Corsair K95 RGB Platinum Mechanical Gaming Keyboard - 6 Programmable Macro Keys, USB Passthrough, Media Controls - Cherry MX Brown Switches - RGB Backlit for PC Gaming, Streaming & Office Work

Tldr; version: If you like lights and keys that actuate at a feather touch, then you will want this keyboard. With that out of the way, I'll go in depth about certain elements of the keyboard.Keys:I was initially attracted to this keyboard because of the Cherry MX Speed keys utilized in it. I am used to various types of mechanical keys, but had been using a Logitech G910 with Romer-G switches for well over a year. Several reviews I have read have compared the MX Speed switches to the Romer-G due to the similar actuation force and engage, and this isn't exactly off. Every time I try to think of a comparison for these switches, I think of the Sanwa Denshi OSBF-30 arcade buttons. Much like those buttons, these keys actuate if you simply breath on them; I have actually engaged therm with a spray from my compressed air can while cleaning. While this is mostly positive, there are some things to consider.The keys will engage if you apply even a light touch to them, and if you're used to keys that require a little more weight for actuation, you may find yourself accidentally depressing keys when you don't mean to, especially if you like to idle on home row. This, of course, is something that you can adjust for, and the switches seem to lose this as you break them in. With that being said, the MX Speed keys are very easy to press, especially in rapid succession. Again, though, if you are not used to typing on keys such as this, you will probably find yourself bottoming out quite often, so you need to either (A)adapt or (B)buy some o-ring dampeners to help relieve the feel of bottoming out.Curiously, the space bar has a textured feel to it, which I am still not sure whether I appreciate or not, and would have liked Corsair to offer a non-textured space bar included with the rest of the alternate keycaps, which I will detail later.Lights:So, if you weren't aware, Corsair puts lights on everything but their chairs ( much to my disappointment ). To up the ante compared to previous keyboards, they have implemented a RGB light strip across the type of the keyboard. As you probably already know, you can customize the lighting in any way you want. You can stack lighting effects on top of each other to achieve several effects ( something you still cannot do in Logitech's software ). The lighting is bright, but comes with two caveats. (1) The LEDs are centered at the top of the switch, so keys with double rows of text are dimmer on the bottom. Because of this, the lighting on the keys isn't quite as uniform as it is on some other keyboards with centered LEDs or keycaps made specifically to accommodate the top-mounted light. (2)Because the body of the switch is clear, they emit light from all sides, which causes bleedout from under the keycaps. Whether you like this or not depends on personal taste, and almost every illuminated keyboard aside from Logitech's Romer-G keyboards suffer from this. It's not a bad thing, just a result of how the keys are crafted.The RGB LED strip on top of the keyboard has its own problems. The lighting is uneven and you can tell where there LEDs are placed and the space between them because of the dark zones here and there. This is less noticeable if you have a rapidly moving effect, but on static lighting, it is very glaring. While this could be forgiven, Corsair's own Polaris mousepad, which has a led strip on the entire side and bottom perimeter of the mousepad, does not have this problem; the lighting is completely even. I am confused why my $50 mousepad has more even lighting than my $200 keyboard, when it has to be more or less constructed in the same way.Body:The keyboard itself appears to be a single piece of "aircraft grade aluminum," according to Corsair's own description. It is a very elegant look with a fair amount of weight behind it. Imperfections are obvious, if there are any ( mine had a weird stripe on it out of the package that I had really wipe and buff out ), and it likes to attract dust in the thin lines of the metal. Not a big deal and usually cleans easily with a can of air or a microfiber cloth.Wrist rest:I have used a K95 before and was a little surprise to find that the wrist rest on the Platinum is really not as good as the previous rest found on other models. On previous keyboards, the wrist rest was attached solidly with screws. That is not the case here, and if you left the keyboard without support of the rest, it may fall off since it's only held in by two plastic tabs. Not a big deal, but when you're supposed to be "getting it all," on a "Platinum" product, you'd expect