Riotoro Ghostwriter Brown Review | Daxdi

For years, Riotoro has been well known for making gaming products.

Following its success in producing PC cases, power supplies, fans, and other components, the company is now stepping foot in the door of gaming peripherals.

The Ghostwriter Brown ($129.99) is the flagship model of its keyboard line, and while it offers some excellent gaming-centric features including sturdy MX Cherry switches and dedicated media keys, it does little to set itself apart from the parade of gaming keyboards that marches through our labs.

Looking the Part

The Ghostwriter Brown is at the high end of three initial Riotoro keyboard offerings.

The Classic model offers only eight-color global backlighting and membrane keys for roughly $65.

The Ghostwriter Black offers Cherry MX Black switches and full RGB backlighting for about $120, and the Ghostwriter Brown seen here chimes in with MX Brown switches and RGB backlighting.

Certainly the Riotoro's design will appeal to the gamer demographic.

The Ghostwriter is matte black, with sharp, sloping angles around the edges.

The included magnetic wrist rest that snaps onto the keyboard's front edge stays consistent with this angular design.

A set of media keys adorn the top right of the keyboard.

Apart from the usual fast forward, rewind, and mute buttons, you also get a wide, silver volume roller.

The Ghostwriter features a standard 104-key QWERTY layout.

The symbols on each key are etched to allow the backlight to shine through.

Keycaps feature the usual concave design to help improve comfort while typing.

Without its wrist rest attached, it measures 1.19 by 18.26 by 8.33 inches (HWD), a couple inches deeper but otherwise almost identical to the Editors' Choice Razer Ornata Chroma.

In comparison the Corsair K95 RGB Platinum, also an Editors' Choice, measures 2 by 7 by 18 inches.

Most gaming keyboards have at least one USB 2.0 pass-through port, essentially adding an extra USB port into which you can plug a mouse or headset if all your other ports are taken or distance from your PC is an issue.

The Ghostwriter comes equipped with two pass-through ports, and a second USB plug attached to its braided cable in order to enable them.

Overall, the Ghostwriter feels sturdy, and we wouldn't hesitate to toss it in a backpack (it weighs about a pound) and abuse it at a LAN party.

Moreover, we'd feel comfortable showing the Ghostwriter alongside our gaming rig.

The keyboard is attractive without being gaudy, and we're particularly fond of the red accents of the bull logo on the wrist rest's right side as well as the bottom edge of the keyboard, thanks to the bottom panel being a bright, sexy red.

Strike Force

As mentioned, Riotoro equipped two models of the Ghostwriter with Cherry MX switches, one with the nearly silent MX Blacks and the other with slightly clicky MX Browns, which are a sort of middle ground between the very audible MX Blues and the speedy MX Reds.

With a 55 cN actuation force, the MX Brown switches are firm without being stiff.

You get a tactile bump for strike feedback, but without the extra-loud click that makes some switches annoying when you want to hear your game without a lot of background chatter.

MX Blues remain our favorite for 24/7 typing, but Brown switches are a decent option when you do a bit of everything and only want one keyboard to rule them all.

While build quality and switch types are cool, one of the most important features of a gaming keyboard is its software.

Unfortunately, Riotoro's is a bit anemic.

Upon opening the software, you're greeted with a large image of the keyboard layout.

With the lighting options arrayed directly below this, you'd think individual key lighting would be among your options.

Sadly, the only lighting choices available are the preset animated effects—breathe, raindrop, ripple, wave, and so on.

You can change the speed and brightness of the presets.

You can also cycle through the lighting presets by pressing Fn + F1 through F5, or cycle through colors for the static option with Fn + Delete.

The only function offered by the on-screen keyboard is to let you choose which key to remap or assign a macro.

Unlike the lighting, the macro editor has some depth, but not much.

You can have multiple profiles, record or manually enter macros, set the delay between macros, set how many times a macro loops, or choose to just remap a key entirely.

Overall, it's pretty basic stuff—definitely not the depth and quality you'd expect from a $130 keyboard.

Underwhelming Options

Riotoro does a lot of things right with the Ghostwriter Brown.

The keyboard is sturdy, has dedicated media keys as well as a volume roller, and sports a magnetic wrist rest.

It offers multimode RGB backlighting and authentic Cherry MX switches.

From that description, it seems to hit all of the gaming essentials.

Unfortunately, its software is dry and does very little to help set it apart from the the competition.

Plus, its price is a tad high based on the features you're getting.

In the end, if you want a midtier gaming keyboard with RGB lighting, you'd be better off with the Razer Ornata Chroma ($68.26 at Amazon) , which, at $99, is a bargain based on its usability and feature set, or the more feature-rich Corsair Strafe RGB .

Though it lists for $150, the Corsair's street price is substantially less, and it packs far more useful features and excellent software.

Or if you're willing to spend a bit more, the $199 Corsair K95 RGB Platinum ($170.95 at Amazon) checks just about all of the boxes we look for in a gaming keyboard.