A year or two ago, you wouldn’t have caught me dead with gaudy gamer RGB anywhere on my desktop setup. While the neon glow of a piece of RGB gear is gorgeous, I always considered it a bit excessive to ever want for myself. Fast forward to today, though, and I’ve thoroughly eaten my words. I’ve got bias lighting on the backs of my screens, an ultra-comfortable gaming mouse kitted out with multiple glowing bits and spots, and now I’ve added a Corsair K60 RGB Pro to my desk.
The colorised keys of this premium kit are already a massive game changer for me personally, but there’s plenty of other solid features to this keyboard that might warrant an upgrade if you’re in the market for a new desktop device. At $90 in the US, it’s actually around the middle of Corsair’s RGB-happy keyboard range, comparing well against other high-end mechanical keyboards. It’s slightly less appealing in the UK, where it can be found for £109, for whatever reason.
Aside from the price, the weight and feel of the K60 scream one word: premium. With a brushed aluminium frame and a hefty weight of 880g or 1.95lb, the K60 is a sturdy beast that won’t slide around your desk or get any cracks or scratches easily. I’m in love with the texture of the surface, and while the keycaps themselves look a tad more basic by comparison, they’ve got a unique look going thanks to their elevated style.
The RGB emitters under the keycaps stick out a lot further than you might see on other keyboards, giving the keycaps a sense that they’re almost floating above the body of the keyboard. While it certainly gives the keyboard more real estate to emit gamer glow from, the fact that the emitters and the keycaps aren’t uniform leads to an awkward visual disconnect whenever I look at the keyboard. It’s a shame that some important keys are missing, as well. The K60 has no dedicated media buttons, and on top of that, there isn’t even a Function lock key to permanently swap the operation of your F keys.
Of course, if you’re the type to prioritize RGB with your keyboard, this is still great news for you. The glow of the K60 is bright, gaudy, and gorgeous. You can adjust the brightness and style of the glow through your function keys, enabling a variety of patterns like rolling waves, a sliding scanner, rippling glows as you type, and more. For me, I enjoy going with a simple single-colour glow on the keyboard. It’s nice to simply have easy-to-spot backlit keys for when it gets darker in my room, but getting to set them to a sleek purple that matches my mouse is a fun bit of personalization.
You’re afforded a lot more options for customisation if you connect to the Corsair iCUE software, which is the same software you’d use to alter the RGB and functionality of any other Corsair products you might be rocking.
The K60 is kitted with 100% CHERRY VIOLA mechanical keyswitches, on top of full n-key rollover and anti-ghosting. For the uninitiated, all of that basically translates to one of the most responsive and accurate keyboard experience you’ll ever have.
As someone who’s spent many a night being deprived of sleep by the loud clang of my college roommate’s mechanical keyboard, I was happy to hear that the K60 is nowhere near as loud and obnoxious. Your typing gives off satisfying little clunks, but it’s a much softer sound that won’t prove too distracting.
The only distracting thing is the spacebar. Even with standard light presses while typing out an article or email, the spacebar spouts off a noticeable mechanical twang that continues to echo for a second after you press it. That same sound can sometimes be heard from the rest of your keypresses if you’re really slamming the keys or looking out for the sound, but the fact that it’s so noticeable on every press of the spacebar is a massive distraction. Even with a headset on and a video playing, hearing the sound of the spacebar echo out dozens of times a minute as I type proves to be way too intrusive for my tastes.
