Logitech Pro X TKL Rapid review – peak performance with some design flaws

Logitech has taken a no-frills approach to the design of the Pro X TKL Rapid, which is available in black, white, and pink. It’s undeniably a Logitech board, featuring the large bezel across the top where the media controls sit, as well as the G logo on the far left. The keyboard also features RGB brightness controls and a game mode button.

The keyboard comes with three height levels from which to choose, using flip-out feet, which means there’s every chance your ideal typing angle is covered. There are also five plastic grips on the rear of the board, with three along the bottom. These features are all the Pro X TKL Rapid offers in terms of anti-slip measures, and I found that when using the board on my NZXT Zone desk mat, it was prone to the occasional slip when making quick or heavy movements while gaming, despite its fairly heavy 1kg weight. However, the board fared much better when sitting directly on my wooden desktop.

Meanwhile, per-key Lightsync RGB is available on the Pro X TKL Rapid, which can be adjusted using the Logitech G Hub, which is a very straightforward process. Everything is laid out with the visual of the keyboard, and you can make per-key adjustments, group keys together, or make whole board changes in just a few seconds. Just make sure you don’t allow Windows to control the lighting on the board before trying to edit the lighting, otherwise nothing will happen and you’ll be stuck with a generic blue underglow instead.

Outside of the keyboard itself, the only other item included with the Pro X TKL Rapid is the 1.8m USB-A to C cable. Unfortunately, this just uses basic plastic housing rather than a fabric alternative, meaning it can be quite awkward to bend into shape and manipulate to ensure it doesn’t disrupt the aesthetic of your desktop cable management.

The performance of the Logitech Pro X TKL Rapid is not up for debate. This gaming keyboard is incredibly responsive, and I found there to be no issues with adjusting the actuation of singular keys or with both the key priority and rapid trigger features.

While gaming, I had no issues with the responsiveness of the keyboard’s rapid trigger feature when set at both high and low activation gates, and the same goes for the general adjustable actuation. Whether I had the board set to be incredibly sensitive or to use the full travel distance of the switches, the Pro X TKL Rapid felt great to use, and its responsiveness was flawless.

A big reason why adjustable actuation can be so useful is if, like me, you’re prone to fat-fingered mistakes when gaming. If I’m playing a game such as Call of Duty: Warzone, where I’m only going to be using the movement keys and a few select action buttons, I can set these keys to be more sensitive while leaving the surrounding keys as needing a full press to register. This prevents me from hitting an accidental input and messing up my rhythm while gaming.

The same goes for rapid trigger, a technology that allows for a keypress to be registered again as soon as uplift is detected. Rapid trigger ensures that multiple, fast inputs can be registered without a key needing to be fully depressed before it’s reset. This is ideal for movement in action games and rhythm games too.

Multi-point actions, sometimes called dynamic keystrokes or dual-activation, are also possible to set up via the Logitech G Hub, and these work great too. This feature allows you to set two commands for a single key press. For instance, a half-press of a key could begin the process of cooking a grenade, and then a full key press could throw the grenade.. I personally like to use this setting in Fortnite, where I can assign a half-press of the WASD keys to walking, while the full press is used for running. This effectively takes away the need for shift toggling for running/sprinting in games where it’s possible.

Finally, there is key priority, a feature which is sometimes known as snap tap, snappy tappy, or rapid tap. Addressing the elephant in the room first, this feature is banned in Counter-Strike 2, so it needs to be disabled prior to playing. For now, it remains unbanned in other competitive games.

This feature effectively allows for layers of keypresses to be set up and prioritized accordingly, but with no need to release an input for it to re-register once the prioritized keys are released. As an example, if you’re holding the A key to strafe left, key priority allows you to then press D to strafe right while keeping the A key pressed. Upon releasing the D key, you will return to strafing left. Complex strafing isn’t as crucial in other games as it is in CS2, and Valve did act quickly to ban the feature when it was first revealed, but there is an argument that it makes very little difference outside of the elite level of play.

One issue, however, is that a slight key wobble can be felt at full press, which indicates some instability within the board’s build. It may go unnoticed more often than not, but when holding down a key as far as it will go, it’s easy to detect and worries me that, under long-term use, wear and tear damage will occur much quicker than with other gaming keyboards.

Elsewhere, on-board memory profiles also mean that once you make changes in Logitech G Hub, you can save them to the board rather than having to re-download the software on whichever system you are playing. This is great if you plan to attend LAN events or, for whatever reason, play using a PC that isn’t your own.

At $169.99 / £169.99, the Logitech G Pro X TKL Rapid feels slightly overpriced due to the basic design. However, when it comes to raw performance, you get your money’s worth with the suite of modern features and how well they are all implemented.

Steelseries Apex Pro

Early adopters of features such as rapid trigger and rapid tap, the Steelseries Apex Pro boards are a great alternative due to the range of sizes in which they’re available, with wireless boards also on the market. One disadvantage of using a Steelseries board, however, is the bloated software required to edit and adjust the features.

Keydous NJ98-CP

While the Keydous NJ98-CP is only $10 cheaper than the Logitech Pro X TKL Rapid for the aluminum plate model, it has the benefit of being a full-size keyboard and also offers wireless 2.4GHz and Bluetooth connection options. It also has a small magnetic multi-function screen and comes in a range of colorways. This is all on top of fantastic gaming and typing performance thanks to the Gateron Jade Pro switches.

The Logitech Pro X Rapid TKL is a solid gaming keyboard that brings very little to the table in terms of new and exciting features, instead serving as the first in a new generation of gaming keyboards from Logitech.

Rapid trigger and key priority are fine features to add, even if one is a bit risky, and this has clearly been the direction for gaming keyboards for the past few years, but asking gamers to cough up $170 when there is so little else to shout about is a tough sell.

There are competitors out there offering a bigger total package, albeit for a higher MSRP, but it feels like more is being done to justify those costs than is being done here with the Logitech Pro X TKL Rapid, which feels as though it’s playing catch-up to the likes of Razer and SteelSeries.

The Logitech Pro X Rapid TKL is great for gamers who want to be at the cutting edge of keyboard performance, and who aren’t concerned about fancy design features or wireless connections. For everyone else, there will be a feeling of buyer’s remorse if you are hoping for more on the design front.