Over the past couple of years, I’ve tried to switch to many different gaming keyboards and always ended up back with a Wooting 60HE. Wooting changed PC gaming with the 60HE, popularizing the use of Hall effect switches and a Rapid Trigger system that speeds up how quickly you can activate keys. Now it’s back with a v2 that upgrades the best gaming keyboard to improve its sound and feel.

I’ve been testing the $239.99 Wooting 60HE v2 over the past week, and I’m impressed with my early hands-on, but I don’t know if I would rush to upgrade from an original modded 60HE.

The Wooting 60HE v2 has the same 60 percent layout as the original, so there are no dedicated function keys or an F row. There are also no arrow keys, but Wooting has a clever “mod tap” system that lets you enable arrow keys in the right shift section of the board.

$240

Wooting’s 60HE v2 is an upgrade to the popular 60HE. It has true 8K polling, a new closed-bottom switch, and an aluminum case that together improve the sound and feel.

The big changes with the 60HE v2 are all about what comes as standard now. Wooting has really focused on improving the sound and feel of the v2 so it’s a lot closer to a modded 60HE with custom switches, dampening, and more.

Wooting has ditched the screws for the v2, opting for a pressure fit instead. I’ve been testing the aluminum case that looks and feels a lot like the alumaze cases Wooting sold as optional extras for the 60HE. The case includes a new silicon dampening option, or the regular EDPM foam.

Here’s what typing sounds like on the 60HE v2 with EDPM foam and Lekker Tikken switches:

Here’s what typing sounds like on the 60HE v2 with silicon and Lekker Tikken switches:

Here’s what typing sounds like on the 60HE v2 with no dampening and Lekker Tikken switches:

I felt like the silicon option dampened the sound of the switches too much, so I preferred the EDPM instead. You can also just not use any dampening if you prefer that type of sound. Wooting is also using PET film to prevent the switches from making contact with the PCB, and a factory tape mod on the rear of the board. Both of these help improve the overall sound.

The switches on the 60HE v2 have also been upgraded to Wooting’s new “Lekker Tikken” switch, a closed-bottom Hall effect switch with a 4.0mm actuation range. Hall effect switches use a magnet so the board can track how far a switch has been pressed, but the sound profile has typically been worse than Cherry MX-style switches.

Wooting’s new switches have definitely improved the sound profile, but they use a longer 22mm spring that makes the switches feel a little heavier than the Geon Raws I’ve been using for months. I can usually adapt to different switches after a few hours of use, but I found myself quickly moving back to the Geon Raws as I preferred both the sound profile and feel. Wooting’s switches are still a great default switch though, and the stem wobble of the original switches has been greatly improved here.

The new Lekker Tikken switches.

The upgraded 60HE v2 is also faster than the original model, thanks to true 8kHz polling and a low input latency of just 0.125ms. That’s the same latency as the 8kHz USB polling on Wooting’s larger 80HE that I reviewed last year. I don’t think you’d actually notice this latency improvement unless you measured it, but it’s nice to have either way.

I opted to test the split-spacebar 60HE v2, and I’m still a bit undecided on whether I like it. It allows you to have three keys where you’d normally only have the single space bar. I like the idea in principle, but I found myself constantly hitting the button in the middle of the split space bar.

I found it better to assign that to a function key that would have to be paired with another key to activate, but if you can get used to this layout, then having that extra button right next to the space bar could certainly be useful in competitive games. The right-hand side of the split felt a little too far to reach to make it useful in a pinch, though.

The aluminum case comes in silver or black.

The biggest issue with a split-spacebar for me is just the lack of keycap sets that support it, but if you’re happy with the double-shot PBT ones that Wooting supplies, then it’s less of an issue.

Overall, the 60HE v2 feels like a solid upgrade to the original, but it’s not a revelation like Wooting’s first Hall effect keyboards were. The thing I like the most about the 60HE v2 is that it feels like a fully modded keyboard out of the box, so you don’t have to play around with different switch options unless you want to, and the sound dampening options are super easy to switch between, thanks to the friction fit.

At $239.99, it’s a premium PC gaming keyboard, especially now that Wooting has competition that has finally caught up. Logitech, Razer, SteelSeries, and plenty of Chinese brands now have more affordable Hall effect boards that aim to match Wooting both in terms of hardware and software. None are good enough to dethrone the 60HE v2, but if you’re on a tighter budget, then there are plenty of more affordable options now.

As I have a pair of fully modded 60HE keyboards, I’m not upgrading to the 60HE v2 just yet, but if you’ve been put off doing mods yourself and want the best gaming keyboard available today, then the 60HE v2 will be well worth the investment.

Photography by Tom Warren / The Verge

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• Tom Warren