Corsair Vengeance K70 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard Review

Looking closer at the Vengeance K70 (Part 1)

The Vengeance K70 is available in two colors: black with red lights and silver with blue lights. (Update: Cherry MX Red switches, Blue switches, and Brown switches are available for both keyboard colors.)

The Vengeance K70 has a standard 104 key layout with dimensions of 17.25(L)x6.5(W)x1.5(H) inch / 437(L)x166(W)x38(H) mm. Attaching the wristrest increases the keyboard width to 8.25 inches. The keyboard enclosure is constructed from plastic and aluminum. The reinforcing plate to which the keys are mounted is exposed.

On the top right of the keyboard are multimedia keys for Play/Pause, Next, Back, Stop, and Mute. A rolling bar controls volume. To the left of the media keys are three buttons, from left to right: key-by-key backlight toggle, backlight intensity control, and Windows key lock.

The K70 has a thick braided 6-foot USB cable that terminates with two plugs. Only one of the USB plugs is necessary to power the keyboard; the other plug handles USB passthrough.

A slider switch near the USB passthrough controls the keyboard polling rate. By default, 1 is 1000 MHz and goes down to 750 MHz, 500 MHz, abd 250 MHz. Sliding the switch all the way to BIOS will put the keyboard into a compatibility mode for BIOS that may not recognize the K70.

The K70 allows for key-by-key backlighting. As the user instructions direct, press and hold the backlight button until the ring around it lights up. Then, press each keyboard key to turn the backlight on or off. Its much quicker to get around than with a software implementation.

All of the 104 keys are backed by a Cherry MX Red mechanical switch. Its also cool to see that there are additional LEDs under the spacebar to add to the backlight effect that spills from under the keys and onto the backplate.