Roccat Valo Gaming Keyboard (ROC-12-801)

I bought the Roccat Valo hoping it would be as amazing as it claims. Roccat seems like a European version of Razer, and I love Razer products. Razer has made some flawed keyboards in the past, so I spent a little extra and went with Roccat. The first thing I noticed was the massive packaging bookended in large blocks of foam. Not packing foam, but logo covered black foam. After prying everything open it came with a very sufficient amount of extra keys, a directional mic, and some promotional materials. Upon plugging in the keyboard and typing with it I noticed it missed approximately 1/3rd of all keystrokes when I was typing faster than a grandma with meat hands. I did a little testing and discovered it typed perfectly if you acted like each individual key was trying to get in your face and you had to push it angrily and forcefully. This kind of emotional commitment to a keyboard was overwhelming. I could not get the attached mic to work, but that is a blessing because I wouldn't want to record the angered grunts that come standard with typing on this keyboard. The keyboard has no audible feedback when you successfully complete a keypress, so unless you are a touch typist it is a surprise every time you look up at the screen. It feels like a Ouija board. The Keyboard comes with 5 profiles, with 4 sub profiles within each profile, and 41 macro keys in each sub profile. That is a total of more keys than any person will ever need in their entire life, even if they are an FBI translator that raids in every single MMO. That is 820 macro keys. Eight hundred and twenty. Also it is incredibly easy to switch to another profile or layer accidentally and mess everything up. The macro keys are very limited in their use, unless you only want to use them for media controls and keypresses. The LCD screen is equally limited, only showing date and time, and profile and layer status. The key backlighting is impotent at best, but the Roccat logo shines with a fully adjustable bright blue light. The keyboard features on the fly macro recording using the tiny LCD screen. It starts when you press a button located in the spot where the escape key usually is, then it has you type a name for the macro and then do your macro business. Most of the time this feature is activated accidentally and you end up typing half an email into the LCD screen. To get out of the On-The-Fly Macro Recording Mode you have to backspace all of the letters you typed, then hit escape a few more times to get the keyboard to function as a normal keyboard. During this entire process none of the buttons on the keyboard work as a keyboard. This process is also very lengthy. The keyboard drivers are also clunky and lock up when switching menus and applying settings.Cons-Misses Keypresses-Poor Backlighting-Poor Mic-Poor Non-Macro Key Customizing-Expensive-Poor On-The-Fly Macro Recording-Poor Membrane Keys-Poor Drivers-Poor LCD ScreenPros-The cat logo is kind of cool if you like cats, but I don't-820 macro possibilities-Seriously, 820 macro keys-Why?

keys don't light up enough, cant see them.

yes i also have issues with this keyboard for a gamiing keyboard missing keystrokes is not good and this happens alot.also had issues with the macro creation software. but the missed keystrokes alone is enough to give it a 1 star rating do not buy this if you are a serious gamer