Corsair Vengeance K60 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
2,553 words · ~12 min read
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Welcome to a much demanded unboxing. This is the Corsair Vengeance K60. So,
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yes, Corsair finally has pretty much a full set of peripherals. They've got
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your speakers, your headphones, your keyboards, and your mice. Actually, I
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have a mouse here, too, but we're not doing that one just yet. Um, so we're
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going to show the keyboard. So, Corsair is all about gaming. We've known this
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from pretty much day one. Uh when when it was just memory and
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then oh wow I'm g I'm know I'm gonna get it wrong when I try and tell you guys
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sort of the order of the categories they expanded into but uh power
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supply and then cases and then cooling
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and then audio. I'm probably missing something.
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Corsair does so many things these days,
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but what is most exceptional about Corsair, in my opinion, is the fact that
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they do pretty much everything well. I can't think of very many Corsair
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products that I've had the opportunity to play around with or to check out that
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I haven't been really impressed by. So, let's go over what are the overall specs
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of this keyboard first. So, this is a mechanical keyboard. You ask pretty much
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any serious gamer or serious typist and they're going to tell you mechanical key
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switches are pretty much a must on any high-end keyboard. So, these are using
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Cherry MX red mechanical key switches. Really, which which mechanical key
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switches feel good to you comes down to the personal preference of the typist
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themselves. Some are louder and some are less loud than others. Um, some have
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sort of a longer travel time to register the keystrokes. Some have a shorter
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travel time. Corsair believes that the red key switches are ideal for gaming.
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So that's why they've used those for this particular uh keyboard. This one,
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this is more of the FPS version of this keyboard. Comes with contoured textured
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WD key caps. So you can see those right here. I'll show you those once we open
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it up. Full key matrix anti- ghosting. So anti- ghosting means that no matter
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what combination of keys you press, you're not going to get any accidental
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uh unintended keystrokes register. This
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can happen with less premium keyboards.
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And uh what what it tends to occur is
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while you are typing quickly and you press two or three keyboards together
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while you're while you're going while you're in the middle of something, it'll actually register an extra keystroke uh
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because of the way that the keyboard is communicating via USB to the computer
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itself. So they've implemented anti- ghosting as well as 20key rollover. So,
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you hear a lot of talk about um how many key rollover. So, what does that mean?
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Uh we've seen up to N key rollover on PS2 keyboards and Corsair says they
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could actually implement N key rollover with USB on this particular keyboard
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which is a very neat feature. Um however, they went with 20 because the
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reality of it is unless you're operating your keyboard like with your ARM and
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your face, you're probably not going to press more than 20 keys at a time. So,
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what that rollover spec means is how many
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keys you can hold down. Hold on, let's
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see how many I can press at a given time
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before they will stop registering each
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new one that you press down. So, for gamers, it's fairly common to be holding
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down shift and tab and jumping. And I I
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don't know, maybe you're playing like an older style game and maybe you're actually using these for uh you know,
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your jump and your crouch or something. And then this is you're moving around, maybe you're playing a 2D sidescroller.
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It's fairly common for a gamer to hold down eight or more keys at a time. Uh
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whereas the normal uh the normal rollover for like cheaper keyboards does
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not allow you to necessarily have every one of those keystrokes be registered.
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So that's why that's an important feature. What else we got here? So the
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contoured texture WD key caps. I'll show you those in a minute. They're right
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here. I haven't forgotten. Full key matrix um anti- ghosting. Yep. Multiple
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key presses won't jam you up. Lets every keystroke get through. Professional
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grade brushed aluminum chassis with laser edge keys. Love that. I'll show you guys that closely. Uh soft cushioned
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contoured wrist rest and I'll show you that in a minute as well. I just want to
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make sure that I do not forget anything here because this is a keyboard that uh
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a lot of people have requested that I take a look at. So I don't want to miss
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anything. So here is the wrist rest. So what makes this the more FPSoriented
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product versus the K90 which is more of
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the MMO oriented product? And I will show you guys what makes it that this
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guy is all about comfort when you're using your left hand to game,
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which here we go. Is facilitated by things like this
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wrist rest guy right here, which I'm just going to try to figure out how to
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put back together because I actually do not know.
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There we go. Okay. And this guy goes under here. So, it's got a bit actually
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I'll show you this first. So, it's got like a soft kind of rubberized feely
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thing here with uh see this little dimply surface. I guess that's to help
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keep uh sweat from accumulating and making the surface slippery, which is
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kind of nice. This part's hard plastic as well as this part right here. This
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serves as a carrying case for the keys that you are not using at any given
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time. And then there are latches right on the bottom here. I'll show you those once I've got it attached here that
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allow you to put this right here so that your hand rests comfortably right here
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for gaming. The MMO version of the keyboard has a bunch of buttons over
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here which the FPS version doesn't have. And the MMO version doesn't come with
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this rest which is designed especially for FPS gamers whose mouse hands are
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over here and whose keyboard hands sit right here. It can be quite easily
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attached and detached. So, you just pull it off like that. And I'm just going to
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show you guys the spot on the bottom where it goes. Just like that. While I'm
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on the bottom here, I'll show you guys what you've got in terms of adjustable
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feet for your comfort. So, you can raise up your keyboard a little bit. You can
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slant your keyboard this way if you want. You can slant your
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keyboard this way if you want. And if you're not using any of the feet, you've
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got four rubber feet here, as well as two rubber feet here to keep the
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keyboard from slipping around. although it's quite heavy, so I don't think you're going to have too many problems
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with it moving around unintentionally. Comes with a 2-year warranty. I just
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want to show you guys the included um
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connectors. So, we've got the keyboard USB as well as the built-in hub
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USB. So, the hub has your Oh, looks like
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it's just the one. Okay. So, that's where you plug in your
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mouse. All right. So, let's uh Yeah,
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let's have a look at these keys here. So, what you want to do is you take your
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included key remover, which was in here. I don't know if you guys saw me take
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that out. And you just pull off the keys like this. You can clearly see the
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cherry red switches, so named for their red color. All right. And then you just
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go ahead and take your contoured rubberized keys and you replace your WD.
