Corsair K70 RGB Pro

The Corsair K70 RGB Pro is one of the best all-round gaming keyboards out there. It’s incredibly sturdy and premium-feeling, and features both an immense polling rate and snappy switches. This does all come at a high cost though, so it may not be for every gamer.

Introduction

The Corsair K70 gaming keyboard, and its derivatives, have been around for nearly a decade now, and this latest revision – the K70 Pro – is a worthy successor.

With its fantastic feature set, good looks, and snappy switches, it’s little surprise that the K70 RGB Pro isn’t the cheapest of keyboards with a price of £ 169.99 / $ 169.99 / € 199.99. But if you’re happy to pay the high price, you may well have one of the best gaming keyboards currently available.

Design

• Sturdy, thick outer shell
• Military-grade construction
• Comfortable and convenient wrist rest

The Corsair K70 RGB Pro is a remarkably well-built keyboard with good looks and a nice premium feel. Like other K70s I’ve used in the past, Corsair hasn’t skimped out on the looks and build of this variant, with a smooth anodized aluminum finish making it feel fantastic. In addition, its good looks help it to look suave and purposeful in all manner of settings, be it an RGB-laden gaming den or a modern-looking home office, and even at work too.

It’s worth noting the K70 RGB Pro also seems a little bit smaller than other full-size gaming keyboards I’ve tested recently. When plonked down on a desk, it doesn’t feel or look massive, unlike some other behemoths out there. There’s something remarkably cutesy about the size of the K70 RGB Pro, but it’s welcome.

Also unlike other premium boards out there, like the SteelSeries Apex Pro or the Razer Huntsman V2 Analog, Corsair’s premium offering doesn’t sport any massive statement features like a programmable OLED screen, which helps keep things simple but effective. In other words, it’s not trying to be anything more than a rather good-looking and well-built gaming keyboard.

There aren’t any dedicated macro keys on the K70 RGB Pro, but you will find a handy Tournament Mode key that disables any accidental macro key presses, as well as locking the backlighting to a less distracting static mode. In addition, there’s some convenient media controls with tactile buttons and a smooth volume roller present.

You do get a wrist rest with this particular Corsair keyboard, which can make typing more comfortable, and it conveniently attaches via magnets to the keyboard’s underside. Moreover, its detachable USB-C cable is braided, furthering that premium feel. If you turn the K70 RGB Pro over, you’ll find some rather useful cable channels for routing the cable through the middle, left, or right of the board, depending on where is most convenient.

The keycaps are also reflective of the premium build of the K70 RGB Pro with double-shot, PBT offerings feeling sturdy and well-made, especially in comparison to cheaper keyboard’s ABS options. Including PBT keycaps just adds an extra layer of durability to the K70 RGB Pro, as they are sure to last longer than ones made of ABS plastic.

Performance

• Great choice of MX switches
• Incredible polling rate
• Zero-latency wired connection is fantastic

As for performance, the K70 RGB Pro is excellent within games. My review sample featured CHERRY’s tried-and-tested MX Red RGB switches with their 45cN actuation force making them light and snappy, alongside a linear feeling to keep things simple.

If you’re looking for light, mainstream switches, you can’t really go wrong with Reds for either gaming or banging out an essay. But if you prefer something a little heavier like I do, you’ll be pleased to know the K70 RGB Pro is also available with Blues, Blacks and Browns, as well as Silent Reds, and MX SPEED Silver switches for maximum speediness.

Where the K70 RGB Pro does win against the competition though is on its polling rate and therefore response time. It features Corsair’s AXON tech that offers up a polling rate of 8000Hz and a 4000Hz rate of key-scanning. According to Corsair, this translates to a response time of 0.25ms which should eliminate practically all latency within games.

This allows the K70 RGB Pro to become one of the most responsive keyboards out there today, alongside the likes of Razer’s Huntsman V2 that also carries an 8000Hz polling rate and Team Green’s optical switches – the two feel pretty comparable, truth be told.

With that being said, while the powerful polling rate is an incredible feature to have, it may not be noticeable to most mere mortals. But rest-assured, it’ll be quite the useful feature for the pros.

Software and lighting

• Corsair’s iCUE is fantastic software
• Some gorgeous RGB lighting
• Plenty of capacity for profiles

The Corsair K70 RGB Pro also delivers when it comes to the software and lighting side of things, thanks to a marvelous marriage of Corsair’s iCue software and some great native RGB lighting.

Out of the box, the K70 RGB Pro will cycle through a shedload of brilliantly bright colors and patterns, and the PBT keycaps do a marvelous job of letting it shine through.

The bundled iCUE software is also among the best I’ve used, with some versatile customization options and plenty of pre-installed lighting presets that can be customized. The K70 RGB Pro also features 8MB of on-board memory that Corsair says can store up to 50 different profiles if you need it to.

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