Corsair K70 PRO TKL Keyboard Review

The Corsair K70 PRO TKL has a compact tenkeyless layout. It doesn't take up quite as much space as a full-size keyboard as it's missing a Numpad.

It also comes with a wrist rest that attaches magnetically. The above measurements are without the wrist rest attached. With the wrist rest, the keyboard weighs 2.25 lbs (1.15kg)

The Corsair K70 PRO TKL has good overall build quality. The chassis is made of plastic, and the switch plate is aluminum. The entire deck feels very sturdy and doesn't exhibit any flexing.

Unfortunately, the keycaps on the model we bought are made of ABS plastic. ABS keycaps feel a bit cheap and tend to develop a shiny, slightly slippery finish after prolonged use. However, you can choose to buy this keyboard with PBT keycaps instead, which are higher quality, more durable, and slightly textured.

There are foam inserts under the spacebar which do help minimize the hollow feeling some spacebars exhibit.

Four rubber strips on the underside that do a good job of keeping the board from sliding around on your desk.

This keyboard also includes a leatherette wrist rest, which is fairly soft but provides good support.

This keyboard has a fairly tall standard profile. Thankfully, it comes with a wrist rest that attaches magnetically. It provides good support and ensures you don't have to bend your wrists steeply upwards to reach the keys while using it.

This keyboard also provides an additional incline setting with a pair of flip-out feet on the underside.

The Corsair K70 PRO TKL offers okay hardware customizability. None of the switches are soldered to the PCB, so it's technically hot-swappable. However, Corsair doesn't sell replacement CORSAIR MGX Hyperdrive switches, and to our knowledge, other Hall effect switches on the market aren't compatible with this keyboard.

The PCB has north-facing LEDs, and the switches are installed north-facing out of the box. Due to this north-facing orientation, there is a possibility of interference with some aftermarket sets of Cherry MX profile keycaps.

While you can rotate the switches 180 degrees into a south-facing orientation this significantly impacts backlight clarity for the shine-through keycaps. It can also affect actuation accuracy and may potentially damage the PCB, so we don't recommend it.

This keyboard has full RGB backlighting with individually backlit keys. You can customize the lighting directly on the keyboard using hotkey combinations or the configuration software.

The Corsair K70 PRO TKL's backlight clarity is outstanding, and the shine-through legends are very legible without any major obstructions. The white-only setting is also very clear, though it leans a little on the colder side with a slight blue tint.

This keyboard has a detachable, braided USB-C cable with a Corsair logo on each connector. Unfortunately, the cable does retain some kinks from its packaging.

This is a wired-only keyboard.

In the top right corner of the Corsair K70 PRO TKL, there are a set of two buttons and one rotary knob.

• The button on the left activates a Gaming Mode profile, which toggles several combined settings for optimal gaming performance. These include static backlighting, Win lock, and actuation settings that you can customize using the software.
• The middle button controls media playback by default and can be further customized in software.
• The rotary dial on the right controls media volume by default. You can also use it to adjust backlighting, scroll horizontally through web content, or zoom in on certain applications.

There are LED indicators for Caps Lock and Scroll Lock on the left side of the keyboard, next to the F1 key.

This keyboard is compatible with Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S consoles out of the box, and there's a shortcut for activating a PlayStation mode for connecting your keyboard to a Sony PlayStation 4 or 5.

When you're not actively using the software, or you've connected your keyboard to a device that doesn't support the iCUE configuration software (such as a game console), the keyboard has a shortcut-activated hardware mode that allows you to make simplified changes to settings such as backlighting or actuation point presets.

For a full list of supported shortcuts for compatibility modes, media controls, polling rate adjustment, backlighting, and actuation presets, see an online version of the user manual on Corsair's website.

• Wrist rest
• Braided USB-C cable
• User documentation

The Corsair K70 PRO TKL provides a good overall typing experience. The keys have normal spacing, and the keycaps have a standard OEM profile. 

There's some key wobble and minor stabilizer rattle, particularly on the Backspace key, which feels under-lubbed. That said, these issues aren't particularly noticeable while typing. Unfortunately, the keycaps on the unit we bought are made of ABS plastic which feels a bit cheap. This keyboard is also available with PBT keycaps, which generally have a better, slightly textured feel and aren't prone to getting slippery over time, a common issue for ABS keycaps.

There are a layers of sound dampening material inside the case that make it a bit quieter compared to the similar Corsair K70 MAX. However, these layers don't do much to dampen the feeling of bottoming out your keystrokes, which can be an issue if you're a heavy typist.

This keyboard's typing noise is quiet, and it's unlikely to bother those around you, even in noise-sensitive environments.