it to have all the bells and whistles, including a more sturdy wrist rest. Aside from that, it functions well enough and offers a double sided rubberized padding; one is softer, the other has a little more texture. I am not sure why anyone would ever want the softer, less textured side, but to each their own.Unlike the hollow plastic of the Logitech G910 and several Razer keyboards, this thing is a hefty chunk of plastic, so it's going to take a lot of rage to break it.Extra Features:So, the extra features on the keyboard are (1)6 macro keys, (2)Media control keys, (3)Profile switch keys, (4)Illumination control key, (5)Windows Lockout key, (6) USB passthrough, (7) underside cable routing, and (8) additional keycaps.Another odd choice in naming conventions is why Corsair decided to call this the K95, which is known for having 18 macro keys on the left side compared to 6. It's not a big deal, but it is odd, but I have also realized as games have simplified, there's not really a need for 18 macros for what I do. More keys are handy for image/video editing, so if you need more than 6 macro keys, this may not be the keyboard for you. This seems to suit me and I imagine it would be fine for most gamers, though. Unlike the rest of the keyboard, the macro keys have a textured gray finish on top and are angled to the left so that you know when you're pushing them. I've never really had any problems telling what key I am pressing, but I suppose that's a welcome addition.Like many higher grade keyboards, the K95 Platinum has media control keys that allow you to control your music tracks, volume, and muting. Pretty standard and unlike certain keyboards, blend in well with the overall design. The volume wheel is quite luxurious, but overall, these are nothing to write home about, much like the profile switch and windows lockout keys. These are things that should more or less be standard on any backlit gaming keyboard with macros, so I won't waste too much time on that.The USB passthrough is handy, although it does require a second USB port on the keyboard. If you don't want to use it, you can choose not to plug in the USB connector with the USB marker on it and save a USB port on your computer. It is however, handy, especially if you are using a headset which has a cable that can fit in the underside routing on the bottom of the keyboard. I believe this feature was noticeably absent on some of Corsair's initial RGB offerings, which is probably why it's back on this model...As for the underside cable routing, there are two tracks in an X-shape along the bottom center of the keyboard and two straight lanes on the wrist rest to lead the cable out of. Whoever designed this only designed it for the Corsair Void's non-braided, thin cable. It takes a mighty thin cable to fit in these tracks, and anything that is braided likely won't fit. It's a neat feature, but could have used a little more development put behind it to accommodate more products. As it stands, you might be able to fit a phone charge cable in the tracks, but I could not fit the USB cable for the Logitech G633 headset into these tracks; again, though, the cable for the Corsair Void USB headset fits fine.Corsair includes replacement keycaps and a standard keycap puller for MOBA and FPS gaming in mind. These caps have the same texture as the space bar and the macro keys and are angled in such a way as to bring attention and center your hands in one place. They seem nice and do help in finding keys, but I can't imagine anyone that is an actual professional gamer ever needing them. The keycap puller is a very cheap standard plastic puller, so I would suggest care in removing keys, as this sort of puller can damage the sides of keys if the user is not careful.Software:You need the Corsair Utility Engine to support macros and customize the lighting of the keyboard. The current version, CUE 2, is a godsend compared to the original CUE that Corsair launched a year previously. While CUE 2 still has bugs, more and more of these seem to get ironed out with each new update. The important thing, however, is that CUE 2 is usable by just about anyone. The original CUE software was universally panned as unstable and complicated, issues which Corsair has handled. I say mostly because I do still experience a few crashes, but only when trying to open the software, and there are still issues with upgrading the software itself through the software's built-in upgrade feature. This is important, because I had originally sworn off Corsair products a year prior, because the CUE software would just crash whenever it wanted to--including in the middle of a game. This is no longer the case, though, and there is even a open source alternative if you have problems with the CUE 2 