The best lapboard

The keyboard itself isn’t the best mechanical keyboard I’ve ever used, but it was more than good enough for being mounted in a lapboard. It uses TTC Brown mechanical switches. Roccat also sells a membrane version for less. While the Sova’s layout was fine for games that use WASD, it was a little odd for anything relying on the arrow keys. Instead of being to the right of the QWERTY section of the keyboard like usual, the arrows are tucked under the right Enter key, shortening right Shift, right Ctrl, and removing the right FN key to make room. 

Additionally, the shorter width means there are no gaps between each set of four Function keys, making them harder to find at a glance. It’s a worse layout than your average keyboard, but it’s done this way to allow the lapboard to be shorter overall—a point I really appreciated when compared to the Lapdog. And the fact that the keyboard is built directly into the board also means that it is positioned for the wrist rest nicely.

And oh man does that wrist rest help. I was initially unsure about how comfortable the Sova was on my keyboard hand, but after resting it on the sharp edge of the Lapdog (more on that later), I was begging for the Sova’s wrist rest. The one I used was simply hard plastic, but the rest, mousepad, and cushions are replaceable, and Roccat even says you’ll be able to 3D print your own accessories for the Sova. I didn’t really get to sample this customizability, but it’s an appealing feature for a peripheral everyone will want to use a little differently.  

The Sova is generally an easy-to-use lapboard, but it is a big piece of plastic that will be sitting around in your living room. Even if it doesn’t have much of an effect on your gameplay experience, finding a spot to store a lapboard like this is important. Razer's Turret is much smaller and designed to be easily stored, but the Sova is thinner than Corsair's Lapdog and doesn’t detach into two pieces. That made it much easier for me to find a place for it in my living room when not in use. The USB cable that plugs into the computer also has a point where it can disconnect (similar to a wired Xbox 360 controller) close to the board itself, which made putting away the cord a lot easier.

At the end of all my testing, the Roccat Sova was the lapboard I wanted to keep using. It was the most comfortable across any type of game, and was light and easy enough to move that it wasn’t too bad to use for general computer browsing as well. I didn’t get a chance to try the membrane keyboard version (which shares the same shape and size, so I imagine may be a good cheaper option for those who don’t mind membrane) but the Sova MK is a great way to get a desktop level gaming experience on a living room PC. And while Roccat is planning a wireless version for the future, it'll definitely cost a premium over the wired models.

Size is not to be underestimated as a factor in these tests. Sure, you want a desktop experience on the couch, but you also don’t want a big hunk of plastic taking up space in your living room. The Lapdog and the Sova are hard to hide, and you’ll almost definitely need to dedicate a spot specifically for storing them when they aren’t in use. The turret not only folds up, it comes with a neat little stand for both the mouse and keyboard that displays them nicely while they charge. Because of this, I never had a problem with battery life for either device, which Razer says is up to 40 hours on the mouse and a whopping four months on the keyboard, and they never got in my way.

Being wireless—with the mouse and keyboard sharing a single USB dongle—means I didn’t have a thick cord running from my couch to my TV every time I wanted to play games, and I didn’t notice any wireless lag on either device. I do wish the Turret keyboard had extra USB plugs on it like the Sova or Lapdog, because USB cords for headsets, mics, or wired mice to replace the stock one rarely reached all the way to my TV. Things like wires and storage size don’t directly affect your gaming experience, but they are important factors to those who want their PC to be part of the living room, rather than take it over entirely. 

That being said, the Turret is not really what you’d think of as a “gaming” keyboard. It’s essentially the same kind of flat chiclet keyboard you’d find on a MacBook laptop, with a bit more spring to each key press. It works well and will be more than enough for those not looking to play fast-paced games on it, but it was a little bit of a problem when I tried to play Overwatch or Warframe. The flatness of the keys and the lapboard overall meant I had to twist my hand slightly to hit a certain combinations of keys, like pressing Q while keeping my fingers on WASD. It wasn’t terrible, but it was noticeably more difficult than using a full-sized keyboard.

