Company: Corsair Gaming

Launch Price: $169.99 USD

Release Date: September 22nd

Corsair did a little bit of rebranding to celebrate the launch of the K70 RGB keyboard. First off, they dedicated an entire wing of peripherals to the gaming scene, called Corsair Gaming. Along with a new logo in tow, the key to their early success is placed with the release of their high-performance RGB keyboard line. Does it live up to the publicized hype?

What is the K70 RGB Keyboard?

The K70 RGB is an enthusiast keyboard, pure and simple. However, as sometimes is the case, there’s a great deal of knowledge of how to use such products required to masterfully access all of its features.

The Corsair Gaming K70 RGB keyboard is a fully mechanical, aircraft grade aluminum keyboard with color-customizable LED backlighting (up to 16.8 million different colors) and a removable perforated wrist rest. The keyboard itself uses German-made Cherry MX mechanical key switches, coming in either Red, Blue or Brown. It comes with several multimedia buttons, which are programmed to work with music media players and can control the volume of music players without having to Alt-Tab out of the action. Each key on the board is also fully able to be macro-assigned. Finally, the K70 RGB provides 100% Anti-Ghosting with rollover across the entire 104-key spectrum, which is pretty handy when inputting multiple keys in FPS titles on PC.

On the software side, the K70 RGB uses the Corsair Utility Engine (CUE) in order to customize how your keyboard works. Perhaps the biggest draw to the keyboard, aesthetically, is the way that users can set up both keystroke-dependent and always-active color settings to provide beautiful color combinations, including cascading rainbows. This is done through the CUE, allowing you to both color-coordinate as well as set single or multiple actions to work at the same time. Users can import and export their action bindings, profiles or lighting schemes and share them on the Corsair forums. It’s a great way to incentivize community sharing, as creative minds can create some truly remarkable things that you can try out for yourself.

The K70 RGB Keyboard In Action

When I first plugged in the keyboard and tested out the keyboard’s keys, it felt like I was typing on a cloud. Those Cherry-designed key switches are so precise and so soft to the touch when entering, it actually felt like their speed and precision encouraged me to type faster. The keys are remarkably smooth, while durable and quick to input. For those making the jump from “comes-with-the-box” keyboards that come standard with pre-built computers, the barrier for entry shouldn’t last longer than 30 minutes to become fully comfortable with the upgrade.

Performance-wise, I tested the K70 RGB out with an odd variety of games, including Rogue Legacy, Sniper Elite III, The Walking Dead and replaying a case for Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments. The genre choices were by design, as I wanted to see how the keyboard reacts during each one. The QTE’s in The Walking Dead provided a solid window into repeated key pressings, as button-mashing felt stunningly fluid with the zombie-biting action at hand. Throughout each game, not once did I feel limited by the peripheral; only at my lack of patience in Rogue Legacy.

A neat bonus for when using the keyboard for work (including typing this review right now) was just how excellent the multimedia buttons work with music programs and the rest of the keyboard. I was listening to a podcast yesterday while testing it out, but wanted to make sure I could concentrate on my writing by lowering the volume. While typing out with one hand, I turned down the volume with the other hand by sliding the volume wheel down, never losing a stride. Plus, with the anti-ghosting in effect I had lost no key entries in the process. Whoever decided the volume should be a wheel scroll in the original design should get a heavy pat on the back, as it is much more fluid a design than pressing a volume-down button repeatedly.

Configuring The K70 RGB

There’s a great deal of customization that the K70 RGB keyboard provides. Right now, I have a multi-color key setup, where most of the board is a solid Teal, the WASD and arrows are Red and the NumPad is a Bluish Green. When using the CUE software, it’s easy enough to bind solid colors to what keys you want. When it comes to anything more, however, confusion starts to creep in.

The K70 RGB is an enthusiast keyboard, pure and simple. However, as sometimes is the case, there’s a great deal of knowledge of how to use such products required to masterfully access all of its features. The software is not as forgiving as you’d want, as there is no quick fix if you want to do something more complicated than a basic effect. For example, the rainbow test I provided above required opening the lighting editor with a right-click on the “All” binding, choosing “Wave,” adding each of the 9 color entires about individually with another right-click and color wheel selection, evening it out, choosing spread options and the angle in which I want the effect. Right now, each time I press a key I get a rainbow wave effect throughout the board. It requires a great deal of effort to get right (especially for action bindings), and using the User Manual provided offered means taking a while to get it right.

It’s the small price to pay for a great deal of customization, as the Profile system means putting in the input of what you want your keyboard to look like in a situation-dependent environment. For example, I might want to remove the wave effect and do a simple solid white profile for when I’m doing work, as to avoid distractions. For certain games like World of Warcraft, I might want to highlight different colors for spells and combat actions on the number bar, as well as solidify the WASD area with a different color. If I want to show off, I might rainbow-color sections of the board to show off the limitless capabilities. The keyboard’s software provides that; I just wish it was a bit more user-friendly out of the box.

Verdict

Overall, the K70 RGB keyboard is a very impressive product. Corsair Gaming launching with this device as their flagship product is a great bet, as it will look to stand up against the test of time amicably. It doesn’t come with the 18 G-keys designed for macro inputs quite like the K95, but it still holds the Corsair name up strong with its quality. At $169.99, it’s difficult to recommend to anyone who uses their computer for gaming passively or not at all, but for the hardcore enthusiasts that build their own $1,200+ computers from parts it would be hard to find a better product at its price range. The software takes some time to getting used to, but with time and effort (plus a community willing to share their genius creations) it will become easier to understand.

Pound-for-pound, the K70 RGB is a masterpiece that other keyboards should look up to.

(A copy of this gaming product was provided to GameSided for the purpose of this review.)