Corsair K70 Max Review

About the Corsair K70 Max

The Corsair K70 Max, like Corsair’sK70 RGB Pro, is a full-sized, 104-key keyboard that includes a volume roller and dedicated buttons for mute, pause, play, stop, forward, and back. It also includes a button for cycling between profiles, adjusting the lighting, and a lock button that disables the Windows key that can also be held to record macros. Every key except the lock button can be reprogrammed.

The Tournament Switch on the back enables and disables custom actions and macros, and locks the backlight to one solid color.

The keyboard usesHall effectmagnetic key switches to measure input instead of mechanical contact. Corsair rates the life of each switch at 100 million keystrokes, which is good because although the K70 Max is hot-swappable, typical 3 or 5-pin key switches won’t physically fit in the board’s sockets.

Corsair K70 Max specs

• Price:$230
• Connectivity:Detachable USB-C to USB-A (included)
• Dimensions:17.4 x 6.54 x 1.54 inches (at tallest point)
• Weight:48.61 ounces (1,378 grams)
• Compatibility:PC, Mac, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5
• Material:Black plastic with aluminum top plate
• Switches:Adjustable Corsair MGX Steel Grey switches (rated for 100 million presses)
• Polling rate:Up to 8,000Hz
• 特殊功能:Full per-key customizable RGB lighting, up to 50 saved onboard profiles, 8MB onboard memory, Hall effect key switches with programmable actuation and dual-point actuation, full n-key rollover (NKRO), included magnetic wrist rest with memory foam cushion, tournament mode switch, included alternate radiant space bar, and Corsair logo escape key
• Warranty:Two years

What we like

Complete per-key customizability

海盗很快兜售如何彻底可以铜stomize every aspect of the K70 Max, and it’s completely right to do so. Every key and button (barring the Lock button) can be remapped, and you can create complex lighting patterns or individually color each key, button, and icon in the top display. (I went with all-white as the keycap legends are hard to read without backlighting.)

The real star of the show are the magnetic key switches, which let you adjust the actuation point, from 0.4mm down to 3.6mm, or fully bottoming out. You can also set a second actuation point, which is useful for things like double jumping in games—press the spacebar once to jump, and hit the second point to immediately jump again, all in one swift motion.

As for the feel of the switches themselves, they’refine;linearwith 45g of actuation force (how hard you need to press down) and a maximum travel distance of 4.0mm. That’s identical toCherry MX Red switches, which you can find in pretty much any gaming keyboard.

I personally didn’t find the dual actuation too useful while gaming, but custom tailoring the actuation points across my test keyboard came in handy both while playing games and for writing.

For instance, I typically use a 75%Keychron V1, which means it doesn’t have a numpad. I found myself accidentally hitting the enter, plus, and minus keys on the far right-hand side, so I adjusted their actuation point to require a full key press to activate. I did the same for the caps lock, Windows, and any other keys it might be annoying to accidentally trigger.

Conversely, my V1 is usually filled withGateron Silent Crystalswitches, which require 35 grams of force to depress. I set the actuation point of letters and numbers to a scant 1.0mm and hit an average speed of 91 words per minute and 99% accuracy onMonkeytype’s typing test, on par with my normal results.

It’s super speedy

One of the K70 Max’s main selling points is, like the K70 RGB Pro, an 8,000Hz polling rate. That means your PC will check for input every 0.125 ms when set to its max speed, rather than the 1,000Hz, once-per-millisecond default speed for most mainstream gaming keyboards. This eats up additional CPU resources, and while most people probably won’t notice a difference between 8,000Hz and 1,000Hz, seasoned gamers might.

While you can enable an artificially longer debounce to mimic the feel of a traditional keyboard in iCue, it’s best kept off since it just adds extra latency. With a low actuation point and 8,000Hz polling rate set, it feels like my keystrokes were being registered instantly. In jittery, fast-paced games likeFortniteorOverwatch 2(orReturnal, where I frequently dash around like a madman), the only limitations are how fast my fingers can move.

