Review on Cooler Master CK530 V2 TKL Gaming Mechanical Keyboard Brown Switch RGB Backlighting On-The-Fly Controls Aluminum Top Plate by Paul Tilden

What's this? game controller? Gaming keyboard for one hand? control surface? All previous? There is huge potential here. But at the moment there is no way to unlock it. There are actually three parts to a new product like this. Concept and design, hardware and software. Cooler Master managed the first two tasks, but fell far short of the last. Conceptually, this product is not innovative. Control panels have been around in one form or another for decades. A recent trend is creating programmable key labels with OLED or eInk displays under each key. This product is not the same. New here is the addition of analog or depth sensing buttons. Hardware of this product is modern but not advanced. It is available in two versions with in-line options for Cherry or Gateron mechanical keys. Each key features an independently programmable RGB backlight. Settings are saved in the control panel; as well as smarts that emulate a game controller. The software is pretty much only needed to set up the device. = Software is a disaster. This product is contained in a device case manufactured by CM. He uses MasterPlus when he really shouldn't. This is such a unique device that it deserves its own software interface. MasterPlus might be the way to go if you just want to customize RGB lighting for your gaming keyboard; but such a complex device needs an equally sophisticated and elegant yet user-friendly interface. At the time of writing this review, this did not exist. Here's a breakdown of the main issues. = Custom key sets are not available at launch = The keyboard has a fancy key layout consisting only of numbered keys. Even the product photo shows the directional arrow keys. No luck with actual released product. You should replace the keys with keycaps appropriate for your actual application, be it games, photoshop, etc. However, these custom key sets are not available at launch. So if you buy this product now; They wait for the CM to release the key phrases. = Double action key feature is basically useless = Advertised double action keys are mostly useless because third party software is not supported. I can think of very few instances where two commands using the same key would be useful, since the second command requires you to run the first command as well. To make matters worse, MasterPlus does not allow any arbitrary key assignment. You can only select commands from the preset list. how stupid it is Any freshman studying computer science could have added the ability to capture a keypress, but CM kind of missed that opportunity. Why? Who knows. = Gamepad function not working as intended = I would say hardware emulation of the Xbox controller is a smart move. ControlPad does exactly that. Software/games can tell virtually no difference between a ControlPad and a real Xbox controller. This eliminates many compatibility issues and the need for a potentially unstable software driver. The big disadvantage of this concept is that many newer games don't support the controller/mouse combination. This inadvertently caused PCMag to incorrectly state that this device is not supported by the Epic Games Store. The problem is to turn on the gamepad, you have to press "Start" on this gamepad. That means you don't just have to add a button to the ControlPad to launch it — in some games, this causes the ControlPad to be treated as split-screen for the second player. No matter how you cut it; Games are not designed to support the gamepad/mouse combo and many of them will not work properly in this configuration. = MasterPlus needs work = MasterPlus is not suitable as a tuning tool. Key mapping is a chore without the previously mentioned ability to capture keystrokes. The macro function is difficult to use and you often lose track of where you are in the sequence. There's also no separate delay or pause function between keys. The lighting configuration is clumsy. The RGB configuration you define gives the maximum key brightness. It's not enough to smartly scale the values up and down with the brightness slider. The only benefit is that the profile buttons don't have a brightness control, so you can use lower RGB values to manually dim the profile LEDs. Aimpad specific options are limited and confusing. First you need to enable aimpad. You can then assign an Xbox controller mapping to specific buttons. Or you can follow a weird diagram for dual-action button mapping. Even for a programmer like me, I had no idea what these symbols mean. Apparently they control how the pressed and pressed key is reported. Basically, it makes an already less useful feature even more confusing. For well-known use cases like copy (Ctrl-C) and cut (Ctrl-X) there are no preset (or better managed recipes). The aimpad function is not calibrated. If you try the gamepad functions with a tester, you will notice that the buttons are never fully pressed. The problem is that calibration is a real journey. Not only do you need to figure out how the calibration is done, you also need to figure out what you're actually doing during the calibration. MasterPlus is useless in this regard. The calibration process is not accompanied by pop-up windows when starting the calibration. You have to deal with that yourself. After you've managed to google-fu to this guide, you still have no idea if you're doing it right, as the LEDs aren't glowing as predictably as they do in the guide. In general, this is an annoyance and should be addressed immediately. = No support for synergic apps = What I mean by "synergic app" here. Well, I define it as implementing use cases that exploit the strengths of the device. For example, without software support, why would anyone think double action is a good idea? Instead, why not natively control analog functions such as zoom, scroll, pan, scroll, [brush] size, etc. Some of these can be implemented without third-party support. This leads to fixes I'd like to see. Developer Support = This can't happen soon enough. If CM doesn't want that. let someone else try This product badly needs either an API or an SDK. Aimpad must release one itself; which contrary to what PCMag claims is not a Cooler Master brand but a real company. I've read that Aimpad is planning some level of third-party support, but I'm hoping this bypasses the need for MasterPlus entirely. If you're wondering how third-party support is going to fix things, here's a partial list I've put together: - Being able to read analog values directly is real magic. are you a musician Want to implement a sample/drum pad controller. You can read the analog value and determine the speed from it. Ideally you would want the box to report the speed itself using the built in controller to get a more accurate time, but this can be done with software. Do you use an NLE video editor? How about these analog buttons to delete the video? Photoshop? Use the buttons to pan horizontally and vertically. Zoom in and out accurately. With developer support, these features can be added without waiting for the CM. How about changing the brush size? With developer support, you can emulate existing supported controllers or implement your own plugins to achieve so much more. Reading an analog value also means you can forego double-acting CM for something that actually works. Based on mobile gesture recognition techniques, we know that it is possible to recognize overlapping but mutually exclusive gestures. As? Either wait until you can tell them apart or cancel one of them. That means you can map two independent buttons to the same physical switch in two ways. They add a short delay between the first button (halfway down) and the second button (fully down). If you don't half press, a short delay prevents the half press from being recognized and only causes a full press. The latency is so low that it is barely noticeable for non-gaming purposes. The second option is to have programmatic support for canceling the gesture. If the user presses fully, this cancels the half-press action. - Change lighting on the fly - Instead of static lighting or pre-programmed sequences, you can create reactive lighting. Press a button and its status can change to let you know the feature is on, a specific photo editing tool is selected, or you're repeating a specific audio sequence, or with game assist you can know if your cooldown is up. = 1. Support = Some of these are hardware. Some of these are software. I rely more on the hardware side as the software side can require any number of commercial arrangements. Regarding the hardware, Aimpad should solve the gamepad problem first. Possibly adding an option for a PWM-like function to automatically spring directional buttons instead of trying to emulate a gamepad. As a supported input method, it makes more sense. On the software side, game developers need to implement aimpad. It's more difficult, but the ideal solution. I hinted at this in the previous section, but it would be nice if Aimpad added additional metrics like analog key reading speed for developers and other third party partners to create a better product. value.More hardware emulation modes. There are many professional software controllers out there. If additional emulation were added to the ControlPad, it would save the need to write new software to support these features. This would be very helpful for anyone looking to use this device for professional/professional purposes.