The Board That Made Rapid Trigger Mainstream Just Got a Sound Check
Wooting confirmed the 80HE+ on September 8, and it is not a ground-up redesign, it is the company going back into its own flagship TKL and fixing the exact things the community has been griping about on Discord for two years. New switches, a stiffer plate, a split spacebar option, and a zinc coating process that actually holds up. That is a mature move from a brand that could have just shipped a color refresh and called it a day.
Lekker Tikken: Closed-Bottom Housing Changes the Whole Voice
The headline change is the switch. Lekker Tikken keeps the same magnetic Hall effect sensing as the Lekker V2 line, but wraps it in a closed-bottom housing instead of the vented design Wooting has used since the original 60HE. That single change matters more than it sounds like on paper. An open-bottom housing lets air (and sound) escape straight through the switch and out the bottom of the plate, which is part of why early 80HE boards had that slightly hollow, clacky top-out even with foam installed. Closing the bottom traps and dampens that resonance before it ever reaches the plate. Expect a rounder, more contained tone on both bottom-out and the spring return, closer to what modding communities have been chasing with switch films and lube jobs for years, except stock.
FR4 Over the Old Plate, and Finally a Split Spacebar
The plate moves to stiffened FR4, a material choice lifted from what Wooting already validated on the 60HE V2. FR4 sits in a good middle ground for HE boards specifically: rigid enough to keep magnet-to-sensor distance consistent across the deck (which matters a lot when your actuation point is adjustable down to 0.1mm), while still flexing enough under the switch to soften bottom-out compared to a raw aluminum or steel plate. On a board that lives and dies by consistent rapid trigger behavior, plate rigidity is not a cosmetic spec, it is a functional one.
The other change modders will care about immediately: the 80HE+ module supports a 2.75u/1.25u/2.25u split spacebar at launch. That is the layout the QMK and VIA custom keyset crowd has wanted on a Wooting board since the original 80HE dropped, since it opens the stab and spacebar area up to swaps without needing a full aftermarket plate. It is module-only for now, so anyone who wants it needs to be buying into the bare board rather than a prebuilt.
Zinc, Fixed (Hopefully For Good)
Wooting is also using this refresh to quietly address the zinc alloy case coating issue that showed up on earlier 80HE zinc units, where the finish was prone to wear and chipping faster than the price point suggested it should. The 80HE+ carries a revised coating process alongside new finish options: a dark translucent ABS Dark top case, and a fully assembled Frost variant for people who want the look without ordering a bare module and building it themselves.
The Knob Gets Bigger Too
Probably the most fun addition for anyone who has used a Wooting board day to day: the 4u Lekker Large knob, ships standard on the prebuilt zinc models and is sold separately for ABS buyers. Volume and media control on a knob this size actually gets used, unlike the tiny inset dials some 65% boards ship with as an afterthought.
Pricing Holds, Which Is the Real Story
The standard 80HE currently sits at $199.99 for the base configuration, and KitGuru's reporting indicates the 80HE+ prebuilt pricing matches that existing line directly, with the bare module actually landing cheaper than before since it now includes a daughterboard for people building custom. That is a genuinely good outcome in a peripheral market where "new revision" usually means "new markup." Pre-orders open September 17, with shipping expected mid-October.
Where This Leaves the 80HE Line
Nothing here touches the actual Hall effect sensing core that made the original 80HE a benchmark board in the first place: true 8kHz polling and per-key actuation adjustable from 0.1mm to 4.0mm remain the foundation everyone is buying into. What Wooting fixed with the Plus is everything wrapped around that core: how it sounds, how rigid the plate feels under your fingers, whether the case holds up over a year of daily use, and whether the layout plays nice with the mod scene. Thock is a feeling, not a sound, and Wooting just spent a whole refresh trying to get both right at once.
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