Linus Tech Tips coverage of CES 2014 is brought to you by ncx.com, your source
for great technology, selection, and service along with Corsair Memory and
Western Digital. This, you guys, is not
your average Corsair K70 keyboard. This
is the world's first fully RGB backlit
mechanical keyboard featuring Cherry MX
switches. Now, you might say to me, Lionus, we have tons of RGB backlit
keyboards. Why would we care about mechanical? In which case, I would direct you to any of the other videos
that we've ever made about why mechanical keyboards are vastly superior
and particularly Cherry MX is a favorite of all the staff here at Linus Tech
Tips. So, you cannot replicate the quality, at least from what we've tried
in the past, with other differently branded switches. It just doesn't really
happen. and they're still manufactured in Germany and there's not much stuff you can say that about these days. All
right, so onto this keyboard. First up, well, okay, it's RGB back lit. Second
up, what I was kind of expecting to see was programmable backlighting, and you
could just kind of change the full backlight to any color, maybe like a WD
zone to go along with one of the other zones or something like that. What we
got is probably one of the most complex
um one of the most complex keyboards ever. I mean, they're actually using a
digital signage processor from Panasonic. The first time this has ever
been implemented in a consumer-grade device in order to drive what is
effectively an LED display. I mean, that's what this processor is for. It's
for digital signage, large format LED displays, and that's what we're looking
at here. So, I've seen 16.8 8 million color RGB back lit keyboards that really
when you tinker around with them and you configure all the settings in the in the
you know the color dials is probably more like 256 colors that is not the
case here. We have an extremely wide variety. We've also got Okay. All right.
Let's talk about the LED reliability. So, you've got all these colors and one
of the things that I was really concerned about when I first heard about this keyboard was you see you see LEDs
die. I have a K90 that's got a dead LED on it. It's like, yeah, okay, it still
works just fine. The key switch works, but it's not perfect anymore, and that
doesn't make me happy. So, what I was informed of is that they're using a
completely different method of mounting the LEDs in order to dramatically
increase reliability. Now, the way that LEDs on keyboards apparently usually die
is actually from ESD, so electrostatic discharge. And by mounting the LEDs
within the key switch rather than to the
PCB of the keyboard, you can virtually
eliminate that. So in spite of the fact that the LEDs are much more complex, we
should still be looking at a situation where it's very difficult for them to
fail even over an extended period of time. Now, in terms of lighting
patterns, Corsair has pretty much everything under the sun. You can do
your standard, you know, wave or breathing or fully lit here or color
zones or individual colors on each key
or you can have, you know, reactive uh reactive fadeins and fade outs and you
can adjust the timing of that or like, you know, laser beams frigin zapping
across the thing. And they have a very complex piece of software that's going
to launch at the same time of this as this keyboard that's going to allow you to configure a lot of that stuff. Don't
worry, there will be like an easy beginner's mode for just like, well, I
just want an orange keyboard. Can't I just have that? No one's ever made an orange LED back lit keyboard before. Why
can't I have that? If you want that, then that's still just fine. Or you can
do some of the more advanced stuff. Or because they're keeping the software
architecture open, you can even code your own way of lighting up the keyboard
and have it do whatever you could possibly want. You can share that with
friends. And Corsair is encouraging the modding community to just kind of take
charge and run away with it if that's what they want to do. In addition to
being fully programmable in terms of the lighting, every single key on the
keyboard is fully programmable. We've seen this with uh uh Steeler's latest
Steel Series Engine software, and it's something that I'm personally very
excited about. I think it's great. So, not only could you remap one to seven if
you wanted to, you could remap it to uh control 7. So, you can do macros, you
can do straight remappings, whatever you want. Every key on the keyboard can be
changed into something else if you prefer it that way. Now, of course, the
question you're going to be asking me now is Lionus, how many hundreds of
dollars am I going to have to pay for it? And Corsair
is being very wishy-washy about it. They won't tell me a straight price. I was
like, okay, tell me this. Is it 200? Is it 250? and they said, "Okay, we won't
tell you, but we will tell you that there are RGB backlit membrane keyboards
that will cost more than this, which to
me means under 200. Although, I could be wrong, but I hope I'm right. Cuz if this
comes in around 150 to 170, I think it
is a knockout punch to pretty much anyone who is not delivering such an
advanced LED backlit mechanical keyboard. It's going to be available in
red switches, black switches, and no, not black switches, red switches, brown
switches, and blue switches at the start. And uh so that addresses one of
my other complaints about Corsair keyboards, and that's that they seem to always lead with red. And I'm more of a
brown guy. So there you go, guys. If you have always wanted an Easter themed
keyboard, Corsair will be delivering it sometime this year. Don't miss any of
our CES 2014 coverage here, guys. Our trip to the show is powered by ncx.com,
your source for great technology selection and service, as well as our
other sponsors, Corsair, which has nothing to do with why I'm raving about
this keyboard. If you guys will notice, I was actually raving about this before
I'd even seen it yet because I was super excited, and a Western Digital. Big
thanks to those guys for allowing us to be