Of all the things to get excited about at CES, a gaming keyboard? Here’s why the ROG Azoth is my most anticipated product coming out of the show.
I won’t pretend that gaming keyboards are exciting. We see them year after year with minimal changes, nearly all of which you can see in a product photo. My relationship with gaming keyboards completely changed when I built my own — suddenly, nothing seemed even close. But Asus is challenging that position.
The ROG Azoth is an unassuming gaming keyboard, but it’s a huge deal for the world of custom-built keyboards. Even after seeing AMD’s Ryzen 9 7950X3D and Samsung’s Odyssey OLED G9, Asus’ lowly keyboard is my most anticipated product at CES 2023. Here’s why.
Let’s take stock of the current market. Assuming you don’t want to go down the rabbit hole of custom mechanical keyboards right away, there’s one main option as a base: the Glorius GMMK Pro. It’s a slab of aluminum that won’t move around on your desk, and critically, it includes a gasket mount. The gasket mount is important — it’s the key to the soft thunk you hear on high-end mechanical keyboards.
There are several other gasket-mount keyboard bases, but they all have something in common. They’re wired. The ROG Azoth supports wireless, and not just Bluetooth. It supports 2.4GHz and Bluetooth, as well as a standard wired connection. On top of that, Asus claims it can last over 2,000 hours without a charge with the LED lighting turned off.
