In a design akin to the lighting on the ROCCAT Kone XTD the Isku FX makes available 16.8million colours, essentially any in the RGB spectrum. Rather than multiple LEDs for each key – which would explode costs – the Isku FX utilises a distributed lighting system which dissipates an LED backlight across the whole keyboard. The effect is one of great colour consistency at the expense of some brightness: you won’t be gaining a great deal of aesthetic benefit in even substandard lighting conditions, but move to dim lighting or none at all except that of your monitor and the choice literally shines.

The included five brightness levels feel a little ancillary to the experience – two could easily have been enough for gameplay and periods of inactivity. Still, we’re not ones to complain about additional options. If you however choose to go without lighting entirely it will be worth knowing that the text print is crisp, clear and easily legible in most conditions.



The lighting isn’t perfect however; when observed from a standard typing angle the it doesn’t quite appear to reach to the top of particular characters - the ASCII characters on the number row are the clearest example. Also 16.8 million colours is somewhat misleading – although an RGB input of that size is possible, realistically the variation in output exhibited isn’t that great. The sixteen preset colours however are all very good with some variation possible either side of each, and those options on their own are more than most others.

A couple of lighting effects are also available from the software suite: breathing and colour flow; the former is a relatively simple brightness variation at a constant frequency, whilst the latter cycles the backlighting through the colour spectrum. Breathing is fine, but as we found in the Kone XTD the colour cycling tends to have a step change between certain colours rather than a continuous flow. That said, the pleasant illumination of constant lighting isn’t a feature we would give up.



Lighting is on a per-profile basis. Due to the five on-chassis profile indicator lights this isn’t as important as on the Kone mice where profiles can be differentiated by this lighting, but may have additional ancillary benefits.

ROCCAT Talk FX



Apart from the new colour choices, the chief difference between the Isku and the new Isku FX is the integration of ROCCAT Talk FX. The first version of ROCCAT Talk allowed cross-communication between ROCCAT peripherals – initially the Isku and Kone[+] mice – allowing functions such as Easy-Shift[+] and Easy-Aim to operate on both periperhals. Talk FX goes beyond the previous iteration to add the potential for additional sync’d ambient and dynamic lighting options.

The technology was first unveiled at Gamescom 2011, but could only begin to flex its muscles with the release of an enabled keyboard and supported titles. At present, finding a list of supported games for the dynamic notification feature is very difficult beyond World Of Tanks, and in the main integration needs to be performed in software rather than at the driver level, especially for event notification. There may be a few exceptions to that, but it seems unlikely that traditional game mods would have that level of access to the API without built-in support.

World of Tanks makes use of the dynamic lighting Talk FX protocals rather than general ambient lighting, but in relatively ancillary ways. When in game, the pre-start countdown period makes your keyboard and mouse lighting flash white. In-game, the colour of the your peripheral lighting will reflect your in-game health through a green to red gradient; with death comes a fairly obnoxious flashing red. There may be more hidden deeper in the game, but they are the most obvious and go some what towards showing what could be done.

This has not stopped amateur modders from getting their hands dirty with Talk FX. Unofficial apps are available if you search hard enough, which will allow you to see the potential of Talk FX in action. Two features in particular have been implemented thus far with some success - Actions Per Minute and Ambient dynamic lighting. The former will change the colour of the keyboard/mouse lighting based on your APM (essentially, the rate of keys/buttons pressed per minute), whilst the latter analyses the colour balance presented on-screen and changes the peripheral lighting to match. Whilst relatively crude demonstrations, they are effective at presenting the potential of the technology if it becomes supported in the mainstream.

At present a lack of support makes this heavily promoted feature something of a non-starter compared to standard ROCCAT Talk, but with near boundless ideas we want to see how far Talk FX will go and if it will be extended to other peripherals such as headsets in the future.

Live Macro Record

The Isku FX Live Macro Record allows lets you record macros on the fly and bind them to a key without needing to go through the rigmarole of the software suite. Once pressed, a voice prompt will ask you to press a macro key - M1-5, Easy-Shift[+]+M1-5 or one of the other 20+ available buttons - and then enter the keystrokes which the macro needs to be composted of. Once complete, Live Record is pressed again and the recorded macro is bound to the macro key specified.

Any macro saved is stored as the following hash:



and can be edited later through the Macro Manager in the Isku FX software suite. This seems extremely convenient, and voice prompts are clear and surprisingly helpful; just be aware that other macros with the same name construction will be overwritten.

The Isku FX therefore perfectly complements the Kone XTD's ethos of high customisation through lighting and onboard features. It's disappointing that ROCCAT appear to have yet to follow through with a software package for Talk FX's basic functions, but hopefully they will take the ball and run with it.