Roccat's rallying cry is for PC gamers to take back the living room and own the couch. To help do that, Roccat is now accepting pre-orders for its Sova lapboard, which comes with either mechanical or membrane keys.
"For decades the living room has been the near exclusive domain of console gaming. Millions have enjoyed playing on the couch, experiencing the casual ease of plug-and-play fun that comes with it. While smaller PCs and various streaming technologies have cracked the door slightly over the years, Sova kicks that door wide open," Roccat says.
The Sova is far from the only lapboard out there, a peripheral that Roccat CEO and founder René Korte says is "relatively easy to design." But what makes the Sova stand out is that it's the "most comfortable long-term user product of its type on the market," according to Korte.
To support that claim, Roccat outfitted the Sova with cushioned padding underneath. It also sports an ergonomic palm rest and a size and weight distribution that Roccat claims is ideal for gaming on the couch.
"You don’t want to worry about mousing off a small pad, clicking too hard and shifting the weight of the board in the middle of play, having to adjust to an awkward ergonomic design and most importantly, feeling pain or tiredness in your wrists and back. When people tested the Sova, the overwhelming response was how easy it was to forget you were using it at all. It was so simple and effortless to interact with. Testers could simply concentrate on their game. We’re very proud of that," Korte added.
In other words, Roccat is awfully proud of its product, as you would expect it to be—we've yet to see a CEO come out and say, "Don't buy our product, it sucks." We happen to have one of these in-house and will be able to offer our own opinion soon, so stay tuned for that.
One thing that's unique about the Sova is that it has replacement components. The mousepad, wrist rest, and cushions can all be replaced as needed. It also blue LED per-key backlighting, cable management amenities, built-in memory to store profiles, and an Easy-Shift[+] key for executing macros.
The Sova with membrane keys runs $150 (€150), while the mechanical version costs $200 (€200). Both are available now (or soon will be) to pre-order from Newegg and come with a Roccat Kova mouse.
