 So my first reaction to the arrival of my sample of a retail K70 RGB was like, Ah, gee, awesome, I'm gonna go plug it in right now, it's gonna be sweet, and I can't wait! I then proceeded to calmly and patiently wait for the new Corsair Utility Engine Q software to download and install, fired it up, and after faffing about for a couple minutes, realized I had no idea how to do anything. So I checked the box for the manual, only to discover that the reason Corsair makes you download the manual is that it's 142 pages long. That's when it hit me. This review was gonna take a while. Cooler Master Neptune Series CPU Coolers are available in a variety of radiator sizes to perfectly suit your next build. Click now to learn more. We'll start with a physical overview. If you've seen one K70, you've pretty much seen them all. The layout is a standard 104 key with no deal-breaking alterations like a short backspace key, and a couple much appreciated additions, namely a hardware switch for polling rates, I recommend leaving this at the default setting, and BIOS mode, which improves compatibility, particularly outside of your OS on older hardware. It's got a three-level brightness toggle, a Windows lock key, five media keys, and a classy-looking textured metal volume wheel. Corsair continues to include soft-touch rubberized wrist rests, and as someone who won't use a keyboard without one, I consider this very important. And they continue to deliver the same pleasing fit and finish that we've come to expect over the last few years, with a gorgeous, solid brushed aluminum backplate, rubber bottom, flip-out feet, and a braided dual USB power cord. Although it should be noted that the second connector with two arrows on it is not for a passthrough port, but just extra power for the RGB LED lighting and significantly upgraded microcontroller when you're using USB 2. If you plug in via USB 3, you only need the connector with the picture of the keyboard on it, and you can leave the other one dangling. So let's dive right into it, shall we? The well-publicized and much-anticipated special sauce here is Cherry's implementation, for now exclusive to Corsair, of RGB lighting within their MX Series key switches. Replacing the single 3mm 2-lead LED embedded on the top of the switch, directly below the keycap, is a new system that mounts an RGB LED to the PCB of the keyboard, and uses a translucent keycap housing and lens to focus the light, so from the outside it looks very similar to the older style. Of course, this would all be meaningless if performance was compromised in any way, and keyboard enthusiasts will be happy to know that the tactile characteristics of the red, blue, and brown Cherry MX switches that this keyboard is available with at launch are untainted. And another desirable side effect is that the LEDs are less susceptible to failure due to static discharge because they're surface-mounted in the keyboard. So, so far, sounds good all around. But of course, if it's impossible to use, then this is all a purely academic discussion. So let's dive into the documentation for the Corsair Utility Engine software. The main reason this keyboard has been delayed and delayed and delayed some more, and find out if a little bit of good old-fashioned R-ing-t-f-ing-m is going to get me through this. We'll start with profiles, not to be confused with modes, which are sort of like sub-profiles. Profiles store their modes and foreground lighting effects, and can be switched automatically when certain applications launch, or manually using the system try icon, something you may find yourself doing often when setting up lighting effects, since sometimes you'll have to change them to get settings to apply. Modes coexist with profiles. You must always have one of each loaded at least. They can have their own background color schemes over which the foreground lighting effects will run, but they are inexplicably missing functionality, like the ability to have continuous wave patterns or their own reactive typing schemes. So you'll likely need a handful of profiles to get the variety that you obviously crave, because you just spent a couple of hundred dollars on a keyboard that lights up. Funny. Modes also store button assignments, and the options here are basically endless. Every button on the keyboard, even the LED brightness toggle, which I rebound to mode switching because the keyboard lacks any dedicated buttons for that, or even general purpose macro buttons, is completely reprogrammable. We're talking text input, shortcuts to the home page of your favorite website or applications or whatever, overlaid countdown timers for gamers, although that overlay features a bit of a work in progress, mouse DPI changes, mouse movement, mouse clicks, separate macro execution for the downstroke and release of the key, and even different lighting effects to go along with it. It's pretty cumbersome, but the groundwork has been laid here for Corsair's RGB series to be the most powerful keyboards ever made. And never mind just for gaming, for anything that requires execution of