The K70 RGB Pro is another variant of Corsair’s K70 line-up of mechanical gaming keyboards with some added flair that includes an 8,000Hz polling rate – i.e. it takes 8000 milliseconds for a command to go from ‘board to PC, so it’s super fast – along with a standard bottom row layout, dedicated media keys, up to 20 layers of RGB lighting, and more. So how does it hold up for gaming?
Premium performance
- Full key rollover (NKRO) with 100% anti-ghosting
- USB polling rate up to 8,000Hz with AXON, 4,000Hz key scanning
- Choice of Cherry MX Speed RGB, MX Red, MX Brown, MX Blue and MX Silent switches
The Corsair K70 RGB Pro is a tournament-ready keyboard that’s designed to deliver the goods in terms of performance.
With that in mind, it’s built to be fast. As we said up top: its 8,000Hz hyper-polling means your key presses are registered swiftly and accurately. For context: this tech means it’ll register your inputs eight times faster than most other keyboards. So if you’re serious about your fast-paced gaming and need to know you can rely on your keyboard then this is one option to go for. Low latency and high accuracy is the name of the game here.
You also have a choice of switches when purchasing, as the K70 RGB Pro is available with everything from Cherry MX Speed RGB to MX Red, MX Brown, MX Blue and MX Silent switches. Most gamers will favour MX Red or speed switches for gaming, but it’s certainly nice to have a selection of switches available.
What’s it like to game with?
As you can imagine the K70 RGB Pro is certainly accurate and responsive for gaming on. The tried and trusted Cherry MX keys do a good job and the extreme polling rate means there’s certainly no issues tracking your button presses.
We used the MX Red RGB switches during our testing and found them pleasant enough for both typing and gaming. The only discernible downside here is the sound of the stabilisers. We found both the spacebar and enter key have a noticeable ‘ping’ when pressed, especially if you’re mashing buttons quickly in the heat of a frantic gaming session.
This is a fairly common problem with gaming keyboards and not limited to the K70 RGB Pro. However, once we noticed it, we couldn’t stop hearing it. It doesn’t harm the typing experience though. Especially if you’re fully immersed in-game audio or listening to music while you work.
In the software you can open up a world of other possibilities. You can reprogramme keys quite easily and it’s possible to do simple things like disable certain keys (such as caps lock, for example) or programme macros. You can also setup a “modifier” while doing this, which means that you can assign a secondary action to most keys that can then do something different.
Setting Fn as a modifier, for example, we could then set another key to an entirely different key mapping, macro or other. This opens up plenty of other possibilities and allows for dedicated macro keys, without additional hardware keys on the keyboard. Clever stuff.
Profiles galore
- Multiple profiles
- 8MB on-board memory
- Reprogrammable keys with macros and more in iCue software
- Tournament button to disable it all
The Corsair K70 RGB Pro has 8MB of onboard memory, which means you can craft as many as 50 different profiles with different settings in the iCue software. This includes reprogramming keys and recording and assigning macros too.
If things get serious, then no need to fret as there’s a button at the back of the keyboard near the USB port. If you flip this on, it enables tournament mode, which disables the RGB lighting and all macros, so that you can focus on serious play with default settings. You also don’t need to worry about iCue running, so you can close that if you’re worried about it negatively impacting system performance.
All of these top features are packed into a frame that includes that classic brushed aluminium design, quality double shot PBT keycaps, dedicated media keys and more. There’s even a small display at the top which lights up to show you when things like scroll lock and caps lock are activated. It also comes with a rubberised magnetic wrist rest, that’s easy on the wrists and far more comfortable than it has any right to be.
The final cherry on the cake in terms of the aesthetic is the K70 RGB Pro also has a standard bottom row layout, so you can use your own custom keycaps to personalise the final finish. This is ideal as the standard PBT keycaps don’t let quite as much RGB light through as we’d like in some areas, but for the most part, looks the business.
Lovely layers of lighting
- Per-key RGB illumination
- Up to 20 layers of RGB lighting possible
Small issues aside, lighting is another place where the Corsair K70 RGB Pro shines. It looks great as it has superb reflections from the aluminium backplate and a nice glow from the keycaps.
Like other Corsair keyboards, the K70 RGB Pro has per-key RGB illumination that’s programmable within iCue. But it’s also possible to create multiple layers of lighting. Stacking colours and effects on top of each other, with as many as 20 layers total.
So, for example, you could create a base layer of a static single colour, then layer reactive effects on that. Meaning it’s a calm colour when not in use, but suddenly awash with colour when you start typing. Alternatively, you could set colours for the important WASD keys and other effects for others.
Of course, you can also set different colours in different profiles, so you’ll see specific effects and colours for different modes. Ideal if you’re playing different games and need to have individual settings for each but also see colour change so you know what mode you’re in.
These lighting options really make the K70 RGB Pro stand out and allow for a superb level of customisation.