Corsair's New Mechanical Keyboard Is Half an Inch Thick

An overhead view of the Corsair K100 AIR.

This might be the strangest mechanical keyboard I’ve ever seen. Corsair’s K100 AIR is just half an inch thick (0.4 inches, specifically) and uses new Cherry MX Ultra Low-Profile switches. It looks like a giant gamer version of the Apple Magic Keyboard.

To our knowledge, the K100 AIR is one of the first (or only) standalone keyboards to use Cherry MX Ultra Low-Profile switches. We’ve only encountered this technology in a handful of laptops. And just looking at the specs, we don’t expect an amazing typing experience—the Cherry MX Ultra Low-Profile switches have just 1.8mm of travel and actuate at 0.8mm. They also require 66.3 grams of operating force.

The specs suggest that these switches are very shallow. If you want a high-quality typing experience, you should probably buy a full-sized keyboard. But for those who want a half-inch-thick mechanical keyboard, the Corsair K100 AIR is clearly an option!

And when you ignore the switches, this keyboard is actually pretty neat. Four extra keys let you program macros without sacrificing any real keys. Plus, users can store up to 50 profiles for RGB lighting and keyboard layout, and the battery life lasts 500 hours with RGB backlighting disabled. (But it only handles 50 hours with the backlight.)

Connectivity options include a wired USB cable, a wireless USB dongle, and Bluetooth. Corsair claims that you’ll get an 8,000 Hz polling rate in wired mode. Additionally, you can pair this keyboard with three computers at once and swap between them using a dedicated button.

The Corsair K100 AIR launches on October 4th. Pricing is currently unknown, but we’ll update this article as new information comes to light.