macros or other complex functionality. And we haven't even talked about the lighting yet. It took me a few hours to get the hang of it, but not, at least not entirely because I'm an idiot. I spent most of that time being frustrated by bugs, like needing to drag a mode to the top of the list and sometimes quickly switch profiles in order to preview what I was doing, and not being able to find mode switching within the actions editor because it's the one thing that's not in there. No, you need to right click the button instead. But once I got the hang of it, I found myself able to do some moderately cool stuff. I can set up different key actions per mode, clone my modes entirely within a profile, change any key to any color I want, even the media keys, set up reactive typing on a single key or in a ripple effect. I can set up waves starting on the side or in the center with whatever colors I want. I can export the file to carry it with me to other computers or share with friends. And coolest of all, I can just not be arsed to do any of this and download profiles from the Corsair forum where folks are already doing stuff that I couldn't figure out how to do. But here I ran into another problem. When you import someone else's profile, it adds all of the crap from theirs into yours, with the only way to get around that being to manually delete them all or wipe out everything in the software. And while I saw stuff that I wasn't sure how to do, most of it was pretty simple. Different time delays, longer or shorter trails on an effect, more or fewer colors. Where's the full programmability that you promised, Corsair? Lua, as they call it, is not here yet. Which I guess is both encouraging and discouraging, because it means it's less complicated for now, but it also means that it's going to get more complicated later in order to unlock the full potential of this bad boy. So I guess that leads pretty well into conclusion time, and it's not a simple conclusion. In the 10 years I've been using Corsair products, I've seen innovation and I've seen success, but I've also seen failure. So what is the K70? Right now, I would say it's both. The idea is a success, but the endless delays gave their competitors the better part of a year to react and bring their own solutions to market. Now that it's finally here, I'd say the quality of the hardware is a smashing success, but the software is, to put it bluntly, not. I mean, its features are a success compared to other products currently on the market, but compared to the expectations that they set, they're not, and I'm sure they'd prefer if I just ignore the uproar over the Corsair gaming rebrand initiative, speaking of things that are not that successful right now. So the K70 RGB won't be taking home an editor's choice or anything today, but what I will say based on my experience with Corsair is that, well, this was not a smooth product launch. The battle for RGB keyboard dominance is far from over. For all their flaws, Corsair's RGB keyboards have a few key advantages versus their competition. Number one is excitement. This is the most anticipated keyboard in the history of computer enthusiasts ever, as far as I can tell. Number two, they are first to market. They exist. People are buying them and, more importantly, not returning them. The bugs appear to be software rather than hardware issues, which makes patching the ones in the field relatively simple and gives Corsair much needed capital to continue to develop the product. And number three is that Corsair always comes up swinging when they smell blood, and I bet they do right now. I mean, this is the first time an established gaming peripheral maker, and in this case, two of them, has ever reacted so quickly to something little old Corsair has done. And if I was those competitors, I would make damn good and sure that the Chroma and the G910 are strong reactions. The last time Corsair entered a category this aggressively, the PC power supply and case industry was dominated by a little company called Antec. And the rest is history, ain't it? Anyway, expect to see coverage of the K95 or K65, the macro button equipped and 10 keyless variants of the K70, when I've had a chance to scope out the competition or when Corsair turns their software from something that limps along functionally into something worthy of the Corsair name, or the Corsair gaming name with some bat-lift thing or whatever it is they're calling themselves these days. Guys, thanks for watching. Like this video if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it, leave a comment letting me know. Do you believe that Corsair can ultimately deliver what they promised with the hardware here? And if so, are you buying one? Guys, check out the link in the video description to support us. You can buy a cool t-shirt like this one. You can change your Amazon bookmark to one with our affiliate code so we get a small kickback and you can even give us a monthly contribution directly. All that stuff helps us out a lot. Thanks again for watching. 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