Corsair has been releasing a wave of really exciting products to up your game. New lights, new features, and more. Corsair’s new K100 keyboard is said to be a step above the rest. We managed to get our hands on the K100 to put it through its paces and see if the rumors are true.
RGB lighting and comfort
You all know I love my lights. The K100 keyboard delivers on one of the coolest lighting sets around. First up is the Corsair logo. It sits nicely in the top middle window of the keyboard. All other lights seem to radiate from there. The keycaps sit fairly high on the chassis, meaning lots of light shines through. There’s even lighting on the side of the keyboard. No joke! This is seriously amazing. There’s so many built in lighting functions and cool features. The K100 gets an A+ from me in terms of its RGB capabilities.
As for comfort, I’m really sold here too. The K100 comes with a plush, comfy wrist rest. It’s perfect for typing or gaming all day long. It’s even magnetic meaning it will never move away from you while you’re using the keyboard for hours on end. Taking a step back and looking down, the K100 is sleek, well designed, and in one word, “solid.”
Keycaps and switches
The K100 we got came with the Corsair OPX switches. You can also get it in Cherry MX speed switches. The OPX feels really nice. It doesn’t have that super “clacky” sound to it, but it’s still really tactile. It’s not really loud, but still has good feedback. My housemates definitely appreciate me a lot more. There’s no longer a constantly stream of loud typing coming from my room, instead it’s soft and almost soothing.
Both versions of the K100 (Cherry MX Speed and Corsair OPX switches) come with additional keycaps. These are the WASD gaming caps and a couple of extras for good measure. These extra caps have a textured feel making them perfect for gaming. Personally, I prefer the sleek, clean, consistent look of the plain black switches. Each to their own.
Next up on the buttons side of things are all the extras for that sweet control.
Control your game
The K100 keyboard comes with all the fancy extra buttons you’d expect from a high end keyboard. Volume control scroller, media buttons, and programmable buttons. The programmable G switches, however, aren’t your usual macro keystrokes. Instead, you can program these G buttons in exactly the same way you would program the Elgato Stream Deck. Simply open the Stream Deck software, and you can setup the G buttons to be whatever you like.
Some other controls include locking the keyboard profile as well as changing lighting profiles on the fly. There’s so much control in one keyboard, it’s almost difficult to work out where to start. But there’s one thing Corsair did to make this keyboard really special.
Corsair wanted to up their game with the K100. Instead of just having really cool G buttons, they came up with something new called the “iCUE control wheel.” This wheel is something else entirely and was designed specifically for the K100. You can program the iCUE control wheel to be anything you like.
Open up the iCUE software and away you go. The controller is both a button and a scrolling wheel. Some of the pre-built functions include fast forwarding music, scrolling (both vertically and horizontally), and zooming. There’s tons of other things you can do with this controller, and it really comes down to what you do most. Do you spend a lot of time editing movies? Maybe you need to easily zoom in and out on your timeline. The world is your oyster with this button.
Corsair K100 RGB mechanical keyboard
Okay this keyboard sounds too good to be true. So what are the downsides? Well since there’s a lot of extra keys and buttons, the K100 can throw off your typing a little if you aren’t used to having extra macro keys. With a bit of time, however, this problem can be quickly removed.
One thing about this keyboard is it’s simply pretty to look at. All the lights make for a beautiful atmosphere. But here comes the problem — power. This keyboard has a ton of lighting built into it and lots of functionality. Because of that, this keyboard needs a ton of power. The USB cable for the K100 is really thick. It requires two USB ports just so it can work. There is an advantage here. You receive USB power passthrough on the keyboard, but the K100 takes up a lot of space. It can also be a problem for cable management and will require a bit of extra room just to run this thick cable.
Then there’s the cost. Great things don’t come cheap and that’s true for the K100. At $229.99 USD (approx. $379 AUD), the K100 is at the top of the spectrum. But if you can afford it, it’s worth it. The amount of control and programmability you receive is unparalleled. If you have other Corsair or Elgato products like the Dark Core Pro mouse, iCUE lights, or even one of the new cases, you’ll get the most value out of this keyboard. So will you be getting the Corsair K100 keyboard? If so, you can pick it up from the Corsair website.
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