Wolfking Timber Wolf Keyboard Review

It may not immediately be to everybody's tastes but the thing actually looks quite good. The main body is made up of chic silver plastic, framed by slightly matted black. The media keys along the top of the board are all reflective silver and the black and grey regular keys match the colour of the body perfectly. The keyboard is
without any backlighting. Backlighting is a love-it-or-hate-it feature which, done well, can make midnight gaming a lot easier and more stylish but, done poorly, is more headache-making than any other single design slip-up.A circle of all the important FPS keys called the WASD gaming pad surrounds your left hand in a unique configuration, which is based upon the ancient fighting discipline concept of a circle of death. Martial arts fans amongst you may know that this is where you centre an energy which can then be used to gain victory during conflict. By arranging all the keys that you might use within the battle arena of a first person shooter game to encircle your left hand, the Timber King hopes to focus your fighting energy.The WASD pad is unusual design-wise in that, unlike some other gaming keyboards it doesn't re-label the keys with a series of arrow buttons and 'Jump' stickers. Instead, it lists everything just as it is recognised by the computer; WASD and the surrounding letters. The gaming keypad comprises a total of forty keys, including two Ctrl keys and a vertical space bar for extra large thumbs.These forty keys have all been re-shaped and had the layout subtlety changed to fit into a circular pattern. Some of the keys, like the numbers and ERGT buttons, have been rounded off and positioned into a curved array, while others, like O and B, have been made more massive and widely spaced so as to fall under the thumb more easily.The media keys all along the top of the keyboard provide the basic functions. The Timberwolf has two flick-up stands on the back which elevate it an inch or two to a comfortable position and though the keyboard is small ( 20cm by 52cm), it still feels reassuringly heavy,at 1.6Kg. The Timberwolf design is obviously focused on FPS gamers and yet it not only comes without the CD full of drivers,but it also lacks macro keys of any description. On the plus side, for gaming it holds up very well and is both comfortable and responsive, placing a great number of keys at our fingertips and thoughtfully leaving the lower end of the pad empty as a wrist support. On the downside, the rest of the keyboard feels a little awkward to use and clustering the keys all together means it's definitely unsuited for office gamers who will spend the majority of time typing and game only for an hour or two a day.
It's more aimed at hardcore players who spend the majority of time gaming and who need a keyboard for their gaming machine outside of the office. For that audience, the Timberwolf holds up very well despite a few small design flaws.