Corsair K100 RGB keyboard review - Article

Corsair K100 RGB Gaming Keyboard

Corsair has released it's all-new K100 RGB series keyboard. The new kit 'o keys have overhauled aesthetics, a much stronger processor performance, more RGB lighting zone than you can imagine, as well as included G keys and a new iCUE dial. It does not stop quite there just yet, you get a choice in Cherry SpeedMX switches as well as new optical OPX switches developed in-house by Corsair. And these in particular promise to be spectacular switches. The new keyboard series features some amazing new technology and of course an awful lot of RGB. The K100 DNA has been under development for over 18 months, and you can tell as Corsair paid a lot of attention to the little details like the usual brushed aluminum, now restructured and reshaped it into a more modern contour look. K100 has great structured sides you can see that embed the most RGB they've ever put on a keyboard. Actually 44 zone RGB light edge wrap around the back and the sides the keyboard. The keyboard offers axon hyper processing technology, which basically means it has a faster processor. Oh and hey, new keycap font! 

All hail Axon

Axon basically is the SoC empowering the keyboard, it was made much faster compared to the traditional keyboard offerings and provides 4 times the strength and bandwidth of current generation gaming keyboards so that means Corsair is able to offer 4000 Hertz polling, 4000 Hertz key scanning, and all that combined with 20 layers of hardware lighting the proc still can keep up. Configured with 8MB of onboard storage this allows you to save up to 200 macro and lighting profiles.

Of course, you'll spot the usual dedicated media keys well as the Corsair signature aluminum volume roller, but new is the iCUE control wheel (the round knob to the left), that brings out of the box 4 modes you can use to adjust application settings such as adjusting keyboard brightness, rewinding, or fast-forwarding media, selecting your track as well as being able to do onboard macro recording. Of course, it's programmable, and in iCUE, you can enable additional modes such as switching applications zooming vertical horizontal scrolling, and well all that you desire. One of the bigger features however is the new OPX RGB optical-mechanical key switches, this is an option as you can still pick a model with Cherry SpeedMX switches. However, the new OPX puppies are stronger and faster, guaranteed for 150 million keypresses, offer fast 1.0mm actuation while registering key presses up to 4x faster than standard mechanical gaming.

PBT all the way

Finally, the keyboard gets double-shot PBT keycaps at default, PBT is short for Polybutylene terephthalate. Basically, this is a thermoplastic polymer, actually mainly used as an insulator in the electrical and electronics industries, a type of polyester. PBT is resistant to solvents, shrinks very little during forming, is mechanically strong, heat-resistant up to 150 °C (or 200 °C with glass-fiber reinforcement), and can be treated with flame retardants to make it noncombustible. And yeah, somewhere somehow somebody figured, how cool would it be to make keycaps out of that. and as many of us feel, they work out extremely well. You're also going to notice six dedicated macro G keys that can execute macros or if you are a streamer, hook into streaming commands via Elgato Stream Deck software. last but not least a very comfortable magnetic detachable memory foam palm rest is included.

Before we move onward we need to talk pricing, the product will be priced at an MSRP of US$229, which definitely is a lot to take in. Let's have a peek at the keyboard first, and then browse our way into the review.