Roccat Magma: Maximum RGB without the maximum price
- Manufacturer: Roccat
- Model: Magma
- Type: RGB membrane keyboard
- Price: £49.99 (Amazon UK)
- Reviewed on: PC
- Supplied by: Roccat
Roccat Magma Review
Gamers around the world love RGB; it’s the easiest and most standout form of customizing your peripherals. Usually, it’s per-key illumination and maybe some light-spill adding accents, but what if you want maximum RGB?
Enter the Roccat Magma.
The Magma is one of Roccat’s latest releases, pushing the boundaries of RGB coverage. It’s immediately obvious why the Magma stands out, its entire faceplate is made of semi-transparent diffused plastic lined with RGB LEDs.
Instead of covering up the Magma’s membrane to hide it, Roccat has allowed it to sit front and centre. The translucent plastic cover allows a Flood of stunningly diffused light to blast out at every point – Through your keys, around your keys and even between them.
This faceplate encompasses the vast majority of the top of the keyboard save for a black border around the edge, including under each key and even up the stalks of the keys. Your keys almost look like they are floating on a bed of light.
This is not for everyone, but for people who want an affordable keyboard with some outrageous RGB to add an instant wow factor to their setups, it is perfect.
The lighting’s default setting comes as a cycling wave, gently flowing from one side to the other. With the aid of the Swarm software, this is easily customizable with various effects, including AIMO intelligent lighting that will sync all of your Roccat peripherals to create stunning displays of light.
Performance-wise, the Magma is a decent membrane board. It’s definitely one of the more comfortable typing experiences I have had on a membrane but still a far shot from high-end mechanical keyboards.
This isn’t entirely negative, though. The price would not be as appealing if the Magma was a mechanical keyboard, and furthermore, I’m not sure mechanical switches would be able to achieve the same level of seamless light the Magma’s membrane base does.
The typing is comfortable and fairly assertive. I have had no issue with mushy keys failing to register a press as I have in the past with other membrane boards. To add another subjective pro, the Magma is also far quieter than its Mechanical alternatives. I can safely say that the Magma has been far less irritating to my colleagues than my usual Blue clicky switches have been.
The actuation feels clean and precise, not requiring too much pressure but enough that miss presses are not so common. The feel is also on the better side, each press is distinctive and feels pretty good for a membrane board, without the mush feeling I have gotten used to in most membrane keyboards. This seems to be due to the more solid construction of the posts beneath each key that are a part of the faceplate.
I have also relished the fact that the Magma does not have the rattly keys I find on so many affordable membrane keyboards; the usual culprits being the spacebar, enter key and the right shift. On the Magma, they are solid, with virtually no rattle at all. In fact, all the keys so far seem to be really nice and solid with minimal wobble or rattle. That really is something I appreciate about Magma.
The Magma is a full-size keyboard – this will always be down to preference but I much prefer TKL. I never find a use for the number pad bar to take up space. I must say, though, that I feel a good TKL could have allowed them to hit the same MSRP and given them the wiggle room to give the Magma a more sturdy construction.
The Magma’s construction seems to be made entirely of lightweight plastic. It’s a light tone matt black with a slight texture with some gloss black striations across the backplate. Typing on it feels solid enough, but it does not feel overly sturdy, and if you apply any pressure to the Magma you will notice the flex in the board.
This leaves the Magma feeling a little flimsy, which is a shame as the keys feel great and are made of a nice quality plastic. If the entire casing was made to the same standard it would be a whole different story for the Magama, but as it stands, flex and feel are a slight issue if you are looking for a hardwearing keyboard.
Another nitpicky con I have is the flip-out feet for the Magma. Having now had a few keyboards that have a couple of stages of adjustment, I feel that the Magma would have benefited greatly from having two sets of feet that could adjust the tilt angle a bit more. With the Magma being a fairly affordable and standout keyboard, having the extra adjustment would have simply meant that it catered to a wider audience, having a setting that’s right for everyone.
Connection-wise the Magma has a long cable that comes out of the back centre of the board; it is an unbraided thick-sleeve cable that has plenty of length, ending in a standard USB connection. Fairly standard and more than adequate, one thing I do love is that Roccat has gone to the effort of actually putting a keyboard icon on the USB connector itself, meaning that when you are tumbling around doing behind the desk yoga to change out a USB or plug something in you can easily identify which USB is your keyboard. Not a necessity but a very nice addition nonetheless.
Summary
The Roccat Magma is an affordable and loud keyboard with all the RGB you could ever wish for. I absolutely love the design and idea behind it, though I wish it was constructed out of a more premium feeling plastic. Either way, with a nice typing experience and wow-factor looks, I’d say it’s a great first keyboard for any gaming and RGB enthusiast.
