Needless to say, I was rather looking forward to testing this bad boy out first hand! As per my normal procedure, I tested it in various games and used it for a good 2 1/2 weeks for everyday activities. There is also no software for the Rantopadd MXX so any features it has are controlled right from the keyboard which is quite nice.

Gaming

Once I got used to the actuation of the keys, yes it took me a little while as I came from Cherry red switches, it was a pleasure to use for gaming. As I mentioned, it took me around 4 days I would say to get fully comfortable when using the MXX keyboard. For my gaming tests, I played a number of FPS type games like Battlefield 4, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, Counter Strike: Global Offense and a bit of Quake Live. While I feel these games together can really round off my testing, it is normally Quake Live where problems occur, but not with the MXX.

The response from actuating the keys on the MXX felt almost instant and did not effect my gaming at all. Normally when testing peripherals I notice a slight decline in my overall performance and this wasn’t very noticeable in my time using the MXX, well, after the initial break in period anyway. I can’t recall any times where I felt as if I pressed a key and nothing happened, or, didn’t press a key and something did happen. I tend to have a small problem of jumping the gun a bit when I try to sneak around and a lot of times I hit the space bar on accident, but the slightly harder key presses needed on the MXX seemed to of stopped this which was a pleasant surprise.

While this is a gaming keyboard, it is going to be best used by FPS players or those not needing any macro keys, especially seeing as to how the number pad is also missing. It’s hard to define what a proper gaming keyboard is, but by all means the Rantopad MXX is definitely up to the task if you are not looking for too many extra features. One of the things it does come with, however, is the gaming mode that once enabled will lock the windows key which is a must have for a gaming keyboard in my opinion. To enable or disable this feature, simply hold the FN button and hit the F9 key which also has the G on it. Without this feature, hitting the windows key while in-game will open the start menu and in most cases results in minimizing your game, which is highly annoying and can loose you the match depending on what you’re in the middle of.

General

Using the Rantopad MXX for daily tasks is where I mostly noticed the fatigue after typing for long periods of time. I spend a lot of time writing, whether it be Emails at 6 AM, or reviews and 8 PM, I spend a lot of my day typing. While I am in no way faulting the keyboard for this, as it is more to do with the Gateron Black switches, it is something I want to make sure everyone is aware of as if you have weaker fingers or even forearms for whatever reason, this may be more of an issue for you. As I said it did take me a few days to break it in too where I wasn’t noticing any fatigue after a longer typing session.

Once I was used to the MXX and its Gateron Black switches typing on it was fairly good. I didn’t have too many more errors than normal and the added media function keys such as the volume keys do come in great handy. From a day to day aspect and more office type use, the Rantopad MXX is decent and the only thing I missed personally was the number pad as I do use that quite a bit. Again, this is not any fault of the keyboard, it just doesn’t happen to come with one. Aside from that one minor issue for myself, I had no other issues with it in the 2 1/2 weeks I used. I have to say while I did miss the number pad, the extra bit of space on my desk felt nice and made things look a bit more tidy.