The K70 RGB TKL was ready to go straight out of the box in common with the wider selection of CORSAIR’s peripheral range. The lighting was active with the RGB 'Rainbow' wave preset, and configuration was unlocked once iCUE v4 was reinstalled (v3 did not support the keyboard).
One immediately notable fact was that the K70 immediately inherited left-over profile settings from the K100 RGB we reviewed previously. If you’re upgrading from an older CORSAIR keyboard you can take solace in knowing that old keybindings, and even partial lighting settings (without the NUMPAD region), will be inherited.
In contrast to the K100 RGB, the K70 TKL takes up less space than you might expect on the desk top, offering substantially more room to manoeuvre a mouse on compact desktop spaces. Nothing in terms of build quality appears to be lost in the transition either as there’s no hint of flex or misalignment when striking the keys; the K70 RGB TKL is very much living up to CORSAIR’s reputation for solidly built mechanical keyboards. The rubber feet are good, but the grip on the desk was slightly lighter on the right than the left.
The sample provided was equipped with CHERRY MX RGB RED switches. These switches aren’t the fastest available, and will have some amount of debounce response which may reduce the impact of the 4000Hz switch polling available through the K70’s AXON processor. At present CORSAIR have opted not to make their OPX optical-mechanical switches available to this model, a technology that remains exclusive to their flagship K100 RGB.
MX Red-style switches haven’t been our preferred switch type in the past due to the manner in which they tend to clatter against the base plate when bottoming out. We were surprised to notice that, although impacts could be heavy, they weren’t quite as jarring as other equivalent switches we’ve sampled. True gamers might prefer MX Speeds and those with acoustics to consider could take the MX Silent option, but we feel confident in saying that these might be a little easier to live with if mixing and matching gaming and work-related activities. As always when it comes to keyswitch designs, trying before you buy pays dividends.
The major question when it comes to general wordprocessing and office work is whether you can live without a numberpad, which for many people will be determined by whether or not they work from home. If a numberpad is effectively necessary (spreadsheets being what they are) then a full-sized keyboard may be more appropriate, but it should be noted that the detachable cable makes it trivial to just plug in as and when you want for a quick - or extended - gaming session.
To test out gaming we started by booting up World of Warcraft and importing keybinds and macros from the K100 RGB profile. More exotic configurations aren’t possible as the K70 lacks dedicated macro keys, but it is possible to leverage media or lesser-used keys for more useful functionality. In this respect the power of iCUE in combination with the fully-remappable CORSAIR key engine starts to show itself.
The MX Red style switches were fine for this application, despite a rather heavy-fingered and repetitive-striking play style. The longer actuation distance of MX Reds also means that you’re less likely to accidentally press a key despite resting your finger on top of it, which can be something of an issue with MX Speed/OPX models. Macro keys turn out to be useful, but not essential.
We found that the media keys were most suited for toggle on/off functionality, particularly microphone activation or lesser used abilities like hiding the HUD, rather than fast-response requirements. They’re just fractionally too spongy to be comfortable when used repetitively, but are reliable nonetheless.
We’d also like to mention one major improvement on this generation of keyboards: the stability of non-standard size keys. The Spacebar, Backspace and Enter keys all exhibit significantly less wobble and have a more even response across the key, particularly the space bar. This is a UK layout keyboard, but we hope that the same is true of the Left-Shift on US layout models.
Like the iCUE wheel on the K100 we’re a little unsure about additional uses for the volume wheel on the K70 RGB TKL. In WoW specifically we settled on camera zoom functionality, but there’s surely a killer app we’re missing to really use it to the fullest potential. Apart from volume control of course.
Bethesda’s DOOM (2016) switched things up and highlighted the value of that additional desk real-estate. With mouse sensitivity turned down it was far easier to make large movements for more accurate sniping without risk of clattering into the keyboard, and the keyboard itself was crisply responsive to inputs. The kepcaps are contoured such that fat-fingering adjacent keys wasn’t an issue here, nor with WoW.
Without LAN events in the near future the Tournament Mode feature can’t really get the work-out it deserves, but we found it trivial to activate and no problem to work with. When active the keyboard disappears entirely from iCUE, but basic functionality is retained including all media keys and the Windows Lock key. LEDs default to a static colour (customisable before hand) and profiles are explicitly disabled (even the profile switch button is disabled and not illuminated).
It’s a fascinating feature, but one that will only come into its own when LAN events, small and large, return in your home region.
One feature we’d love to see as part of the default iCUE suite is a Microphone Mute Action that can be bound to any key. We understand that this is something of a limitation with default Windows 10 behaviour, and that the Elgato software makes it possible with a custom plugin, but we feel that the popularity of streaming would make this feature all the more beneficial as part of the included software toolkit.