The K70 Pro TKL features a brushed-aluminum top plate on a plastic chassis that measures 1.1 by 14.4 by 5.2 inches (HWD). This has the benefit of making the keyboard relatively lightweight without feeling flimsy. The rear-left side of the chassis has a port for a detachable USB-C cable, and the board is limited to wired connectivity, with no Bluetooth or 2.4GHz support.
A couple of nice touches include the magnetic wrist rest that ships with the keyboard and the raised switches, which make it easy to clean out any debris that might collect under your keycaps. The overall design and aesthetics of the keyboard are clean and inoffensive, but the K70 isn’t intended to be disassembled, making modding or repairs difficult.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
The $179.99 base configuration of the K70 Pro TKL comes with ABS doubleshot keycaps. You can upgrade to PBT keycaps for an additional $10. The layout is fairly standard compared with other tenkeyless designs. It excises the number pad while keeping the function row intact, along with a small grid of navigation keys. Above the navigation keys, you’ll also find a pair of raised, plastic buttons and a single metallic dial.
By default, the rotary dial controls volume on your PC, but it can also perform several secondary functions that you can toggle via the iCue software that I’ll discuss in more detail below. These are limited to brightness control, horizontal/vertical scrolling, and zoom. You can cycle through each function by pressing the Function and F12 keys simultaneously. While it’s nice to have some additional utility packed into this particular feature, I would have preferred a different selection of functions.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
A pair of additional buttons flank the dial on the left side—one with the iCue logo and the other with a speedometer. The iCue button serves as a play/pause button for media playback, while the speedometer enables gaming mode, which swaps to a custom profile with different settings.
The inclusion of Hall effect switches enables the K70 Pro TKL to incorporate several gamer-centric features commonly found in other contemporary high-end gaming keyboards, including the Asus ROG Falcata, the Logitech G Pro X TKL Rapid, and the Inzone KBD-H75. The most important are analog inputs and dual actuation, which allow for variable, per-key actuation points and the ability to map multiple inputs to a single key based on the actuation distance.
While it isn’t a novel inclusion, the Hall effect switches on the K70 Pro TKL also support Corsair’s version of Razer’s Rapid Trigger function, dubbed FlashTap. Each keyboard maker has a different name for this feature, but it remains functionally identical across brands. It prioritizes the most recent input from a pair of assigned keys, allowing you to switch inputs quickly without releasing them. It’s a small change that can have a big impact in competitive shooters, where quickly strafing your opponents is a key strategy.
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Because Hall effect switches rely on magnetic actuation as opposed to mechanical inputs, they all feel similar to each other. For a tactile comparison, I tried some Gateron magnetic switches after using the proprietary Corsair MGX V2 switches on the K70, and they felt virtually identical.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
However, an important distinction with the switches in the K70 Pro TKL is that they’re soldered onto the PCB, which means they’re not hot-swappable. While this was the industry standard for gaming keyboards for a long time, many contemporary Hall effect keyboards offer hot-swappable switches. This doesn’t affect the performance either way, but it does make the K70 Pro TKL more difficult to mod or repair.
Brands like Asus and Keychron have managed to make keyboards that sound fairly amazing out of the box, so at this point, I fully expect a seasoned manufacturer like Corsair to be able to do the same. But that isn’t the case with the K70 Pro TKL. A pair of sound-dampening silicone sheets is sandwiched between the tray and the PCB in an attempt to improve acoustics, but the sound profile is far from the smooth, rich “thock” you’d expect from a premium gaming keyboard. Instead, it reverberates with a hollow rattling sound.
