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Well, you guys asked for it and this is the big brother to the K60, the Corsair

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Vengeance K90 keyboard. Now, I made a mistake. I would say a fairly fairly

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large mistake when I was doing my unboxing of the K60. And I said at the

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time, although I corrected it by the end of the video, I said at the time that I

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thought the K60 had blue backlighting. I

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was wrong because I thought both the K60

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and the K90 had blue backlighting. And my only experience with these keyboards

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at all up to that time had been with the

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K90. So now when I talk about the wicked

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awesome individually backlit keys, I

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will be correct because the K90 is a

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gorgeous looking keyboard in the dark

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with its beautifully individually backlit keys. So something else to bear

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in mind about the backlight is that it does shine through these laser etched

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numbers which are not printed. That's

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right, they are etched. So that means that no matter what, no matter how many

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times you press on any key on this keyboard, it will always stay well

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illuminated and distinctly numbered or

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lettered according to how the manufacturer intended. Okay, so let's

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get the keyboard out. We got a warranty guide here, which is going to tell us

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some little something about our uh probably 2-year warranty, I believe. And

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yeah. Okay. You know what? I'll I'll I think the packaging for Corsair usually

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Yeah, there we go. It's a 2-year warranty. Okay, so 2-year warranty. We've got a quick start guide, which

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probably pretty much Oh, that's great. Full color illustration of plug the

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things into the thing. Also, download the software um for managing your macro

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profiles and whatnots from Corsair.com/vvengeance

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K90. All right, so that's all pretty self-explanatory. What else we got in

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here? We have a wrist rest. Wrist rests

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can make or break a keyboard. And uh one

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of the ways they make a keyboard is by being shaped and well and supporting

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your wrist in a in a fashion that is uh you know good. U and one of my favorite

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wrist rests of all time is actually on the Steel Series 7G which is also a

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mechanical keyboard like this one. More on mechanical in a bit. Um and the way

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that they can usually break a keyboard is by breaking.

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And that often comes down to the mechanism employed by the manufacturer

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to attach the wrist rest to the keyboard, which is usually just, you

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know, a couple of little metal tabs. Although these ones seem to be fairly

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wellb built. I can put a lot of pressure on them. They're not going anywhere. So

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Corsair has uh sort of seen that

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probably in action. I mean, their guys are I've met a lot of the Corsair team

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and they're total enthusiasts. So they've probably encountered uh wrist

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rest breakage in the past. Actually, my own G15 has uh has a broken wrist rest,

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which is uh one of the reasons that it's no longer in service. So, what they did

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is they went, "Okay, let's one up the rest of the industry and let's put,

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check this out, thumb screws, which you

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can also screw in with a Phillips head screwdriver, which might actually be easier based on my experience with my

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fingers here. Um, thumb screws in the sides to make sure Also, oh, look at

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this. Look at this. So it keeps it from going too far here, okay, with the shape

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of this lip. And then keeps it from coming up too far once again with this

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rather than putting all the pressure on these little plastic clips which no

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matter how well you build them are prone to breaking. So way to go Corsair for

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seeing what everyone else is doing and seeing why it was wrong and fixing it

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with a, you know, three cent piece of metal. Excellent. Love it. Okay. Well,

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actually, you know what? Why don't we finish up on the bottom here before we go? See, look at that. I accidentally

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like went too far and it's fine. Uh, we've got a couple of these little

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height adjust tilt adjusty dudes. We've got one, two, three, four, five, six,

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seven rubber non-slip grippy feet. Um,

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some experts believe that it the use of any keyboard may cause serious injury,

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so like be careful and stuff. All right, let's flip this back over. So, I think

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we're done with the underside of the keyboard. Why don't we go ahead and I'll

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show you guys the pass through here. So, this be okay here. So, it's labeled with

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two arrows. That means pass through. That's the one that actually runs the keyboard. So, it's a pass through, which

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means that this is a fully powered and fully speeded USB 2.0 port because

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there's no actual uh hub splitting going on inside the keyboard. So you go ahead,

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you plug your mouse in there or you plug your mouse directly into the back, you plug a USB key in there, it's all going

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to work just fine. So yes, mechanical keyboards. This is a mechanical

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keyboard. At least uh most of the keys commonly used for typing are mechanical.

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So the only keys on this keyboard that are not mechanical are these ones right

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here, the macro keys. Part of the reason that Corsair opted to go with a regular,

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well, now these days it's a regular um dome switch key for these guys is

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because they wanted them on a different uh plane than the main keyboard. So, see

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how these are quite a bit lower down than the rest of the keyboard.

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This is actually for a very interesting reason. Now, if you've ever owned a G15,

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I have a G15 Gen1, which was kind of the first keyboard to really do the whole uh

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matrix of of programmable keys over here, you've probably pressed this key

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instead of your escape any number of times. So, you go for escape, you go,

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"Oh, oh, why isn't escape working?" So, that was why they went and they put

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these down lower so that you can easily tell when you're operating the keyboard

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when you reach the edge of the real keyboard and the beginning of the macro

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keys. So, that's very cool. You've got three profiles for these. So, you've got

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18 keys times three profiles right there. And you can manage that using the

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Corsair software. Um, you know, actually another thing we haven't quite finished

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up with yet is the wrist rest. So, it uses like a rubberized dimpled feel.

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Actually feels very nice. It's like more it's like a soft touch type material.

