Corsair Vengeance K90 & M90 MMO/RTS Keyboard and Mouse Review

Corsair consistently makes products that are at a great price point and feel well made when touched. Moving into the input device realm makes perfect sense and the use of high end materials such as the aluminum plates on both the Vengeance K90 keyboard and Vengeance M90 mouse is just what you would expect from Corsair.

Vengeance K90 Keyboard

We really liked the looks of the K90 keyboard and the floating keys made clean out dust, dirt, and the random Doritos crumb a breeze. The backlighting is great with three levels of brightness and the ability to turn it off. Eighteen ‘G’ keys to record on the fly or software driven macros with three memories for a total of 54 is what we would call overkill but nice if you are a macro fan. The Cherry MX Red keys on the K90 are top of the line with light activation and subtle audio click. Putting a 20KRO PCB in the K90 takes advantage of the maximum simultaneous key press USB can handle and should guarantee no key presses are missed in the heat of battle. There have been many comments about Corsair not making all the keys mechanical Cherry MX Reds but we did not find it had any real impact on our game play. Corsair’s free downloadable software is very well done and makes complex macro creation a breeze. This would be ideal for someone with complex Photoshop actions or After Effects effects.

The only real areas we thought could be improved on the Vengeance K90 were the macro keys. First you have 18 keys with three or more profiles to pick from which makes trying to remember which key does what a sheer act of frustration. There is no bumps or other tactile marks and the keys are all tightly aligned perfectly over each other making pressing the wrong key a common issue for this reviewer. I actually ended up making a cheat sheet to reference and taping it next to the ‘G’ keys. The second issue is that because they are the silicon dome keys they are not backlit making a quick glance in a dark room challenging. We are not sure how much it saved Corsair to do the hybrid design but it might have been worth ten more bucks to just make them all Cherry MX keys so we could get consistent lighting.

Overall we really liked the Corsair Vengeance K90 MMO / RTS keyboard and the fact that it has a two year warranty means you can bang on this bad boy all day without worry. The Corsair Vengeance K90 has a street price of $124.99 shipped. We feel the slight challenges with the ‘G’ keys are not a show stopper which is why we are giving the Corsair Vengeance K90 keyboard our recommended award.

Vengeance M90 Mouse

The Corsair Vengeance M90 Mouse is sleek and sexy and we really liked the solid feel of the aluminum base plate. The laser had highly accurate tracking and the weight was just right for a decent inertia to prevent accidental movements but light weight enough for fast action. We loved the large metal mouse wheel with its rubbery surface and smooth as silk scrolling made paging through long PDFs a breeze. Buttons, buttons, and more buttons with 15 programmable buttons the Vengeance M90 should more than cover even the most die hard macro user. Just like the K90, the software Corsair published for the M90 mouse makes making macros easy as can be and fully utilizes the power of this highly configurable mouse.

We wanted to just love the Corsair Vengeance M90 mouse with its sexy looks and easy tracking but something about the way the top of the mouse is configured really bothered this reviewers hands after extended game play. For the record I will state again that I have very large hands (my father is 6′ 5″) so I might not be representative of the normal user. If you can play with one in the store before you purchase it might answer the size question for you. While the buttons are great for those that want to fire off a dozen macros at a time we found that more often than not the buttons got in the way. Corsair did a fabulous design with the way they integrated them into the body it is just more than this old thumb could figure out.

The Corsair Vengeance M90 also comes with a two year warranty and we found it for $59.99 shipped from Amazon. We were on the fence of giving the M90 a recommended award as well but the cramp still in my hand made me second guess that award.

Legit Bottom Line: The Corsair Vengeance K90 mechanical keyboard is a solid gamers weapon while the Corsair Vengeance M90 laser mouse is not as easy to live with.