The Corsair Vengeance K70 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard is the answer to customer complaints of the K60. The K70 uses all Cherry MX switches with your choice of Red, Brown, or Blue switches, depending on your tactile feedback preferences. It also has a few features that should interest typists more than gamers, too.
Ever since someone at work let me try their mechanical keyboard, I’ve been hooked. Although I have been using computers for over thirty years, I had forgotten how fun they are to use. A lot of the computers I learned on had mechanical keys, and most of the keyboards today use cheap membrane switches that require a lot of force and feel mushy. Once you get used to a mechanical keyboard, you develop a light touch and your fingers do not hurt after a writing session.
I’ve looked at pure typing solutions by companies such as Ducky, Das,and Unicomp (the makers of the original IBM Model M buckling spring keyboard). During my research, gaming keyboards have come up as serious solutions for typists. For the same price of a quality mechanical-switch keyboard, you get more features and eye candy.
Features
Looks great on your desktop
Not only is the K70 a remarkable gaming keyboard – it looks amazing, too. The brushed aluminum frame is black anodized for an impressive look, and the brilliant red backlighting gives it the unmistakable look of serious gaming machinery.
Designed for performance gaming
Cherry MX Red mechanical key switches provide fast, linear response and low-noise operation. Since the K70 is fully mechanical, you’ll get that response with any key you press. There’s a full key matrix anti-ghosting mechanism for perfect signal quality, and the full key rollover on USB ensures accuracy no matter how fast you play. The aluminum frame is lightweight and durable for hours and hours of intense play.
100% Cherry MX Red, Brown, or Blue Mechanical Key Switches
You get smooth, linear key response for ultra fast double and triple taps without the audible click.
Key-by-Key customizable backlighting
Deep red LEDs with adjustable brightness and key-by-key programmability to light up just the keys you need. It’s great for illuminating your key bindings for each game. It’s saved directly to the K70 onboard memory, so you can take your light maps with you.
Black anodized, brushed aluminum chassis
The K70 frame has a professional-grade look and feel, plus the rugged durability you need for hours of gaming.
100% Anti-Ghosting with full key rollover on USB
Every keystroke translates into exact gameplay—even when multiple keys have been pressed. There’s no signal degradation, and it keeps up with you, no matter how fast you play.
Contoured, textured WASD and 1-6 keycaps
Keep your eyes on the action with easy to locate FPS keys. An extra set of standard typing keycaps and a keycap replacement tool are provided for general typing.
Easy-access dedicated multimedia controls
You don’t just play games – you play music and video, too. Play, stop, pause, skip tracks and adjust volume directly from the K70.
USB pass-through
An extra USB connector is provided. It’s great for attaching a Vengeance gaming mouse or headset.
Soft-touch wrist rest
Give your wrists a break, or take it off if it gets in the way.
The back of the keyboard has a single USB 2.0 port and USB mode switch. The switch has five positions: BIOS, 8, 4, 2, and 1. The BIOS setting is the most compatible with PCs, should you have a problem. The numbers indicate the USB polling rate. 1 is 1000Hz, 2 is 500Hz (1,000Hz divided by 2), 4 is 250Hz (1000 / 4), and of course 8 is 125Hz. Most people will want to leave this at the default setting (mode 1) unless they encounter problems.
The bottom of the K70 has standard back tilt stilts which raises the back of the keyboard to one position. The front of the keyboard has grooves to accept hinges of the include full-length wrist rest. This wrist rest is one of the reasons to upgrade from the K60 to the K70, as the K60 only has a dinky little rest for your left hand (although its hollow cavity can store the spare WASD and number keys). Also on the front of the underside of the K70 are risers that adjust the front tilt of the keyboards.
One feature that the K70 has that most keyboards do not have: front elevation hinges. It really isn’t very ergonomic for your hands to be tilted up. A more natural approach is for your hands to point down, as your arms do.
Of course, when the front tilt has been lifted, the wrist rest compensates. It does make a more oblique angle for your hands.
The layout of the keyboard is almost exactly like that of the K95, but with the omission of profile banks. The top right side of the keyboard has a key lighting mode button, backlight level button and Windows lock key. To the right of this are the familiar num lock , caps lock and Scroll lock indicator lights (which illuminate with white LEDs.
Further right of these is a volume mute button and metal volume wheel, which has a nice texture. Below this volume knob are four media keys: Stop, Back, Play/pause and Forward.
Gaming key caps
The Vengeance K70 comes with replacement key caps for the WASD and 1 through 7 number keys that are most often used with FPS (First Person Shooter) PC games. When properly placed, the keys form a slight curve so the keys are slightly more reachable. The keys also have a different ridged texture and feel a slightly rubberized so your fingers grip a little more.
The model of Vengeance I chose uses Cherry Blue switches and red backlight for each key. The brightness level at 100% illumination is just insane, and is actually enough to read by.
Cherry MX Blue Switches
I chose Cherry Blue switches because they are more natural for typists, and since I intended to use this keyboard for programming and writing, then I wanted the tactile and audio feedback that Blue switches provide. If you work in an area with other people, they may get annoyed because typing on one sounds like someone released a bunch of ping-pong balls in a concrete stairway.
As discussed in our mechanical keyboard overview article, Cherry MX blue switches take the tactile “bump” of the Brown switches when they actuate and add an audible click. Blue switches require additional force (55 grams) to actuate than Red switches (45 grams), but they somehow feel lighter to me. Red switches actuate when the key has been pressed about half-way down (2 millimeters), and have to raise all the way back up before they can actuate again. Blue switches trigger at about 1mm, which produces the tactile bump, and have to raise up a certain amount before actuating again.