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Um, yeah. Yeah, quite nice and should be

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fairly durable just based on how deep the dimples are. So, it should maintain

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that textured surface, which I think is great for gaming gear because if you're

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going to sit there and use it for a long time, a lot of the time you can get sweat on it, which means that if it has

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those recesses, then you'll still maintain that that slight grippyiness

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even in the presence of palm moisture.

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So, yeah, that's good. Uh, what else?

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Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, mechanical. So, mechanical keys. Ah, everything but

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these guys. The F keys all along the top

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here. And then this block of keys right here. These are mechanical. These are

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all mechanical.

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Can you hear the difference?

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Okay. So, the reason Corsair opted for partially mechanical is because all of

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the typing, all of the actual typing surfaces are going to give you that that

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typing feedback that a lot of people do desire. And then the other ones that are

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very much less frequently used, things like, you know, escape and F9 and page

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up and page down are not mechanical. The number pad is the arrow keys are. Uh

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let's have a look at some of the other functionality here. So we've got our media keys. So there's your volume

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scroll wheel. This is one of the better implemented volume scroll wheels I've seen in the past. Got that nice This is

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not a sticker. This is an actual texture to the uh to the wheel. So it's very

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nice. Mute button, stop, back, pause, forward. Uh there are your LED

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indicators of your uh number lock, caps lock, and scroll lock. You got a Windows

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disable key and backlight control. Yes, this one actually does have a backlight.

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Uh mechanical keys. Let's see if I can take one of these off fairly easily.

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Uh how about this one? No. Okay.

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Apparently, there we go. Okay. So, these are Cherry MX red keys. Um the actual

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preferences uh vary dramatically from

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person to person what kind of keys they prefer. Um

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so really the solution is probably to try them. Uh, very shortly we're

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actually going to have Corsair keyboards in pretty much every NCX store for you

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guys to just sit in front of them and play around with them a little bit

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because all mechanical keys, whether they're browns, blacks, blues, reds, I

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think there's even a clear one, but those are a lot less common, do have a

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slightly different feel, a slightly different sound. Um, Corsair determined

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that for their purposes, the reds were the most desirable for as a balance

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between gaming and typing. Another thing that you're going to see here next to

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the uh red mechanical switch right there is actually one of the things that's I

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do like about them though is they're fairly quiet um compared to some of the

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other mechanical keys uh is that is your blue light. And so every single key has

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one of those lights and it not only illuminates the key but also kind of the

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area around it on the aluminum uh

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backboard that is part of this keyboard. So, one of the things you might notice

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about it, if you see here, is there's actually quite a bit of space under the

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keys, uh, between the actual the the

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rigid back plane and the keys themselves. This makes it a little bit

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easier to clean and it also gives it kind of a unique look. I've never seen a

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keyboard where they've done this before because every keyboard does have a back

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plane like this. Sorry, I'm still a little sick. um that

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the keys are attached to, but most of them cover it up with something which

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often leads to the accumulation of dust and dirt and doesn't really serve any

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other real purpose. A couple things I haven't talked about yet, although I did

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talk about them in my K60 overview, are the uh full matrix uh full key matrix

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anti- ghosting, which just basically means no matter how fast you type, no

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matter what combinations of letters you press, you're not going to accidentally

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register any additional uh additional letters or anything like that. This is

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more of a software feature. It's built into the software, the keyboard to make

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sure that everything is registered correctly over USB because USB does on

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some keyboards that don't implement these features, USB does have some

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limitations. Another one of the limitations of USB is that typically you

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can only press, I believe it's six keys at a time. So 1 2 3 4 5 six and the last

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one will not be registered at all. Um what Corsera has done is they've given

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you up to 20 keys. So that's a 20 key rollover where you can actually yes

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press 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 like you can press 20

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keys before it will actually stop registering keystrokes which is pretty

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much uh the practical limit of actually I'd say that's above the practical limit

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of how many keys most people can press at a given time. I just want to make

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sure there's nothing I've missed here. You guys can actually I never even showed you guys the box really. So,

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there's Corsair's look at it. Uh, fully customizable profiles, 36 kilobytes of

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onboard memory. Sounds like a really old computer. Hey, I bet I bet if you showed

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this to someone, you're like, "Yeah, it's got 36K of memory on a keyboard."

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They'd be like, "Oh, that's crazy." Um,

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sorry, I digress. Uh, yeah. Yeah. Last thing I want to do is I do want to plug

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this in for you guys and I'm going to turn off the lights in here. So, I'm

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just going to go ahead and run this around to the back of my test bench

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here. And we're going to plug that into We're going to plug that into a USB 3

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port just for giggles. So, you guys so I can say it's USB3 compatible. Woo. Okay.

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And then, you know what? Here, I'll show you guys in the light first. There you go. Has just a beautiful, beautiful back

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lit look because not only are the keys illuminated, but you also see a very

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distinct glow behind the keys themselves. Remember guys, here uh let's

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pan around and have a look at the lights we've got in here. So yeah, and the

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other side. So this is in my uh my little Tech Tips filming room here. And

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that is how much you can still see the blue. So I'm going to go ahead and I'm

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going to turn these lights off. One, two, three. And you'll see how much

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that's going to stand out in the dark. This is one of the strongest backlights that I've seen on a gaming keyboard yet.

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And as I said before, one of the most striking looking because of the

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individually backlit keys and the way that the um the backboard for the

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keyboard itself is a little bit further away. So it gives it a bit more room for

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the glow to spread out. Just looks outstanding in the dark. So I think that

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pretty much covers it here. I'll turn one of these back back on just so you

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can see me again. Uh thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look

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at the Corsair Vengeance K90. Don't forget to subscribe to Lest Tech Tips

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