The mouse that comes with the Turret is another bit that will work fine for some and not at all for others. It’s a nice shape, ambidextrous with two buttons on either side and a good amount of weight to it, but it’s so small that it physically hurt my hand to use. I am personally used to palming larger mice, and the Turret mouse seems to be more suited for gamers partial to using the “claw grip” with nothing but their fingertips touching it. It's a stubby mouse. But its size does pair nicely with the mousepad, and I love that it's very slightly magnetized to it so it won’t slip off.  

The mousepad area is a smoother finish than the Sova and Lapdog and is significantly smaller, measuring roughly 7.5” wide by 4.5” tall, but it provided more than enough room to use with a higher sensitivity mouse and wrist motions. If you are accustomed to a lower DPI while using the whole pad with sweeping elbow motions, this isn’t the lapboard for you, but I never found myself wanting for more mouse space, even when playing shooters. That is until I finally abandoned the included mouse and plugged in a larger one, which is when I almost ran out of vertical space without even moving it! The left and right motions were fine, but top to bottom risked the edges of the mouse going off the pad. 

So it’s tough say where the Razer Turret lands. It’s a fantastic small form factor lapboard for using a mouse and keyboard on the couch, but only if you are looking for some very specific things. I wouldn’t reach for the Turret to play FPSes or action games, but not having to fumble with wires coming out of a piece of plastic the size of a skateboard on my lap means I’d prefer it for slower games, or just generally using my PC. The Turret doesn’t provide a high-end gaming experience compared to its competitors, but it provides an ease of use and portability that they don’t come anywhere near.  

The inconveniences don’t stop there. The two extra USB ports on the right side of the Lapdog require a power cord be plugged into an outlet to function. The foam cushion on the bottom of the lapboard attaches with magnets so you can decide whether you want to use it or not, but the magnets are just a little too weak, making the two halves slide apart fairly easily when I tried to move or readjust it on my lap. The whole thing is uncompromising in its design—power to the USBs allows them to charge things faster, for example—which would be noble if it weren’t also so uncomfortable to use.

Unlike the Sova, the Lapdog doesn’t have any sort of wrist rest. The extra space created by the mousepad being taller than the keyboard was put above the keyboard instead of below it, which looks pretty, but ends up just being wasted space. Instead of being on a pad, my hand in the WASD position was resting on the slightly sharp metal edge of the Lapdog tray. It’s honestly surprising to me that anyone could have tried playing an FPS with their hand in that position and not seen it as a problem. Ironically, I actually had to take off the K65’s removable wrist rest to fit it into the Lapdog. 

With all of those problems, it has to be said that the K65 and K70 are genuinely better keyboards than what’s built into the Sova. The mousepad areas are nearly identical materials, both a rough matte finish, but the Lapdog's is slightly larger. That bigger area and better keyboard was noticeably nicer to play on when trying Overwatch and other shooters—or it would have been, if the Lapdog frame wasn’t grinding into my hand the whole time. It’s a better high-end gaming product hamstrung by poor design.

That larger mousepad and room for a numpad keyboard come at another cost, as the Lapdog is the biggest of the three options by a fair amount—both in length and thickness, thanks to that removable cushion. The cushion is comfortable, with a bump in the center of it meant to sit between my legs. But I found myself wanting the lapboard to be a few inches to the right of center, so the bump wasn’t always in the right spot. It also meant I couldn’t set the lapboard down flat on my coffee table when I stood up, as it would sometimes tilt to one side and the mouse would slide off. I ended up finding the whole thing easier to use without the cushion, which then took up more space somewhere else in my living room. 

Corsair recently dropped the price of the Lapdog down to a more palatable $60 on Amazon, which brings the total package—Lapdog and a Corsair keyboard—to competitive levels with Roccat and Razer.

If the Corsair Lapdog had a wrist rest, it would be easy to recommend as a high-end option for people who don’t mind all the little annoyances if it means getting closer to a desktop setup on their couch. But as it stands, those annoyances are hard to ignore when coupled with less-than-ideal usability. I wouldn't recommend the Lapdog to anyone over the Sova or the Turret.