I have tried Red, Cherry, and Brown switches and haven’t really had a problem with double-taps with any of them. For me, it’s really about the satisfying tactile response (and how much I want to annoy my co-workers).
My first experience with the K70 was not great. When I do a review, I usually take pictures of the product first (before it gets dust and fingerprints all over it). I plugged the keyboard into my laptop to take photos of the backlighting, and everything seemed great.
When I plugged the keyboard into my main PC to write this review, the keyboard’s backlight shut off and the keyboard became entirely unresponsive, even in the PC’s BIOS or other computers, even after changing the USB polling to BIOS mode.
The keyboard was just dead, before even first use. The keyboard was replaced and (so far) the keyboard is working great. I have read about a few others that experienced a defective keyboard within a few hours of first use, but I’m hoping that these are rare cases. One of the reasons to buy a mechanical keyboard is that they will last for generations, so it is unacceptable for quality control to be so poor that a keyboard just dies or shorts out.
Like the Corsair Vengeance K95, the key lighting mode can be changed between all off, all on, or custom key. If you hold down the backlight mode switch for 3 seconds, then you can tap individual keys that should be backlit. Holding the button again saves this setting to the keyboard’s memory. Unlike the K95, there is only one profile mode, so only one custom mode is saved.
If you hold down the Control key while pressing the backlight mode key, you can change the keyboard so that the backlight of each key lights up for one second after you press it. This isn’t very functional, but is a cool feature to show off to your friends. This mode might appeal to users who like “stealth” keycaps, where there are no markings on the top of the keyboard. It’s an impressive visual that makes the keyboard unique.
The K70 passes the n-key rollover and ghosting test with flying colors. I counted 21 keys on the rollover test, even though the keyboard boasts 20 keys maximum. Another gaming keyboard, the Cooler Master Stealth, only managed 6 key rollover in USB mode, and was within the same price range as the K70. As a matter of fact, most mechanical keyboards have very little difference in price (between $100 to $150), so you might as well get the best one instead of regretting your purchase.
The extra hollow cavity around the arrow keys and Insert/Delete row makes them much easier to feel for, which makes for easier text editing and programming (since I often have to navigate to the beginning and end of text lines)
The way many membrane keyboards are wired means that activation of some keys can block any new ones from registering within the same group. A keyboard that has ghosting issues will not be able to do the “forward crouch reload” (Ctrl + W + R).
You can do an anti-ghosting test on your keyboard right now by holding down both the left and right Shift keys and testing out every key. Type a sentence with all the letters, like “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”. Here are the results as typed:
Corsair K70:
THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG
Crappy integrated notebook keyboard:
TE QUICK BROWN FOX JUO OVER TE LAZY O
The K70 was able to register every key, as every switch is directly wired instead of being arranged in banks of keys. The Corsair K70 passed the ghosting test with flying colors, as do nearly every mechanical keyboard. The keyboard also managed to register 21 consecutive key presses, far above the default 6 keys in USB specifications.
Broken in Mac and Linux
One thing we noticed is that the keyboard’s Caps Lock, NumLock, and Scroll lock LEDs did not work when plugged into a Mac or Linux PC. When we switched the keyboard to BIOS mode via the backplane switch, the CapsLock and NumLock would work, but the ScrollLock LED would blink constantly.
The K70 is recognized as TWO keyboards (HID Keyboard Device) in the Windows Device manager, except when running in BIOS mode. Windows keeps track of the keyboard lock LED states, not the keyboard itself, which is why this does not work for Mac or Linux. You can fix this by putting the keyboard into “BIOS” mode, but then the “Windows” and “context” keys do not work, and the scroll lock LED constantly flashes.
This may or may not be a huge issue to you, as the only time I’ve ever looked at the Caps Lock or Num Lock lights is when troubleshooting failed password attempts.
USB passthrough performance
We tested the file transfer of several flash drives with and without the USB passthrough. Needless to say, the USB drives performed exactly the same, but keep in mind that the port is USB 2.0 so if you plug the passthrough cable into a USB 3.0 port, the port on the back of the keyboard will only use 2.0 speeds. A USB 3.0 flash drive plugged into the K70’s passthrough port will only operate at USB 2.0 speeds (~35 MB/s).
The Corsiar K70 is still one of my favorite keyboards. It has all the features of the K95, but without macro support or multiple profiles. As such, this keyboard does not need software to handle or program the macros, which can be frustrating if you don’t need them.
The K70 also has something the K95 currently does not: a choice in switches. The K70 can be had in Cherry MX Red, Brown, and Blue switches. The Red version is pretty easy to find in stores, but you have to go online to get the other versions. Click here to get the K70 with Cherry Brown switches, or click here to get the K70 with Blue switches.
The K70 also has front tilt, which combined with clicky Blue switches makes this keyboard my favorite for typing.
This keyboard would have easily swept a 5 rating if it weren’t for the Mac and Linux issues.
The keyboard indicator LED issues we had with a Mac is disappointing. This is a Windows-only keyboard and there are caveats when used with other operating systems. For as much as you are spending you should not have to troubleshoot, flash firmware, or do anything other than enjoy your nice keyboard.
One of the reasons you’re buying a mechanical keyboard is for longevity. You plan on having it around for a long time. So why in the world would you choose a keyboard that does not work right in anything other than Windows?
A lot of the issues we had with the Corsair K95 keyboard was its software and macro execution. Just like Bob Marley said: “No Macro, No Cry”… The office Interns informed me the reggae title is actually “No Woman, No Cry”. Maybe it was Abraham Lincoln that said the macro thing.
And I need to find some new Interns.