Photos and Features

So the Wooting One is a TKL or TenKeyLess keyboard. Bringing a TKL out as their first keyboard would look a little crazy to the mainstream market but it isn’t really unusual to see TKL or 60% boards for first models in the enthusiast market and the Wooting team are clearly enthusiasts. They do however have a full-sized model on the way called the Wooting Two. The Wooting One has a bezel-less design, the same one that Corsair’s keyboards really spearheaded 6/7 years ago. This means the keys are floating with the backplate being the main structure of the keyboard. The Wooting One backplate wraps around the bottom for a better transition along the bottom. This design is easier to keep clean, blowing air will push your crumbs and hair right off the keyboard. The downside is the switches are visible from the side and depending on how the lighting is done it could also give a glow around the keys. Some people like that look, others don’t.

The Wooting One is a complete traditional TKL key layout. This means you get full support for aftermarket keycaps without having to worry about weird bottom row keys. That means you have a full F key row, the direction pad, and the alphas and modifiers. Now the scroll lock key is missing with a mode key in its place. But I doubt many people will even notice, I didn’t even notice for about a month. The backplate is blacked out with a rough finish and it paired up with the black keys for a clean look. The font used for legends is easy to read and Wooting was careful to avoid any of the “gaming” fonts that far too many boards go with. The only other thing unique on the board is the W Wooting logo key used to replace the windows keys. This gives a touch of branding without being in your face and also means Mac users don’t have a windows logo on their keyboards.

There are a few function layer things. The home keys have media controls including volume controls. This is a good spot for a function layer volume control because you can one hand the control. That said I still rarely ever use function layer volume controls. But will never be upset at having the option. The function layer up above those has led brightness up and down for the print screen and pause buttons. The function layer for the mode button is a function toggle. So you can lock the function layer on and play with your volume or brightness.

It’s a small detail but in addition to the all blacked out look, I like that the only Wooting logo that isn’t on a keycap is down below the spacebar and is just embossed. Most companies would have backlit it or at least filled it in with white to make it super visible, but this clean look puts the customer first, not advertising the brand first.

From the side profile, it looks like the Wooting One has an OEM or Filco keycap profile. The Flaretech switches are blacked out as well so they aren’t as visible as you would normally expect for a bezel-less design. The keyboard also has a small indented area on the sides here for a touch of style.

So the bottom of the Wooting One has a lot going on for the bottom of a keyboard. For starters, they really went crazy with rubber feet and I love it. There are three along the front edge and then four along the back. Each is about an inch wide. Then there are two flip-out feet to angle the keyboard, those also have rubber feet on the end so you don’t lose too much grip when angled. The board does have a detachable cord if you didn’t see it in the packaging section. It attaches under the keyboard in a recessed area just like Filco and later Cooler Master have done. It connects with a Micro-USB connection allowing for you to replace the cord if it is damaged or if you just want to spice things up with a different sleeving.

Also on the bottom in the middle is a sticker with the model and serial numbers as well as the normal certification and regulatory logos. What caught my eye though was down at the bottom of that sticker. The three guys from Wooting have their signatures with a note saying they made the Wooting one for you and to take care of her.

Here is the included cord with its USB Type A connection on one end and Micro-USB on the other. It does have a black sleeving to go with the rest of the blacked out board.

Okay, so I pulled a few keycaps off so we could get a better look at the business end of the board. These are the Flaretech optical switches. They don’t really look any different than other key switches, in fact, they have the same shape and form factor as a Cherry MX switch, all the way down to the location of the branding on top. There are Cherry stems up on top for keycap compatibility as well. There is a light tube up on top to pull the light from the surface mounted LED under the switch up into the keycaps, I like this better than going full transparent on the whole switch like the new Cherry MX switches do. Between that and the transparent stem, it gets the light up into the keycap without as much outer glow, with this being a bezel-less board that is important. Now the Wooting One does support removing the switches so we can get a good look up under everything as well. You can see the surface mounted LED right there at the top.

So there are two switch types available, this clear looking model is the Linear55 aka a Cherry Red like feel. You get a 55cN actuation force with a linear travel all the way down the 4mm travel distance. Now they don’t list an actuation point because this is an analog setup and Wooting allows you to change the actuation point up or down in the software. The Flaretech switches are basically just dummy switches, the real work goes on up under the switch facing up into two small holes in the bottom of the switch. They do have a clicky model as well that they call the Clicky55 that is designed to be similar to a Cherry MX Blue. It has the same 55cN actuation force, 100,000,000 million click lifespan, and everything else. Just with the click. It has a transparent stem as well but you can see an orange color inside, that is how you can tell them apart. For the longer keys like the shift button, they do have stabilizers. They look to be similar to a Cherry style stabilizer meaning the bar is inside the keyboard between the two pegs with cherry stems on them. This makes swapping out keys much easier but can sometimes be a little noisier.

Now for the keycaps, they didn’t go crazy or anything. They are your basic transparent ABS plastic keycaps. That means they are a transparent white then painted black with UV and protective coatings to keep it from wearing off too quickly, then the legends are etched off so the light shines through. The Wooting One is begging for a nice set of doubleshot PBT keycaps to really top things off, but that adds a LOT to the cost unless you are a huge name producing large volumes.

While it doesn’t matter like it does with a mouse, I did also toss the Wooting One on the scale to see what it weighs. It came in at 1 pound 10.5oz or 752 grams. So it isn’t beat someone to death with your keyboard heavy, but you could at least do a little damage.