software. I generally find very few issues with the official CUE 2 software though.All in all, you are getting what you pay for with the K95 Platinum. There are a few minor things to consider, but overall you are getting a beautiful looking keyboard with some of the best Cherry MX keycaps for gaming and typing. There are less expensive options, of course, but none of them seem to quite nail it as well as the K95 Platinum.After about 9 months, the keyboard no longer works due to a small (about 1/4 an ounce) spill of water on the keyboard, most of it getting on the wrist rest.I bought this keyboard for general use, I'm a software engineer so I also use it for remote work, and gaming. It's hard to get used to at first, I read a review about another person claiming their keys register more than once or sometimes not at all. At first I believed this to be my case too. However, upon using the keyboard more and getting used to it, I believe this is in fact user error.The keys are extremely sensitive, and resting your fingers on the keys without intending to press them is very difficult. If you're already "pressing" a key, pressing it again (while it is already pressed) will do nothing since it's technically already in a "keydown" state. If you press and hold a key, you'll notice it will continue to type that character many times. However, try pressing and holding a key while in the middle of typing a word. For instance, if I type "dog" and hold down the "o" key, after finishing typing my word nothing will happen and the o key will still be in a "keydown" state. The first "o" was registered, but if I think the key has been through the keydown & keyup cycle and I attempt to press it again, nothing will happen until the o key is released from it's keydown state.Releasing the key but having it remain in the keydown state is way too easy. because the keys are so sensitive you'll press the key and it will seemingly do nothing. Other times you'll release the key, which sends a "keyup" event (effectively a full button press - keydown along with keyup) and then immediately accidentally keydown again. If you aren't used to such sensitive keys it can be easy to dismiss this as a bug, as I almost did. But I was committed to giving it as much of a shot as I could. Eventually I got to the point where these issues seemingly disappeared as I got more familiar with the sensitivity of the keys. Zero of these issues affect me now, and I 100% believe these are user error cases. Again, it's easy to dismiss it as a bug, but technically it is user error.Now, with that out of the way I want to move on to the biggest problem I have with this keyboard. The CTRL key. Now, this could be my fault, but even after getting used to the sensitivity and adjusting, this still happens to me constantly. The ctrl key will break, and will need to be replaced. I've bought additional ctrl keys and even still went through multiple of them (third party here on amazon. the pack also comes with a few other keys) The slot on the bottom for the key to slide into is cheaply made plastic, and I use the ctrl key a lot. I don't always seem to hit the ctrl key directly in the center, evenly distributing the force between left and right, so after a while of it constantly being subject to slightly more/less force on either side, it will weaken and eventually break. I have gone through 5 ctrl keys now, within the time I have used this keyboard. It got to the point where now I use an upside down W key in it's place just to have a reliable ctrl key. I don't apply excessive force on it when I press it either. This is just something I seemingly have to deal with.Into the software of it, I think it could be a lot better than it is. It crashes all the time and constantly bugs out. The mountain of issues I've had with the software mean that I haven't really used it. I just leave it on in the background. It's nice for games like Metro, because the software interacts with the game and your keyboard becomes part of the game, it's actually VERY cool. when it tells you to press a key and that key actually changes color.. it's really, really cool. I imagine there's some API the game uses to accomplish this, since no other game does anything like it. but the games that do support it (such as Metro) really make this keyboard shine (literally).The macros could be improved quite a bit. It seems sort of primitive when it comes to assigning key presses & functionality. You'd think you could make it type a word on the press of a button, and then keep that function (each letter of the word) for use in other macros but it's nothing like that (at least as far as I am aware). I would also think it would be possible to HIGHLIGHT the key being pressed from a macro. so I can see exactly which