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Now, check this out. This is what they mean by
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contoured. Each one of these keys is actually Oh, shoot. I just installed
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that one upside down. That's the thing about S is it's hard to tell which way
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it is intended to be oriented. So there you go. Put those on like that. So now
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you can very easily feel without looking. Can you see from that angle how
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these are actually uh curved towards the center? There you go. Yeah, now you can
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see that. So these are contoured. So you can very easily feel which are your WD
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keys and which ones are not. And the same goes actually for the number keys
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up here. You can see that one is actually curved the opposite way
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from six. So, this could actually be very useful for MMO gamers as well. So,
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when you're looking for that particular potion, you can easily feel up here. Oh,
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okay. Which one is it? Oh. Oh, that. Okay, that's too far. That's my number
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six belt spot or whatever the case may be. So, that's kind of a neat feature.
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Um, let's have a look at the overall layout. They haven't done anything that
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I would consider to be a cardinal sin here. long shift keys, long backspace
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key, and full-sized enter key. I am just
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it kills me to see otherwise awesome keyboards like say for example the 7G
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with something like a short backspace key. Great for gaming. Um not ideal for
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typists who have small hands like myself because I can barely reach this. I
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definitely can't reach that while keeping my fingers on the keys. Now,
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something a lot of people have sort of made, I think, um, an inordinate amount
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of fuss about with this keyboard is the fact that it is not fully mechanical.
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That's right. So, these keys, this whole
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block is mechanical. These ones are mechanical. That means they use the
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Cherry MX switches. So, those are the expensive type switches. And the number
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keys are all mechanical. However, the F keys as well as these keys are non-
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mechanical. Now, one thing I would like to see Corsair change around if they
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ever do a Rev 2 is I would like to see the delete key and the escape keys be
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mechanical. But honestly, for all this stuff up here and the insert homepage
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up, it doesn't make that much of a difference. You know, you can actually hear the difference in mechanical keys.
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So, check this
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out. I'm hitting those with exactly the same force. This gives me a much more
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sort of satisfying response versus something like that. It feels more
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spongy. That's because it's not a mechanical key switch. So up here we've
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got a Windows key lock. We've also got our number caps and scroll lock
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indicator LEDs. We've got media functions. So we've got stop, back,
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play, pause, as well as forward. There's your volume wheel. I love the way
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they've implemented this. It's very very nice to to touch. As well as a mute
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key. Um, you know what? We're we're not going to be able to do this video
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without plugging this thing in because it has an awesome blue LED backlight
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which looks fantastic off of the brushed aluminum base. So, what Corsair's done
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here, as you can see, the entire keyboard is going to be super easy to
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clean. You just use a can of dust off because instead of leaving little
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recesses, actually, I'm going to pull out my uh my 7G here again to show you
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guys. Instead of having all these little recesses in here that you can't clean
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things out of very easily, Corsair has given you full access to the entire
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inner workings of the keyboard. You can actually pull almost every key off and
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easily uh get any sort of dust or hair or anything that accumulates in it out
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of it. So, that's kind of neat as well. It also gives it kind of a really cool
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look. I love the brushed aluminum finish here. Have you had a good look at that yet? You have. Okay, good. Let's see if
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I've missed anything else in terms of spec. uh gaming rest with soft touch
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surface, 10 user installable sculpted FPS keys. So yeah, that included WD as
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well as the 126 numbers. And uh don't
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forget you can store all of those keys inside this handy rest little labeled
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spots as well as your spot for the key installer and uninstaller. Windows lock
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Cherry MX. Um if you're interested in the specs of the Cherry MX red
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mechanical key switches, there you go. They do have gold contacts and they're rated for 50 million operations. So,
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yes, this keyboard will last you a very, very, very long time. So, let's go ahead
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and drag it over to a computer so that I can plug it into a USB port and show you
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guys how wicked this thing looks when you actually plug it in. So, it looks
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like I was mistaken. The K60 does not have the backlight. The K90 does. The
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only one I've actually used so far is the K90. So, uh, yeah, I've sort of
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misremembered which one had which. But either way, I think that pretty much
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concludes it. I think we're done with the K60 here. Thank you for checking out
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my unboxing and first look at the Corsair Vengeance K60 FPS gaming
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keyboard. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos. And
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now that I've actually used both of them, I would have to say that if it came down to it, I would probably choose
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the K90 with the backlight. Oops. With the backlight as
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well as the additional programmable buttons on the left hand side, uh versus
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the K60. Even though the K60 is less expensive, they'll both provide a very
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good typing experience. They've both got the laser etched keys which are never
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going to wear out no matter what because those letters are etched right into the
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key caps themselves rather than being something that can be worn off.
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Actually, a perfect example is if you check out uh this 7G over
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here, over here where you can clearly see which
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keys get used a lot more or less than the other ones. Yeah, that's pretty
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obvious. So, you can see all of the numbered keys are much less bright than
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this Steel Series logo right here. So, don't forget to subscribe to Lest Tech
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for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer