Editor’s Pick: Corsair K55 RGB Pro XT

The best of the membrane?

IT’S VERY IMPORTANT, when it comes to tech journalism, to stay grounded. It’s too easy to play around with all the expensive stuff, and get swept into this world where anything but the best is mediocre. It’s a big part of my team’s ethos, and something I’ve drilled into them during my time here. Yeah, RTX 3090s and AMD Ryzen 9 5950Xs are great, but for the vast majority, those ain’t nothing more than pipe-dreams, or overly expensive parts that don’t warrant the investment.

It’s a big part of why our Blueprints section is so important to us as a team, and why we often rotate it between us. That way each of us gets a feel for the industry, and where things lie right now in the market. Over time, and this is something I inherited from my predecessor Alan Dexter, the lower-end parts become the far more interesting items.

After all, we know a Corsair K100 RGB keyboard is going to be impressive, AMD’s flagship graphics card will pump out some serious frames, and Audiotechnica’s $1000 headset is going to sound great, but how does that tech filter down to the budget options in these manufacturer’s lineups? How do the Pentium processors perform? Is integrated graphics improving generation-over-generation? What’s happening in the world of non-mechanical keyboards? It’s something we don’t do enough (not for lack of trying, most manufacturers don’t like sending out review samples of budget parts).

And so that’s what brought me back to this little number from Corsair. The K55 RGB Pro XT. Despite having a somewhat ridiculous name, it’s an intriguing offering from the Californian giant. It features rubber dome, membrane key switches, has six macro keys, dedicated media controls, and some rather impressive perkey lighting as well. Yes, it’s membrane, and you can individually control the lighting effects on each key switch if you’d like to.

It’s not a perfect solution, there’s some bleed over into the surrounding areas, but the fact this is even possible, and not something entirely relegated to the world of individual mechanical key switches, is awesome. It’s not that expensive either, you can pick one up for $70 or so. Not super cheap, by any means, but certainly not a $200 juggernaut either. And you get a wrist-rest!

But the big question, no doubt, will be on the feel of the key switches themselves. Do they feel as good as a mechanical switch? No, of course not. If you’re used to that super-smooth linear feel, or even the tactile response, this won’t be the board for you. It’s a tough board to type on for sure. It’s quiet, but it requires some force to push each rubber dome down, and there’s nowhere near as much travel distance per key switch as you’d find in, say, a Cherry MX Red. That said, actuation is immediate, once the key is traveling, so bottoming out is for your own enjoyment (and also an inevitable side effect of applying enough force to get the key to depress to begin with). And it’s also worth mentioning that this thing is pretty quiet too.

Overall, the aesthetic is slick. There’s a high-gloss plastic bezel at the top (where the media keys are), then the rest is a fairly budget, smudge-resistant plastic, with the subtle new design style Corsair has debuted in its recent designs. There are a few other basic elements too—there’s no USB pass-through, and the cable is a standard plastic, as opposed to being braided, or removable, but otherwise, there’s little to complain about.

$70 www.corsair.com