Corsair K95 RGB Platinum XT
Fully loaded doesn’t begin to cover it
DAMN, this keyboard is terrible. The feet fold out sideways. That’s vaguely neat from an aesthetic point of view, but the slightest lateral movement causes it to crumple to the deck with a whimper. Don’t use the feet. They’re really bad, and Corsair’s engineers should flagellate themselves for designing them. Whether they choose to break out the birch twigs before or after they receive the plaudits for the rest of this keyboard is up to them. Damn, this keyboard is great.
The K95 Platinum XT is an obvious evolution of Corsair’s tried-and-true overall design, which sees a cleverly folded aluminum base frame forming a neat dished base for the keyboard, with a distinct forehead and tiny, functional chin. Everything that isn’t core keyboard (and there’s a lot of that) has its own tactile distinguishing feature: the easy-to-find ridged buttons of the media cluster; the physically separated profile, lighting, and lock controls; the knurled, slick volume roller; and the macro column, which deserves further dissection.
Dedicated macro keys are divisive at best and a disaster at worst, particularly for those who locate their left hand by the feel of the left edge of the keys. Corsair has solved this problem: Not only are these keys colored differently, they’re strongly textured, and they’re contoured in the opposite direction from the Tab column—we didn’t once, in a two-week testing period, accidentally hit G6 instead of Left Ctrl, and that’s about the most ringing endorsement you’re likely to find.
You have three options in terms of switches, one clicky (Cherry MX Blue) and two quiet: Cherry’s luxurious Brown variety, or the Speed Silver variant tested here, the latter of which appears to be your only option if you pick up the alternate gunmetal finish. Switch performance is often very subjective. We’ve tried keyboards in which Speed Silver switches just didn’t feel right, but Corsair has found the balance. There’s a minimum of spring ring, and the rigidity of the base (and high actuation point of the switches) makes every keypress sharp and fast. Could the top of the keycaps be a micron smaller to prevent fat-fingered mispresses? Sure. Could the contour of the main key block be more favorable to help with accuracy when (curses) the K95 isn’t lifted by its useless feet? Yes, yes it could. But we’re not unhappy with the way this feels, and it’s a keyboard that’s sharp enough to help make the feelingout period of flipping between keyboards as short as it can possibly be.
The “RGB” part of the name is so strong it deserves to be in 72-point bold. Perkey lighting burns through each keycap, and glows wonderfully in the gaps and through the clear bases of the switches. It’s a feast for the eyes, made even more impressive by the 19-zone light bar along the rear, which beams color everywhere. Rainbow vomit isn’t to everyone’s taste, but this is equally capable of being subtle, and easily configured through Corsair’s iCUE driver, and subsequently stored as one of five on-board profiles.
Even the little extras hit the mark. We often rag on Corsair for its brutal wrist rests, but this one swaps the horrible textured plastic for a soft, comfortable faux leather. There’s a USB passthrough, running through a fat but sturdy feeling hard-wired braided cable. There are extra keycaps, textured examples to cover the WASD cluster, along with alternately colored “S” key, useful for marking keys you may have dedicated to the newly fostered Elgato Stream Deck integration of the macro buttons. It’s a strong, strong package, and we have no doubt that it’ll be resilient enough to last a great many years. That’s handy, because damn, this keyboard is so expensive. It’s worth it, but it’s not the only great keyboard in the world.
Corsair K95 RGB Platinum XT
PLATINUM Feature-packed; great key feel; tons of wellexecuted extras.
FATINUM Terrible feet; pricey. $199, www.corsair.com