By David Ramsey
Manufacturer: Azio Corporation
Product Name: MGK-ARMATO-01
UPC: 851104001130
Price As Tested: $129.99 (Amazon)
Full Disclosure: Azio provided the product sample used in this article.
Azio Corporation says that their name derives from “A to Z, Input to Output”, While their products are manufactured in Taiwan, they’re designed in California (sound familiar?) In any case Benchmark Reviews has in hand their Armato Mechanical Gaming Keyboard, model MGK-ARMATO-01. As a single-color backlit mechanical keyboard with Cherry MX switches, it might seem as if there’s little to distinguish it from the many other similar products available. But first appearances can be deceiving, as we’ll find out in this review.
- Cherry MX Brown key switches with red backlighting
- Full N-key rollover
- Magnetic attaching palm rest
- Four backlighting levels with breathing, reactive, and custom lighting modes
- Dedicated media keys with machined aluminum volume control knob
- Five programmable macro keys
- Machined aluminum top plate
- 2-year limited product warranty
Let’s take a look at this keyboard in the next section.
The Armato is a large keyboard, without the thin-bezel design that’s become popular of late. The entire top plate is brushed, anodized aluminum, with red mesh aluminum accents. Five macro keys are placed vertically at the left side of the keyboard, and a massive aluminum volume control knob protrudes from the upper right side of the keyboard, next to four dedicated (but not backlit) media control keys.
The back of the keyboard contains only the product label and fold-out feet.
As I first looked at the keyboard after removing it from its box, it seemed to have some sort of internal lighting, which was odd since the keyboard was not connected to anything. What I was seeing was the polished, chamfered edges of the holes in the top plate, which catch and reflect ambient room light. It’s a nice touch I haven’t seen before.
From a normal viewing distance, the polished metal chamfers give the appearance of white accent LEDs:
For the Armato, Azio uses genuine Cherry MX Brown mechanical key switches, with a red backlight. In this photo you can also see the red back plate, which provides a consistent, low-level red glow around the keys when the backlighting is on.
Since the backlighting LEDs are located at the top of the key switch, Azio has positioned the shifted symbols on keys that have them below the primary symbols, giving lighting “preference” to the unshifted symbols as shown below.
Accessories include a manual, warranty booklet, and key cap puller (although Azio does not provide any extra key caps with this unit, it’s still a nice touch). Unlike the manuals provided with most other keyboards, which consist of little except instructions to plug the keyboard into a USB port and download the support software from the vendor’s web site, you’re going to want to keep this manual around.
Let’s continue our examination of this keyboard in the next section.
The Azio Armato has more metal in its construction that most other keyboards: there’s the thick aluminum top plate, as well as the metal base plate the key switches snap into, but there are also red anodized aluminum mesh sides and a CNC-machined aluminum volume control knob.
To the left of the volume control knob are four dedicated media buttons– sadly not backlit– and the Num Lock, Caps Lock, Scroll Lock, and Windows Lock indicators.
At the left edge of the keyboard is a mysterious “REC” button…
The included wrist rest attaches to the keyboard using magnets, a very elegant solution that eliminates the problems with broken or stuck clips I’ve had on other keyboards.
The braided USB cable is permanently attached…
…and the USB Type B connector appears to have the requisite gold plating.
Normally the next section of this review would cover the keyboard utility software. However, the Armato has no keyboard utility software. What it does have might surprise you.
When you first power up the Azio Armato, lights ripple out from the center of the keyboard to its edges in a circular pattern, filling out the backlit keys in a few seconds. It’s a clever animation as well as being the most elaborate thing this keyboard can do with its lights. Unlike other high end gaming keyboards, the Azio Armato has no separate utility or configuration software. Everything you can do with the keyboard is done on the keyboard, which includes setting the lighting mode and recording and playing back macros. Of necessity this means that lighting and macro capabilities are very simple and don’t approach the level of control and sophistication you can get with other keyboards; on the other hand, the capabilities provided will easily cover 90% of what most users want to do.
