Introduction

It has been twenty years since Corsair's first retail products hit the shelves and the company has undoubtedly come a very long way since then. What started as a small memory manufacturer is now a major global supplier of advanced computer components and peripherals. Today is the dawn of a new era for Corsair, as the company announced the establishment of their own gaming brand. The new division has been christened "Corsair Gaming", and with the name comes a new department and logo. The focus will be on the development of high performance gaming peripherals.

Alongside the announcement of their new department, Corsair is also releasing several new products, with the much-anticipated RGB keyboards being among them. The company dropped the "Vengeance" series name and the new keyboards are just called by the brand name and model. That means we're now looking at the Corsair Gaming K70 RGB (and not the keyboard formerly known as Vengeance K70 RGB or some variation on that theme).

This keyboard has probably had more hype between its announcement and release date than any other keyboard in the history of humankind. Ever since the first demos of the keyboard found their way into pictures and videos back in January, there have been myriad rumors about the capabilities of the keyboard and the new Corsair Utility Engine (CUE) software. Some people even suggested that this is "just a Vengeance K70 with RGB LEDs", which could not be further from the truth. The truth is that the new Corsair Gaming K70 RGB introduces many new functions and far greater customizability than any previous Corsair mechanical keyboard.

Today we finally have a chance to go hands-on with the shipping hardware. Join us as we examine the keyboard, its capabilities, and the new CUE software.

Packaging & Bundle

 

We received the Corsair Gaming K70 RGB in a well-designed, attractive cardboard box, capable of providing more than enough protection during shipping. Inside the box is a minimalist bundle of just a few leaflets and a full size wrist rest. The wrist rest has a corona-treated surface that gives it a soft, comfortable rubber-like feeling. Corsair apparently ditched the extra set of contoured, textured "gaming" keycaps that we saw supplied with the Vengeance K70 and the Vengeance K60. As we mentioned in several previous articles, very few (if any) gamers would actually swap keycaps before gaming so Corsair understandably realized that this was little more than an unnecessary extra cost.

The Corsair Gaming K70 RGB Mechanical Keyboard
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  • singulariter - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link

    Noooooooooooooo
  • peterfares - Wednesday, September 24, 2014 - link

    What were they thinking? The normal Corsair logo looks fine and doesn't pop out at you. This new logo it terrible, especially the yellow text.
  • FriendlyUser - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link

    Nice review, thanks, especially for pointing out the "input lag" bug. That is a deal-breaker for high-end gaming.

    By "texture analyzer" you mean that you actually measured the actuation force with special hardware? I appreciate that kind of detail.
  • E.Fyll - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link

    That is correct. I have access to a TA.XT Plus texture analyser, a machine that can check the exact actuation force of every key. It can actually extract the exact travel/force graph of every key as well, but I am not using it for that unless there is a serious reason (far too time-consuming).
  • FriendlyUser - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link

    The aluminium body is a great feature: I type quite forcefully and I like the feel of a sturdy keyboard. It just feels more "real". Cross supports should feel great, too. My current keyboard unfortunately does not have that feature.

    Now all they have to do is release a non-rgb version at a lower price point for those who don't care about backlighting.
  • Friendly0Fire - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link

    You mean the non-RGB K70 that's already been on sale for something like a year?

    As far as I can tell it's virtually identical aside from the RGB LEDs, and I'd be surprised if CUE isn't compatible with it (though it's worth checking of course).
  • Dustin Sklavos - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link

    There's no reason to use CUE with the vanilla K70. Nothing to configure. ;)
  • E.Fyll - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link

    Uh, not really. The Vengeance K70 -at least the current revision- is using a different microprocessor and is not programmable.
  • Xed - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link

    For once I'm happy to be an early adopter. My keyboards just have the normal black Corsair logo.
  • JoyTech - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link

    Great review! I think if user is not psyched about the RGB mode and have ASUS ROG line MB, then they can simply buy Vengeance K70 and use keybot feature to program K70. At least that's what I plan to do.

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