You might know Corsair as the company that made the power supply or the RAM sticks in your PC. It may not be the first name you’d associate with gaming peripherals, or even the fifth for that matter, but its Vengeance line is dedicated to gaming products ranging from RAM to headsets to keyboards and mice. And if the Vengeance K70 keyboard is any indication, they know a thing or two about gaming.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way first. The K70 is a premium gaming keyboard with fully mechanical keys, so this isn’t for the budget-minded. At an MRP of Rs 9,999, this isn’t the cheapest gaming keyboard around, but it also isn’t absurdly overpriced when you look at the likes of the Razer Blackwidow Ultimate, the Roccat Ryos MK Pro or the now-discontinued CM Storm Trigger, all of which fall within the same price range. So if you are serious enough about investing in a quality mechanical keyboard, keep reading.
Replaceable WASD and 1-6 keys are textured and contoured
This isn’t one of those flashy keyboards with an edgy design just because it’s meant for gaming. Instead, the K70 looks rather understated, and that’s a good thing in our book.
The version of the K70 we reviewed came with Cherry MX Red keys, although Corsair does offer Brown and Blue variants as well. Each Cherry MX key type has different characteristics and gamer preferences differ as well. We’ve always preferred Red keys because they offer just the right amount of resistance during typing and gaming, and they don’t make your keyboard sound like it belongs on the sets of Mad Men. That said, before you decide to buy this or any other mechanical keyboard, take the time out to try a few mechanical key types and then move onto picking a keyboard with that key.
Coming to the K70 itself, the first thing that struck us was how good it looks and feels. This isn’t one of those flashy keyboards with an edgy design just because it’s meant for gaming. Instead, the K70 looks rather understated, and that’s a good thing in our book. The all-black frame is built using adonised aluminium (also available in a brushed metal finish) and it lends the whole thing a strong and sturdy feel. It won’t move around when you’re gaming, but owing to its weight, it’s also not the kind of keyboard you’d want to lug around to LAN parties.
You can individually choose which keys you want backlit based on the ones you use the most during a particular game.
The keyboard features full red-coloured back-lighting (or blue, depending on the variant), the intensity of which can be adjusted across three levels. This is standard in gaming keyboards in this range, but what you don’t see in many keyboards is the ability to enable backlighting for individual keys. You can individually choose which keys you want backlit based on the ones you use the most during a particular game, and these settings get saved in the K70’s onboard memory.
What the K70 lacks in comparison to other boards in this range is dedicated, customisable gaming keys. What you get here is the standard keyboard layout, with no additional keys (other than the multimedia buttons), and while that works just fine for some, a lot of gamers will want a set of dedicated keys that they can assign macros to. At this price, you’d expect that and rightly so. The multimedia keys are located at the top-right corner along with the backlight buttons. Aside from the playback buttons, there’s also a useful mute button as well as a fairly large scroll wheel to adjust volume. As with most keyboards with media keys, however, this feature will require you to plug in both of the keyboard’s USB ports, which sucks if you don’t have ports to spare. That said, the K70 also comes equipped with a USB passthrough port, so you can plug a mouse or headset directly into the keyboard.
It’s ideal for the gamer that wants a backlit mechanical keyboard with a solid build and conventional key layout, but if customisable gaming keys are a must, you may want to look elsewhere.
Typing and gaming with the K70’s Cherry MX Red keys was a breeze. The keys are large enough, the tried and tested layout holds no nasty surprises, and you also get replaceable textured and contoured WASD and 1-6 keys for easy recognition while gaming. However, I did face sporadic issues while typing. On at least three occasions, a key seemed to get stuck (although the switch itself wasn’t) on being pressed, registering the same character repeatedly until pressed again. It seemed to occur randomly and with a different key each time. This could be an isolated issue with the review unit, but it’s reason to be worried if it isn’t, because this can lead to some disastrous, unintended outcomes while gaming. It’s even more worrying considering this issue was also a common complaint with its predecessor, the K60.
The ‘sticky’ key issue, however, was a rarely occurring one, and on the whole, the Corsair Vengeance K70 was a pleasure to use. It’s ideal for the gamer that wants a backlit mechanical keyboard with a solid build and conventional key layout. However, if dedicated, customisable gaming keys are a must, you may want to look elsewhere.