you don't get per-key backlighting. If you want those, right now you only have a couple of choices, and both are full-size keyboards. Corsair was the first to announce a mechanical switch RGB backlit keyboard, and the K70 at least is finally on shelves and priced at $170; we're still missing the K95 unfortunately. The other option is the Razer BlackWidow Chroma that will likewise set you back $170. Prices are obviously a lot higher, but the cost of additional mechanical switches plus the circuitry to do per-key backlighting at least accounts for much of the added cost.