Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsIt's about what you'd expect for the price
Reviewed in the United States on October 2, 2018
If you go on r/MechanicalKeyboards you'll see corsair keyboards getting a lot of flack for being overpriced for for their quality but honestly I don't really see it, I think the quality is good enough, it's no tank but for something that will just sit on your desk the whole time it really doesn't need to be. The mk.2 seems to be sturdy enough, the top is a fairly thick piece of aluminum, about as thick as I would expect a keyboard faceplate to be at least, and the whole thing is fairly ridged overall. The bottom of made of plastic and I see people complain that it's too thin but if you're not using your keyboard to bludgeon your enemies then it should hold up just finr. My biggest gripe with this keyboard are the keycaps, they're light, thin and laser ablated so they're likely to wear over time. Corsair offers a doubleshot version of these same keycaps, but they're another $50 so if you're set on getting those then this starts to become a nearly $200 keyboard. That being said, I think that if quality had to be sacrificed somewhere to meet this price point then the keycaps are the most logical option as they're the only part of the keyboard you can easily modify yourself if you want and I really don't see them as a huge problem until they actually start to wear. This keyboard comes with another set of WASD and QERF keys with a textured surface that won't wear so if you mostly use those it's probably not a huge issue. I suppose only time will tell how bad these keys wear.
I was looking for several things in a keyboard, I wanted an aluminum top plate, a minimal, clean look, RGB and I wanted it to be mechanical and this keyboard meets all those things.
I really like the brushed aluminum, it doesn't take on finger prints, it looks really good and it adds some good heft so full points there. The switches protrude out of the faceplate so there is nowhere for dirt and dust to fall in to and get trapped, this makes it really easy to clean with one of those compressed air cans so if you like to keep things clean then that is a huge plus. This is a really good looking keyboard, it doesn't overdo it by trying to look all gamery and wouldn't look out of place in an office or anything (with the RGB off at least), though you can see the pictures for yourself so whether you like how it looks is really up to you.
The RGB is fully customizable on a per key basis but if you want all the fancy effects then you always need to have the corsair iCUE software running in the background which I'm not a huge fan of. You can save three RGB profiles onto the keyboards internal memory but the effects are a bit more limited if you chose to rely only on that. You can still set each key to any color you want and you can use some effects, but the effects can't be as elaborate as if you have the software running in the background. This isn't a huge problem for me because I don't really want much more than static back lighting anyway but its something you should be aware of. I guess each key can be readdressed to do whatever you want and you can make macros, but this particular model doesn't have any dedicated macro keys. These aren't really features that I've needed to use and so I don't particularly care about them.
I got the version with the cherry mx brown switches because up to now I've been using a keyboard with blue clones and I wanted to try something different. I miss the clickyness of the blues but I like the feel of the browns well enough, I only wish that they were more tactile because the tactile bump isn't super prominent and isn't very sharp. The browns are a lot less noisy that blues but they're still nowhere near silent. Most of the sound just comes from the keys bottoming out so it could be made just a little more silent with some o-rings but I don't like the feel of the o-rings as much. I considered returning this key board and getting the version with the blue switches for a little while but I've grown to like the brown switches, but it's all subjective. A lot of hard core mech keyboard enthusiasts don't really like browns but I don't have much experience with other switches so I can't say too much about that.
The dedicated media controls are nice to have I suppose, but I only ever find myself using the volume knob. The wrist rest is just solid plastic but it has a soft texture and is definitely a plus, I haven't used one up to now but I don't think I could go without one in the future as it makes typing so much more comfortable. The USB passthrough is a nice feature, I use it for my wireless mouse dongle so that it's closer and the connection is more reliable but I imagine that it would be really convenient for a wired mouse as well, there are some routing channels on the bottom of the keyboard for the wire to keep things tidy if you do use a wired mouse . I don't think the passthrough wouldn't be ideal for something that you would remove and insert frequently because it's on the back of the keyboard which makes it awkward to get to in my opinion. The USB cable is braided and really thick which gives it a pretty premium feel. It's also super long so you shouldn't have much trouble getting it to where you need it to go. It's pretty ridged so if you move the keyboard around a lot on your desk that might be a bit of a problem.
This keyboard really needs to be packaged better, Amazon just ships it in the box that the keyboard comes in and there isn't any foam or anything in that box so the only thing between the top of the keyboard and the boxes that will inevitably be dropped or stacked on top of it during shipping is a piece of cardboard. Because of this, my keyboard came with some of the keys knocked out both times, I replaced my first one because I thought it came broken. The first one's volume wheel was really loose compared to the second one I received, I don't know if that was a manufacturing defect or from rough treatment during shipping but it would be nice if Amazon just shipped it in another box with some proper packing material.
