Corsair K100 Keyboard Review

The Corsair K100 is a speed demon keyboard with short actuation switch options and an 8K polling right.

Does it have anything else going for it to justify the $230 asking price? I don’t think there’s enough. The overall typing quality isn’t up to par with what’s out there today.

Nothing But Speed

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Pros

• Great typing feel
• Foam layers produce a great sound
• Lots of switch mod extras
• Great wireless and battery life

Cons

• The software is really bad
• North facing LEDs at this price

Tech Specs

Design

The Corsair K100 is a full size keyboard with an extra column for macro keys on the left hand side with two dedicated knobs up top.

The control knob sits at the top left of the keyboard flanked by a user profile and windows key lock button. The control knob can toggle between different modes such as selecting music tracks, keyboard brightness, horizontal scrolling and other non-gaming related things.

The knob itself is quite wobbly and scratch, not at all satisfying to use. The knob is stepped for feedback.

The LED status lights sit in the top middle of the keyboard.

The volume wheel rounds on the unique design elements on the top of the keyboard. The media keys themselves aren’t tactile and have a long linear press. The volume wheel isn’t stepped, and has a smooth scroll. Unlike the control knob, the volume wheel at least isn’t wobbly.

The wrist rest magnetically attaches to the bottom of the keyboard, providing a comfortable angle for the wrists. The rest is made of a fake leather with a nice Corsair logo down the middle.

A nicely diffused RGB strip runs along the sides and the top of the keyboard, resulting in a nice subtle glow on reflective surfaces.

On the top you’ll find a thick braided USB-A cable and a USB 2.0 pass through port.

The back of the keyboard features some side out feet and 6 ways to channel your thick braided USB cable for this wired keyboard.

Typing Experience

The Corsair K100 sounds quite hollow in use, which is pretty bad for the asking price. This keyboard doesn’t compare favourably with other top priced keyboard from mainstream brands sound wise.

The keyboard produces a lot of hollow rattling and ping when in use. It sounds a lot louder than it should, I would recommend adding foam to this board if you have it.

Switches

The Corsair K100 comes with the option of optical OPX switches at 1.0 mm actuation point, 45 g force and 3.2m total travel or Cherry MX Speed switches at 1.2mm actuation point.

My review covers the OPX linears. I would recommend going with these over the Cherry MX Speed for gaming speed reasons.

The stem and switch themselves have a bit of wobble, which is again something I would hope to be more solid at this price point.

The OPX switches are decent, they have a light spring but I felt a little bit of a scratchiness on the downstroke.

They’ll get the job done for gaming, but I don’t really think that’s enough.

Stabilizers

I found the stabilizers on the K100 to be pretty poor. The stabs don’t do a good job of avoiding rattle and ping which is further accentuated by the hollow case.

I feel like the stabilizers are also adding a bit of resistance to the keys that the non stabilized keys don’t have.

A little lube would help smooth out some of those rattles.

Keycaps

Corsair packs good quality double-shot PBT keycaps with the K100. The legends are crisp and produce a decent shine through with the north facing LEDs.

The keycap surfaces are highly textured while the macro keys have a smooth finish.

Performance

The Corsair K100 RGB is one of the few keyboards capable of doing 8000 Hz polling rate. Combined with fast and responsive optical switches, this is a keyboard geared towards gamers that are looking for that literal 0.125 ms edge.

I’d argue most gamers will not see a huge benefit from the 8K polling rate.

Build Quality

The metal top of the keyboard lends good rigidity to the keyboard. Despite the K100 being a full size length, I was only able to get a minor flex out of the keyboard.

Pressing down on the keyboard resulted in zero give.

The keyboard was equally solid with the feet in the up angled position.

The K100 feels well built and I didn’t see or run into any quality or durability issues.

Software

The Corsair K100 is powered by iCue, which is the standard software package for all Corsair products. All standard features that you’d expect from a gaming keyboard are here.

You can remap keys including the dedicate macro keys. Corsair keyboards can also take advantage of Elgato Stream Deck shortcuts, making this keyboard especially useful for steamers.

Lighting can be set per key or per section with numerous pre-set lighting options and animation speeds.

Last but not least, you can set up what the control knob does, out of the box the control wheel options are:

• Brightness control
• Track jogging
• Track selector
• Macro recording
• Switch apps
• Vertical scrolling
• Horizontal scrolling
• Zoom

What’s in the Box?

Corsair includes a few extras with the keyboard:

• A plastic keycap puller
• QWERTY textured caps for MOBAs
• WASD textured caps for FPS

Warranty

Corsair has a 2-year warranty for the Corsair K100 keyboard.

Verdict

While Corsair is a mainstream brand, the K100 is kind of a niche board. It’s really only valuable to gamers who want to stream or are looking for break neck responsiveness, ideally in a single device.

A lot of streamers are going to opt to have a dedicated device anyway in the Elgato Stream Deck, and there are other super fast keyboards that can deliver more gaming speed.

At $230, this is a tall ask for a mediocre typing experience.