To control lighting effects, you use the Fn key in combination with the secondary functions on the horizontal function key row. For example, the F9 through F12 keys set breathing mode (the keyboard lighting pulses slowly on and off), reactive mode (keys light up when pressed, then slowly fade), custom mode (which lets you specify backlighting only for certain keys, such as the “WASD” cluser), and turning the lighting on and off, respectively.
You can set four levels of backlight intensity (off, plus three brightness levels) as well.
Recording macros is very simple: first, press the large REC button:
…and then press any of the macro keys A1 through A5. At this point all four indicator LEDs will start flashing. Press up to 31 keys in sequence, then press the REC key again to stop recording. Macros can record any key on the keyboard, including the arrow keys, but cannot contain other macros. Pressing the newly defined macro key will play back the keystrokes you entered at a fixed rate similar to that of a fast typist.
In the last section I’ll give you my final thoughts and conclusion for this keyboard.
There’s a features war going on in the keyboard market these days, with vendors striving to outdo each other with ever-increasing feature sets. Some keyboards that I have reviewed have such fine control of their 16-million color RGB backlights that you can invoke credible simulations of flames or arcs of electricity crackling across your keys (or even play Tetris, as I’ve seen in one demo); and craft macros that position the cursor to an exact pixel and post key press and release events with millisecond precision. The utility software used to control these features is by necessity complex, and often seems to have been designed without any input from a user interface designer– you’ll need to invest hours or even days to learn to use the features of the keyboard effectively.
The simple feature set of the Azio Armato, in contrast, can be mastered in a minute or two. All the macro and lighting features are local to the keyboard, and there is no software you need to install to make use of them. I suspect this will prove a significant advantage long-term: will companies producing complex keyboards that require complex utility software to utilize continue to maintain the software? Any user of an old printer or scanner knows how drivers can become incompatible with new operating system releases, and how reluctant companies are to spend the money to update software for products they no longer sell.
The advanced capabilities of other keyboards look good on paper, and are fun for reviewers to play with, but they’re arguably of little real-world use. They don’t make the keyboard “type” any better, and in the heat of gaming you’re not going to be looking at the amazing lighting on your keyboard anyway. Advanced macro capabilities certainly have their place, but I’d guess most people’s needs would be easily handled by the Armato’s simple implementation. There’s also the advantage of being able to use the macro features on any computing platform, rather than being limited to Windows.
Equipped as it is with Cherry MX Brown switches, the Armato’s as nice to type on as any MX Brown keyboard, with a nice tactile “click” that’s missing in the linear MX Red and MX Black switches, and a much quieter sound than the noisy MX Blue switches. The red backlighting is visible in normal daytime room lighting, but not overly bright, at maximum intensity.
If the capabilities of the Armato don’t rise to the level of other high-end gaming keyboards, keep in mind that it’s significantly cheaper and much easier to operate.
The Azio Armato Mechanical Gaming Keyboard is aimed at purists and gamers who are looking for a solid, capable keyboard with basic lighting effects and macro features. Its robust, metal-heavy construction and use of genuine Cherry MX key switches bucks the current gaming keyboard trend of using less expensive Chinese clone key switches and minimal plastic enclosures. Clever features of the Armato include the polished metal chamfers around the key openings in the top plate, which provide reflections that look like accent LEDs, and the magnetically-attaching wrist rest.
And if its lighting and macro features aren’t as elaborate as those of other high-end gaming keyboards, neither is its price, which is $25-$75 less, depending on the comparison.
Gamers who value simplicity and basic functionality over bling and complexity will find the Armato ($129.99, Amazon) an excellent value.
+ Genuine Cherry MX Brown key switches
+ Solid, quality construction
+ Simple macro and lighting features easy to master
+ Two year warranty
– Styling is perhaps a little too aggressive
– No options to choose other Cherry switch types
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Performance: 9.00
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Appearance: 9.00
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Construction: 9.75
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Functionality: 8.00
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Value:9.50
