I’ve always been impressed by how much cleaner and stylish 75% keyboards look. Sure, full-sized boards have more functionality packed into them with a full numpad, but their designs usually end up on the bulkier side as a result. Add gamer-chic RGB into the mix, and things can get quite noisy as well. The Corsair K65 Plus is a swing in a different direction for the brand, and after spending plenty of time with this keyboard, I’d say it’s pretty close to a home run.
Most Corsair keyboard have followed a near identical design-scheme and colour aesthetic, but the Corsair K65 Plus is a breath of fresh air from that. While it’s still a darkly coloured keyboard, gone is the all-black board and keys – instead, this keyboard is housed in a black shell but rocking lighter, two-toned key caps. It’s a mix of light-gray, almost silver caps and slightly darker gray caps. Under certain lightning, there’s a faint hint of de-saturated blue to them that looks really elegant and refreshing. After so many years of all-black keyboards, the change of pace here is really nice. Additionally, despite the keycaps not being see-through, the board underneath them does an amazing job of reflecting RGB outward and against the edges of the keys.
There’s a solid construction that justifies a lot of the $160 / £150 price point with a metal top plate, and then two layers of sound dampening to help keep the click and clack of a mechanical keyboard in check. The feel and sound of this keyboard is amazing because of this.
The lubed linear Corsair MLX Red switches have a soft thunk to them that gives crystal-clear feedback on every keystroke, but doesn’t sound too loud or tinny. The space bar, especially, has incredible sound to it – it has a way deeper, softer sort of thump to it that blends in nicely during rapid typing sessions. If you’re not a fan of the sound or feel on these keys, one of the most exciting parts of the Corsair K65 Plus is that the keys are fully hot-swappable. I comes with a key & switch remover, so it’s so simple to customise the keyboard and set it up with your ideal switches and key caps.
The customisation extends through Corsair’s iCue software as well. This lets you fiddle with the RGB lighting, hooking into the wider system controls if you have other Corsair iCue enabled kit, and you can cook up  custom macros, remap keys and more. This is also where you’ll set what the control knob in the top right corner does, whether you want it to control that RGB, adjust system volume, or perform some other function.
I also really appreciate the versatile connectivity options on the Corsair K65 Plus. It’s primarily a wireless board, but it can connect in two different wire-free ways. The first is through bluetooth connection, which has been super reliable and lag-free for me, while the second utilises an included wireless dongle to provide a dedicated wireless connection to the keyboard with a significantly higher polling rate – keen gamers might want to switch to the dongle or USB-C connection.
Whichever connection you use, you’ll be good to go for a long time – Corsair boasts 266 hours of battery life for the keyboard over Bluetooth and with the RGB off. Having used the keyboard with RGB mostly on so far, the battery life still isn’t anything to snooze at – it was only until about a week and a half had passed that I needed to finally plug the keyboard in to get it charged.