Overall and Final Verdict
With the 60HE you can tell that Wooting has taken what they have learned from each of their previous keyboards and continued to improve on the process. The Lekker switches are a big improvement over the original design and have an ultra-smooth feel and don’t have the key wobble that I experienced back on the Wooting One. Because of how simple the design is to work with the hall effect sensor the switches also have a crazy high 100 million key press lifespan. Combine that with the travel case that you can also pick up and the 60HE should hold up well in the future. The doubleshot PBT keycaps that the ANSI version comes with will help with that as well. If you have sandpaper fingers and you do end up wearing out the keycaps the 60HE does have a standard layout and cherry stems so aftermarket keycaps will work with it as well. The same goes for the case which uses the standard Geekhack 60% layout, you can use the 60HE case with a different PCB or use one of the many custom cases with the 60HE if you want to change things up.
Wooting has improved on their Wootility software which was easy to use and especially when it comes to lighting has a lot of effects and presets available. Speaking of the lighting, I would bet a translucent case would work well with the 60HE given how bright the lighting is. Of course, I have to mention the analog control which is the 60HE’s biggest feature. Being able to use the 60HE like a controller opens up a lot of options when it comes to analog control. This is a lot easier for short gaming sessions or at LANs than getting a controller out or for driving games hooking up your wheel. Not to say that it replaces the experience that either of those offers, but it’s nice to not have to get them out sometimes. That said setting up analog control while a lot easier than in the past is always going to be tough when there isn’t an easy integration into games. You can run the 60HE like a controller of course to get around that but then you don’t have your keyboard. My only other nitpick would be with the strap which at least for me ended up getting in the way a little bit. Thankfully it is optional so that isn’t a big deal at all and frankly I like the styling of the 60HE with it so I’m a little torn on that one.
As far as pricing goes, the Wooting 60HE has an MSRP of $174.99 which does hit the pocketbook hard. There are lots of 60% keyboard options out at this point at a $100 less but with analog switches there is just one other keyboard in this space which is the Razer Huntsman 60% Analog and it is priced at $149 which puts the 60HE a touch high but not completely overpriced. That extra cost might be worth the openness that Wooting offers honestly, check out how they handled the chip shortages.
Live Pricing: HERE