While theRapid Triggerfeature—which prepares the keyboard for another input as soon as it detects any upward or downward motion, allowing you to press even quicker or spam skills or abilities—wasn’t ready yet at the time of testing, it should be soon. Other keyboards with magnetic switches, like theSteelSeries Apex Pro, already have or are soon getting Rapid Trigger capability, so it’s not surprising to see Corsair integrate it, too.

It's well-built

The Corsair K70 Max feels rock solid. Although it uses a plastic chassis and aluminum top plate like most other gaming keyboards we cover, the build quality is top-tier. I couldn’t flex it at all when I twisted the board’s corners, and it easily survived a drop to the floor from five feet up.

Corsair opted for three-stage height adjustment and amply-sized rubber feet, so the K70 Max is firmly anchored to your desk in any setting. Six routing channels have been cut into the bottom of the board to make cable management easier. Corsair even includes a magnetic wrist rest with memory foam cushioning, an added $20 value.

It even sounds alright to type on—no hollow pinging or dull thuds. The spacebar is a bit rattly, but nothing too bad. I did notice that the Numpad keys have a distinctly different sound from the rest of the board, higher pitched and more “clacky,” but it’s not offensive.

This out-of-the-box sound owes to Corsair including two layers of dampening foam, one under the aluminum plate, and the other between the PCB and bottom of the plastic shell. While the top layer of foam is a common addition, the bottom is much rarer in gaming keyboards.

What we don’t like

It’s wired only

If you decide to buy the K70 Max, just know that it will live on your desk (and take up quite a bit of space). Suppose you’re a competitive gamer who only cares about performance. In that case, you might not mind the lack of wireless capability, but for more casual users, that will probably come off as a major downside.

Then there’s the size. Because the K70 Max is just an upgraded version of the K70 RGB Pro and uses the same design language as every other K70 keyboard, it has all of the same problems. While this is technically a full-sized keyboard, the extra top chin makes it seem like it’s “full-sized-plus.”

This is a personal nitpick, but I’m also not a fan of how the volume roller has a dedicated mute button next to it. It would have made more sense to make the roller clickable instead. A row of macro keys would have worked better than the clicky buttons, especially if you were able to customize their actuation points like the rest of the keyboard.

Competing keyboards have better prices

As good as the K70 Max is, I can’t beat around the most significant sticking point: it costs $230. The SteelSeries Apex Pro offers much of the same value, minus the dedicated media buttons, for $200— and you can often find it for close to $140 and sometimes as low as $100. TheWooting two HE, the original magnetic switch keyboard, is only $195.

If you’re all-in on Corsair’s ecosystem, it might make sense to get the K70 Max over the Apex Pro, but if that’s the case, you might be frustrated by how closely the company hewed to its own K70 RGB Pro. It makes sense as it’s in the same K70 series of keyboards, but they are, apart from the magnetic key switches, identical in every other regard.

与樱桃MX速度Silve K70 RGB Pror switches (which I prefer over Reds) costs anywhere from $130 to $160, so keep that in mind if you’re interested in the K70 Max.

Should you buy the Corsair K70 Max?

Maybe, if you value performance above all else or it goes on sale

Although the Corsair K70 Max faces stiff competition from less expensive full-sized keyboards with adjustable actuation points like theSteelSeries Apex ProorWooting Two HE, there’s no denying that, at the end of the day, it feels great to use and would be one of thebest gaming keyboardsif it wasn’t wired. But whether it’s right for you comes down to how much you’re willing to spend.

$230 is a bitter pill to swallow considering how many other keyboards can get you 90% of the way there unless you demand the ability to tweak every aspect of your keyboard to your liking. It also takes up quite a bit of space on your desk, and it’s wired-only.

Of course, Corsair boards go on sale all the time. If you can snag the K70 Max for $200 or less, pick it up, especially if it matches or beats the same price as the competition.