keys are being pressed, the speed and when it's done but no, this isn't possible (again, as far as I know). which disappointed me greatly. You can have some keys change while the macro is going, but you can't change it mid macro execution. I really wish this were possible but alas..This review has gotten quite long, so I'll try to wrap it up. For gaming, because of the ctrl key issues I had, I'm giving it a 1, especially considering if you aren't used to such sensitive keys as I said before - it can be easy to accidentally press keys you don't intend to. It's comfortable but you can't really rest your fingers on the keys at all.I would say, choose a cheaper keyboard. I don't think its anywhere near worth what I paid for it, and I really wish I'd gotten something more durable. This thing lasted less than a year, replacing my previous keyboard which lasted 10+ years and which I'm writing this review on now since it completely went haywire after an embarrassingly small amount of water spilled on it and almost DESTROYED my work at the time.You know how much money my last keyboard cost? about $10. If a $200+ keyboard can't out last that, something is wrong. I'm almost ashamed of corsair. I have so many of their products and I'm deeply disappointed. I'm not talking about the software - even if I didn't have the software, the keyboard should still function as a keyboard. but it no longer does.***TLDR***choose something less expensive, and more durable. I cannot recommend this keyboard at all. I could only name a few of the issues I had with it throughout this review. It has pros and cons, for me the cons out weigh the pros. for you they might not.I primarily wanted to issue this review because of the attention the other review about "multiple keypresses and unresponsive keypresses". I think it's disingenuous and needed to be addressed, and I think I've done that.I'm currently trying to dry out the keyboard (not that it should even need it) and I'll update this review if it comes back to life. good luck.Cherry MX Brown. Firstly, this is a US layout keyboard, not UK, which is not made clear anywhere in the listing. Says the keys are non-clicky, but they are, and it's certainly not as silent as my old MX Red Silent Strafe Mk1. For gaming it's fine so far as keyboards go. LEDs needs are very watery in their colours, and it's difficult to get a nice colour mix if you want certain shades.TL;DR: Keyboard locks up when using the volume roller, forcing a restart. Very low quality despite looking like a beautiful keyboard. Avoid even at a discount!Let me start this review by saying this is the best looking RGB keyboard I have ever used, with the best implementation of RGB (the light bar truly is nice). However, I believe in functionality as well, which is where this keyboard does abysmally.I am coming from a Logitech G710+, so take this into account: it's not the best, as I'm aware it's still just a "gamer board" and is just cheaply made to maximize profit margins. I'm aware it doesn't hold a candle to enthusiast keyboards, such as the Ducky line, etc.PROSLet me get into the pros of this keyboard: the RGB. That's it. The corsair software (iCUE) is quite customizable, with many different RGB profiles to use. However, it doesn't have in-game effects the way razer does with their SDK integration with games like Overwatch and Rocket League. Thankfully, there are solutions: RETC, and better yet, Aurora, can be used to inject and emulate said SDK functionality, so your Overwatch abilities affect their respective keys when on cooldown, and with Aurora you can even mirror the effects of, say, E to the entire numpad, so it's more visible when it's on cooldown.CONSNow for the cons: everything else. The build quality, the keycaps, the media keys, the volume roller, the feet.This keyboard is aluminum plated, so it feels premium, but it somehow manages to be a lot lighter than my all-plastic Logitech G710+.The feet fold in sideways toward the center of the keyboard, meaning you CANNOT slide the keyboard sideways, otherwise one of the feet will naturally collapse as that's how they're designed to close. They should have been made to collapse toward the front of the keyboard, which is how my G710+ is.The keycaps are HORRENDOUS!!! If you get this keyboard, it is imperative that you also get a good set of keycaps. However, at the price point of this keyboard ($250), it is reasonable to expect the keycaps won't be absolute garbage. But alas, such is the case! Contrary to the product title saying "Tactile and Quiet," The Cherry Mx Brown version of this keyboard is in fact NOT quiet in the slightest. Sure, the switches don't click, but the keycaps clack so loudly that even if the keyboard used Blues, you still probably wouldn't be able to