All the Lights
Corsair recently launched their new gaming division dubbed Corsair Gaming and have been recently pushing out an updated range of their previous line-up. One of them is the Corsair Gaming K-Series mechanical keyboards. Jumping on the RGB craze first before anyone else, Corsair Gaming took plenty of market share from it’s competitors with the only company offering Cherry MX RGB switches – yes the only company. Many other brands such as Razer and Logitech had to opt for their own in-house switches. So does this mean Corsair Gaming K-Series is a tier above the rest? Yes and No.
If you’ve ever owned a K-Series keyboard from Corsair before, there’s not much difference in terms of shape and quality with the new RGB range. Our K95 RGB is pretty much identical to the K90 in every way from the anodized aluminium base to the function keys and volume wheel. They’ve also included the wrist pad which in my opinion is not the best. It’s angled slightly too steep and my wrists never really stay on the pads themselves sliding down – thankfully it’s removable.
The only real difference is the use of RGB Cherry Switches. RGB is a craze now for some unknown reason. Yes it may look cool having ripple rainbow effects go from one end of the keyboard to the other but the novelty does wear thin soon. Customization of colours is probably my only favorite thing about RGB – if you prefer yellow lights, you can have yellow lights! Other than that, it’s really just a novelty feature.
As a unit, the Corsair is strong and my ideal type of mechanical keyboard. I really love the quality of the chassis and the feel of the Cherry MX keys. However, the problem with the product is the software bundled with it to customise the RGB lighting.
The Corsair Utility software for the keyboard is quite a mess. It’s quite laggy and the user interface is quite questionable. If you really want to get the most out of the RGB lighting, you’ll be opening up the handbook, reading forums and tutorials for a while. For such a great piece of hardware, it’s quite annoying to see the software isn’t up to par especially when you’re paying for the feature.
If you don’t care about RGB lighting, the normal K95 keyboard is still around for a slightly cheaper price tag. If you’re willing to learn and deal with the software until Corsair comes out with a revision, the K95 RGB is still a good buy but you’ve been warned.
Pros
- Great Quality Chassis
- Cherry MX Switches with RGB
- Colours… all the colours!
Cons
- Software needs work
[wp-review]
A review unit of the keyboard was provided by Corsair