Introduction
The mechanical keyboard market is awash with models from all manufacturers and covering nearly all price points. Corsair themselves have a huge range of keyboards to suit most pockets and demands from the K60 to their flagship K100.
Given that most people want a product which fits somewhere in the middle of the available options, neither too expensive to justify for all but the most well-heeled but neither so cheap that you’re bereft of features, the K70 has comfortably been their most popular seller. In fact we’d say it’s up there with the biggest selling mechanical keyboards you can think of. The fact it comes in so many different variations probably speaks to the fact that even Corsair themselves accept it hits the price and feature sweet spot.
The latest addition to their K70 range is the K70 RGB Pro, a keyboard that has a surprising amount to offer beyond the simply joy and reliability of typing on a full Cherry MX equipped keyboard. The AXON processing alone is enough to make the K70 RGB Pro worthy of your attention, offering up to 8000 Hz polling rate without compromising the performance of the keyboard. Many tech devices boast of how they have more power than the computer that took the Apollo astronauts to the moon, but there can’t be many keyboards that do. Let’s take a look.
Technical Specifications
Within the box itself the contents are simple. Unlike previous keyboards the K70 RGB Pro comes without a quick start guide in the box, so those of you who like to have a handy guide to the function combinations will have to print out the online PDF. A removeable Type-A to Type-C cable and the high quality, soft touch wrist rest are all you get, and indeed all you need. The wrist rest slides on easily, requiring no tabs to insert nor special tools to remove.
The underside has dual-height feet and plenty of options for cable routing should you so desire them. The rubber grips are extremely grippy and guarantee that the K70 will be going nowhere on even the most highly polished desks.
At the top left we have a profile switch button, the lighting intensity button, and the all-important Win-Lock to stop those accidental ‘as if by magic my desktop appeared’ moments. Similarly where the cable inserts there is a Tournament switch that locks off the colours and disables and macros for maximum focus – and indeed ensuring nobody is playing with an unfair advantage in actual tournaments.
At the top right we have a familiar Corsair arrangement of dedicated media keys and their famous volume scroll wheel that can have different functions assigned for up and down if you wish.
Beneath the double-shot keycaps we find the familiar Cherry MX switches, here in their most popular linear, 45nm actuation, Red versions.
iCUE Software
As anyone who has used a Corsair product can attest their iCUE software is up there with the best. Powerful enough to handle some very complicated setups, yet (largely) simple enough to use if you just want to change the colour of your keys. With the AXON processing at the heart of the K70 RGB Pro you can push the polling rate up to 8000Hz if you wish, as well as all the macro and complex lighting effects that we have come to expect from Corsair.
Lighting
As you can see from the photograph that has been adorning the top of the pages of today’s review, as well as the ones below, the lighting on the K70 RGB Pro is fantastic. Able to replicate all manner of colours accurately, even the difficult ones like yellow and a white that doesn’t lean towards blue.