hear them click on top of the incessant loud keycaps bottoming out. O-rings are REQUIRED, and unlike the G710+, this does not come with them. Again, at this price point, it is reasonable to expect it comes with something small like this.The media keys are flimsy and mushy. They feel very cheap and fragile. I’ve nothing good to say about them. I used AutoHotKey to make the PauseBreak key to act as Play/Pause so I wouldn’t have to use this keyboard’s media keys.The volume roller. Oh, the volume roller! This keyboard has a really nice volume roller, which is quite satisfying to use. However, every time I used it, I ran the risk of my keyboard completely going unresponsive! I’ve been able to reproduce this half a dozen times consecutively on clean boots. Whenever it’s being used, there’s a chance for it to start making the volume go in the direction it was going (let’s say up) and there is NOTHING you can do to make it stop. You can use windows volume mixer and drag the slider back down, but it will just continue going back up. Luckily for me I was able to plug in my G710+ and use its volume wheel to go up, then back down to cancel the volume increasing. However, even still, the K95 would remain completely unresponsive. None of its keys or volume wheel would work until you reboot your computer.Now, imagine you’re playing a competitive game and you decide to change the volume. Having your keyboard lock up like this, forcing you to restart, would result in being penalized for leaving the match, risking a ban on your account. This is completely unacceptable, especially for a $250 keyboard! What are you even paying for at this point?Finally, small nitpick: the light bar. It sounds great as a concept, but just once you see its reflection in your monitor you’ll instantly want to turn it off (which thankfully, you can). So what’s the point of a light bar then? It gets in the way. Unless you have a wall mounted monitor that’s so high you won’t see the reflection of the lightbar, there’s no good reason to use it.I cannot recommend this keyboard to anyone, even at a discount. There's no reason to have to put up with a keyboard which can lock up for no reason. Look for a better product. I hear the CoolerMaster MasterKeys Pro L is the best quality "gamer board." I will definitely be looking into that or even a non-gamer board.One of the keys keeps popping up from the first day and the price is overrated compared to other sellersEn mi opinión es el mejor teclado mecánico del mercado, al principio estaba indeciso si comprarlo ya que lo que cuesta no es poca cosa pero después de usarlo durante un tiempo me di cuenta que valía cada peso.Como es costumbre Corsair utiliza materiales de la mejor calidad.En la parte frontal encontraremos una superficie de aluminio cepillado y unas teclas distribuidas de manera perfecta, cada switch tiene su foquito LED individual para que la luz sea distribuida de manera uniforme. Las teclas G estan alineadas y su textura es diferente haciéndolas fáciles de identificar, los botones de perfiles, luz y lock windows son personalizables y no seguirán el efecto de luz que le des a las demás teclas (su color sera estático). En los controles de sonido lo que mas me gusto fue la rueda de volumen que es 100 veces mejor que un botón.La cubierta posterior es de plástico resistente la cual tiene un surco en forma de X para acomodar cables delgados como por ejemplo el del mouse también tiene unas patitas para levantar e inclinar el teclado.A lado del cable tiene una entrada USB.En cuanto a los Cherry MX Speed son silenciosos a diferencia de otros switch y son muy sensibles, en lo personal me tarde un poco en acostumbrarme a escribir sin presionar teclas de mas y me gusta que su sonido no llega a ser tan ruidoso.Incluye teclas extra con textura diferente ya sea para MOBA (QWERDF) o para FPS (WASD), una pequeña herramienta para remover las teclasy un descansa muñecas removible y reversible con 2 texturas diferentes.La aplicación de corsair es poco intuitiva pero esta muy completa, inclusive puedes descargar perfiles personalizados en la pagina de corsair.PROS:• Materiales de calidad.• Antighost.• 6 macros por perfil (3 perfiles).• Cherry MX Rgb.• Descansa muñecas removible.• Diseño.• Teclas multimedia, rueda de volumen.• Puerto USB extra.• 8mb de almacenamiento para perfiles.CONS• No es a prueba de agua.• Solo tiene 1 entrada USB.TIPS:• Para usar el puerto USB tienes que conectar los 2 USB del teclado a tu computadora.• Para usar el teclado en BIOS necesitas presionar F1+Windows lock key.OBS:El teclado no muestra la letra Ñ fisicamente sin embargo esta configurado para que aparezca al presionar la tecla siguiente de la L.El paquete llego en perfectas condiciones en el tiempo especificado y me costó $3,290.