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)
