Are Hall Effect Keyboards Worth It?

It all started with the Wooting 60HE and now it seems the entire keyboard market is flooded with Hall Effect rapid trigger boards (Polar 65, Endgame Gear KB65HE, Boog75, etc). It seems to me that any keyboard release without HE/Rapid Trigger functionality is now a thing of the past and I’m not sure that is a good thing.

The Typing Experience

You buy a keyboard for mainly the typing experience even if you get it for gaming, and a lot of the HE keyboards I have seen on the market sound and feel quite bad. It all depends on personal taste and preferences but from owning and modding a Wooting myself I can confirm that HE switches are not always the best sounding.

The situation seems to be improved with the newer offerings sounding a bit better but then their performance is not equal or better than the already existing Wooting 60HE which is still the best keyboard from a performance standpoint.

Finding a keyboard that sounds good, feels good to type on, and is better performance-wise than a Wooting seems impossible right now. 

Does It Improve Your Gaming Experience?

This will sound weird coming from the guy with 4000–8000 Hz polling rate mice and a completely tweaked-out PC, but I honestly did not feel that much of a difference in my plays while using the modded Wooting.

I did not strafe better, did not aim better, it just gave me some mental peace knowing I have the best possible performance at my fingertips. The issue with that is you can buy and build a cheap keyboard for 60-70$ that feels better to type on, sounds better, and has similar build quality (plastic case, a better gasket mount system, has a volume knob, etc).

The performance of it in terms of measured latency will of course be abysmal compared to a Wooting but I could not tell the difference (there are many other cases of the same experience) between them in normal play. Where I am going with this is simple – if I had to spend 200+$ on a keyboard I would just build a custom board, with nice pre-lubed switches, foam, gasket mount, and all the other premium features.

If you do however feel the difference in your plays then buying a Wooting and modding it for the best experience would be worth it since nothing else comes close in terms of performance and web-based software. 

TL;DR

A lot of people including myself cannot really feel the improvement of using Hall Effect rapid trigger keyboards. If I cannot feel the benefits I would rather invest in a premium custom-built keyboard and enjoy the much better typing and sound experience. 

If you do think the HE/Rapid Trigger makes you play better then you might need to start modding your HE board for a better typing experience as well.