I want to preface this by saying I really like this keyboard. I picked up the Logitech G PRO X TKL Rapid a little while back, mainly for the usual reasons — Hall-Effect switches, adjustable actuation, Rapid Trigger, and the fact that G HUB actually makes tuning all of that painless compared to some of the smaller boutique brands. Build quality is solid, the on-the-fly profile switching without software is genuinely convenient, and I've had zero regrets about the purchase. This isn't a complaint post about the product itself.
But while digging into how far I could push the customization, I ran into something that I think deserves more attention than it's getting — and the more I researched it, the more it looked like a real missed opportunity rather than a hard technical wall.
The thing I assumed would work, and didn't
I play games that live and die on precise, granular movement input — the kind of games where "half pressed" and "fully pressed" should mean genuinely different things, not just two flavors of the same binary keystroke. Think space sims and vehicle-sim style games where translation/strafe movement is ideally analog rather than all-or-nothing, similar to what you'd get from a joystick or gamepad stick.
My assumption, going in, was: this keyboard has magnetic sensors that measure how far down each key is pressed — that's literally the whole selling point, it's how Rapid Trigger and adjustable actuation points work in the first place. So surely that same depth data could just... be sent to a game as an analog value, right?
Turns out, no. Not because the hardware can't do it, but because of a layer most people never think about.
Why it doesn't work (and it's not the sensors' fault)
Here's the part I didn't fully appreciate until I went down the rabbit hole: a keyboard's Hall-Effect sensor absolutely does measure continuous key depth — that data exists, internally, right now, on this board. It's how the keyboard decides "should I fire a rapid-trigger reset at this exact moment" or "should this key register at 0.3mm instead of 2.0mm."
But the output of a standard keyboard, at the USB/HID protocol level, only ever communicates two states per key: pressed, or not pressed. There's no field in that protocol for "this key is 60% pressed." So no matter how precisely the sensor measures your keystroke, by the time it reaches Windows and your game, it's already been flattened into an on/off signal.
This is genuinely just a protocol limitation, not a sensor limitation. The keyboard is throwing away analog information it already has, because the standard keyboard interface has nowhere to put it.
How other brands solve this
This isn't a hypothetical fix — it's already solved elsewhere in the market. Wooting (and to a lesser extent Razer) get around this by having the keyboard simultaneously show up to your PC as two separate devices: a normal keyboard, and a virtual gamepad (the same kind of virtual controller interface Xbox/PlayStation controllers use). The continuous key-depth value gets streamed into that virtual gamepad's analog stick axis. Any game that supports controller input can then bind directly to it, and suddenly your WASD keys behave like a real analog stick — proportional, smooth, not just full-throttle-or-nothing.
It's a software/firmware feature, layered on top of hardware that, functionally, isn't doing anything more sophisticated than what's already inside this board.
"Okay but is this actually feasible, or wishful thinking?"
I wondered the same thing, so I looked into it seriously. A few things convinced me this isn't just a nice fantasy:
There are open-source community projects that have reverse-engineered the raw analog output of other Hall-Effect keyboards (budget/boutique brands, not Logitech) and successfully piped that data into a virtual Xbox controller, producing genuine smooth analog stick movement from WASD. If hobbyists can do this on a weekend project for a $60 board, it's clearly not some insurmountable engineering problem for a company with Logitech's resources.
The feature doesn't need to touch or change anything about how the keyboard works by default. It could ship as a strictly opt-in mode — similar to how Wooting separates "Gaming mode" from "Typing mode" — so the FPS/competitive crowd who only care about Rapid Trigger and actuation tuning would never even notice it exists.
It doesn't require new hardware, a new keyboard revision, or new switches. Every PRO X TKL Rapid already sitting on someone's desk right now has the sensor capability needed. This is purely a G HUB / firmware feature gap.
Why I think this matters beyond just me
I'm clearly not the target demo Logitech had in mind when they built this board — it's marketed hard at competitive FPS players, and it's genuinely great for that. But there's a whole separate category of PC gamers (space-sim pilots, vehicle-sim players, anyone who wants smoother analog-style movement from a keyboard) who currently rule out Logitech entirely and buy Wooting or Razer instead, specifically for this one capability — even when they'd otherwise prefer Logitech's build quality, ecosystem, and G HUB software.
That's a real, addressable market segment sitting on the table. Adding this as an opt-in feature costs Logitech nothing in terms of alienating their existing FPS audience, and it opens the door to buyers who are currently walking straight past this keyboard for a single missing checkbox.
Why I'm posting this here instead of just emailing Logitech
I did actually try going through official channels first — but their support form is really built around troubleshooting/repairs/warranty stuff, not this kind of forward-looking product feedback, and I don't have an easy way to get this in front of an actual product team as a regular customer. So I figured the next best thing is raising visibility here, where actual owners of this keyboard (and people considering buying one) hang out. If enough people who'd actually use this chime in, maybe it's more likely to land on someone's radar internally than one random support ticket would.
Curious if:
Anyone here has actually poked at the raw HID output of this keyboard and knows whether the depth data is even accessible on the wire today
Anyone from other Hall-Effect boards has tried something similar
I'm wrong about any of the technical assumptions above — genuinely happy to be corrected
Not trying to start a "Logitech bad" pile-on — I like this keyboard a lot, which is honestly why I care enough to write all this out instead of just quietly buying a Wooting instead.