The majority of the switches on the Corsair K70 PRO TKL are CORSAIR MGX Hyperdrive Hall effect switches. However, 23 switches (including the entire function row, navigation cluster, and arrow keys) are CORSAIR MLX Plasma linear switches, which are conventional mechanical switches that do not support adjustable actuation. See an image of all Hall effect switches highlighted.

We've also recorded a stem wobble video for the CORSAIR MLX Plasma linear switches.

You can change or adjust the actuation point of the CORSAIR MGX Hyperdrive switches between 0.1 mm and 4.0 mm using the configuration software.

For this test, we used an actuation point setting of 0.1 mm with a Rapid Trigger setting of 0.1 mm. However, the actual measured actuation point at this setting was closer to 0.3 mm.

For reference, we measured additional actuation point settings below:

Setting 0.5 mm: actuation 0.88 mm
Setting 1.0 mm: actuation 1.19 mm
Setting 1.5 mm: actuation 1.65 mm
Setting 2.0 mm: actuation 2.13 mm
Setting 2.5 mm: actuation 2.58 mm
Setting 3.0 mm: actuation 3.06 mm
Setting 3.5 mm: actuation 3.52 mm
Setting 4.0 mm: actuation 3.64 mm

The actuation settings are generally very accurate, with minor inaccuracies at the very lowest and highest actuation settings.

The Corsair K70 PRO TKL has outstanding single-key latency, offering an extremely responsive experience for gaming in any genre at any competitive level.

We conducted this test using the following settings:

• Gaming Mode: On
• Polling rate: 8000Hz
• Actuation: 1.0 mm
• Rapid Trigger: 0.1 mm (downstroke) and 0.1 mm (upstroke)

Using Game Mode overrides any custom actuation distance settings and locks the actuation distance to 1.0 mm, but Rapid Trigger remains enabled and adjustable. For more details and supplementary measurements with Game Mode off, see our text in the Multi-Key Latency section.

The Corsair K70 PRO TKL delivers remarkably good multi-key latency performance, making it well-suited for playing any game that requires additional keystrokes while multiple keys are pressed and maintained.

We conducted this test using the following settings:

• Gaming Mode: On
• Polling rate: 8000Hz
• Actuation: 1.0 mm
• Rapid Trigger: 0.1 mm (downstroke) and 0.1 mm (upstroke)

Enabling Game Mode overrides any custom actuation distance settings and locks the actuation distance to 1.0 mm, but Rapid Trigger remains enabled and adjustable.

For reference, we also performed extra testing with Game Mode Off. We've opted to use the Game Mode results for scoring as this mode provides the most balanced latency performance. Keeping Game Mode disabled produces marginally lower press latency if you set the actuation distance to 0.1mm, but this comes with a cost of significantly more release latency.

This keyboard can send multiple keys per USB report and supports full N-key rollover by default.

It also has an effective update rate of 8000Hz, so it doesn't suffer from a performance bottleneck and can take advantage of the maximum 8000Hz polling rate.

This keyboard offers decent overall chord split performance. However, its slightly higher-than-typical 4-chord split delay makes it less ideal for rhythm games or other titles that require precise registration of multiple simultaneous key presses.

The software is easy to use but can be a bit overwhelming if you aren't used to analog gaming keyboards. It allows you to customize a range of expected settings, including macros, backlighting effects, and polling rate, among others.

You can save your custom settings to the keyboard's onboard memory, so you don't have to have the software running in the background.

The Key Actuations section of the software lets you customize switch behavior, including actuation and reset points. Note that only the highlighted keys are adjustable.

This section also includes more advanced analog key settings, detailed below.

Secondary Actuation Point: Allows you to program a second action to a single key that will trigger depending on actuation distance

Rapid Trigger: This setting can dynamically adjust actuation and reset points. This allows for faster follow-up inputs, which can be especially beneficial in scenarios like counter-strafing in FPS games.

Flashtap (SOCD): Specifies a pair of two keys with custom trigger behavior along three possible parameters: 1) Last priority, where your last input is always prioritized. 2) Neutral, where neither key activates when both are triggered at the same time. 3) First priority, where the first key always overrides the other.

Disclaimer: Using this setting may be disallowed in some competitive online games, such as CS:2.

This keyboard is fully compatible with all major operating systems.

In Windows, all default key functions work as expected. In macOS, there is a compatible software version, and several keys behave a bit differently. Namely, the PrtSc key acts as an 'F13' key, the F11 key minimizes the active window, and the Pause and ScrLk keys increase and decrease screen brightness, respectively.

For Linux, all but default key functions work as expected, but there's no compatible software.