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What is NKRO? Does My Keyboard Have NKRO?

Redragon K582 Surara (has nkro)

N-kro. Pronounced "en croe" or "en kay ar oe" is a phrase thrown around a lot.

But what is nkro? Nkro is short for n-key rollover. This means the if you press any number of keys on an nkro keyboard, it will all register. Basically it makes your keyboard optimal for button smashing efficiently.

Don't you hate it when your keyboard only types six letters when you faceplant into your keyboard? Now, with nkro, you can type all the keys you press at the same time.

Sound familiar?

Steno is very similar to resting your face on the keyboard. Both require lots of keyboard inputs to register at the same time.

Most mechanical keyboards have nkro.

Make sure the keyboard says nkro or full anti ghosting if you want to do steno on it.

Side note: anti ghosting is not the same as nkro, but a lot of times gaming keyboards advertise their product as anti ghosting even when they actually mean nkro.

But does my keyboard have nkro?

First, if its a membrane keyboard it probably does not have nkro.

To test, try holding down both the left and right shift keys and press each letter of the alphabet, one by one. If even one key doesn't register, it doesn't have nkro.

If you're still not convinced, try using four of your fingers to press down on all the homerow keys at the same time. Your keyboard is not nkro if less than eight unique characters from the homerow show up.

Is it nkro? Yay you can do steno! You can now have fun messing around and learning steno.


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