Corsair K95 Mechanical Cherry Brown keyboard mini-review

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FlyingPenguin
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Corsair K95 Mechanical Cherry Brown keyboard mini-review

Post by FlyingPenguin »

Bought this to replace my (7 year old!) Corsair K70 Mechanical Cherry Red keyboard.



The old K70 actually still works fine. No weak keys, or burned out back lights. It's an awesome keyboard. I'm keeping it on the shelf as a spare.

My main interest in replacing it is that the K95 has six programmable macro keys on the left side, that I want to use for gaming. Right now I use the tilde key as a "Use" key in most games, but not all games support the tilde key.

The K95 uses Cherry brown keys instead of the Cherry Red keys of my old K70, and I must say I do like the browns better than the reds. Less clicky, but with the same feel of full activation only past 60% depress, which caters to my hard typing style. I actually achieved nearly the same feel with the cherry reds by installing silicon "O" rings under each key.

The keyboard is almost identical in layout to the K70, otherwise. Like the K70 it's an all metal frame, and all the keys are mechanical except the function and media keys. Like the K70 it has a very nice roller volume control. Also like the K70 it has a Windows key lockout for gaming button (can also be programmed to lock out ALT-TAB via the iCue software), and there's a button to toggle between off and 3 levels of brightness for the backlit keys. There's also a similar, but much nicer, detachable wrist rest.

What distinguishes the K95 from the K70 is key remapping and the intelligent RGB backlighting.

All keys, including the macros keys, can be remapped, mapped as mouse presses, or even be programmed to enter a series of keypresses and mouse clicks you can record. In my case all I'm doing is mapping two of the macro keys as tilde and pageup. It's going to take a couple of weeks to get used to having the macro keys on the left - most of yesterday I was tapping the lower macro key instead of the CTRL key, but today I'm already getting used to it. It's just muscle memory.

The fancy lighting is not something I really care about, and I just have my keyboard setup with two profiles: One has all keys be red backlit, which was the only color my old K70 keyboard could do. The other is all red except for the macro and WASD keys, which are white. I don't need anything else, I just need subtle back lighting.

For those that are interested in the fancy RGB lighting, you can do a lot. Each individual key, button, and a dozen edges of the keyboard, can be individually programmed for any color. The color can change in a pattern, or even based on sensor information like GPU or CPU temperature. There are all some games that can communicate with the iCue software and change key colors based on commonly used keys, and even have a key change color to reflect a value in the game. For example, Diablo 3 will make the keyboard all red except for keys used for potions and casting, and the portion keys will change color to reflect their levels. Not something I care about, but it's there. When you first turn on the keyboard, the three default profiles are all garish animations. Yuk.

Now I come to the only negative part of this review, and that's Corsair's iCue software. iCue is Corsair's RGB controller software. It can be used to program and control any Corsair or Corsair compatible RGB lighting (motherboard, RAM, fans, mouse, keyboard, etc).

iCue does not come with the keyboard, there's just a link in the manual for the download. The manual is worthless. It just explains what the buttons and jacks do on the keyboard, and that's it.

iCue is an awful piece of software. It's not intuitive at all, it comes with no manual. There are links in the software to instructional videos, but the videos are lacking. The videos also do not explain how to use the only real feature I wanted to use in this keyboard: hardware profiles.

TWO WAYS TO USE THE KEYBOARD:
There are two ways to use the keyboard: software and hardware profiles. Software profiles are run directly under the control of the iCue software, and it needs to be installed and running for software profiles to work. Software gives you much more powerful options than hardware, like linking key colors to temperature sensors, or having games communicate with the keyboard.

Hardware profiles are limited in features, but are uploaded to the keyboard's internal memory, and thus are retained even if you unplug the keyboard and connect it to another PC. The iCue software does not need to be installed to use the hardware profiles, moreover you can't use hardware profiles if iCue is running. It's it's running, it takes over control of the keyboard.

All the videos on Corsair's site deal with software profiles only, and a lot of the 3rd party videos out there are the same. The few I found that covered hardware profiles were for version 3 of the software, and not the latest version 4 which looks very different.

I wanted to use hardware profiles only (I use a KVM to switch between my workstation and gaming PC) and then leave iCue off on my workstation unless I need to change the profile later. I don't even want to install iCue on the gaming PC at all. I just wanted to upload two color profiles, and two macro profiles and that's it. However, this is so poorly documented, that it took me most of the day yesterday to figure it out. It's so un-intuitive that I typed myself some instructions on how to do this in case I forget how some time in the future (instructions below for the benefit of the inter-tubes).

The software and hardware profiles are completely separate, but it's hard to tell that from the iCue software because it's so un-intuitive. It's also hard to initially understand how you go about uploading the profiles to the keyboard. Another thing that hung me up is that iCue can't upload profiles to the keyboard unless it's running under an administrator. I run my regular user on my workstation as a limited user for security. iCue, however, doesn't tell you it needs admin access, and just hangs if you try to upload a profile as a limited user. Even worse, there's an explicit message on the screen at this point saying not to interrupt the process or you may brick the keyboard, so I ended up waiting 10 minutes and then closed the app via the task manager. Several tries later I eventually figured out it wanted me to open iCue using "Run as admin". Well written software can easily detect whether it's running with admin privileges and should tell you if you're not. I have many other apps I use that nag me about it if I run them without admin privileges. It's not a hard thing to do.
How to configure hardware profiles and upload them to the Corsair K95 keyboard using iCue version 4

NOTE: You MUST run iCue software as Administrator or it will not be able to upload the profiles to the keyboard.

NOTE: While iCue is running, pressing the profile button on the keyboard will switch between software profiles and NOT hardware ones. You have to completely quit iCue from the taskbar icon, to put the keyboard in hardware mode, where the profile key will switch between the three onboard slot profiles.

To create hardware lighting profiles:
- Create or select an existing profile from the profile menu
- Select HARDWARE LIGHTING from the device list (click on the keyboard tab icon at the top)
- Edit or create a layer and set the color or effects, and the keys it applies to. You can add more layers for different effects for different keys.

To create hardware key profiles:
- Create or select an existing profile
- Select HARDWARE KEY ASSIGNMENTS from the device list
- Edit or create an assignment. Use KEYSTROKE to simply map a key to one of the G macro keys.

To upload the hardware profiles to the keyboard:
- Highlight a profile you want to upload to the keyboard memory
- Select DEVICE SETTINGS from the device list
- Right click on the slot you want to upload the profile to (1 thru 3) and select OVERWRITE. That memory slot on the keyboard will be overwritten with the profile you highlighted (Note: In the profile list, there will be an icon of an SD card next to each profile, with a small slot number over it if it has been uploaded to that slot).

You can now QUIT iCue from it's taskbar icon, to use the hardware profiles. Use the profile button on the keyboard to switch between the three onboard hardware profiles.
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Executioner
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Re: Corsair K95 Mechanical Cherry Brown keyboard mini-review

Post by Executioner »

Wow what a nice keyboard. https://www.amazon.com/PLATINUM-Mechani ... B01MS0I1ZK

I'm tempted to get one since I just upgraded my monitor. I like how they added a USB port for your mouse, as I have to use an extension cord for mine to reach the desktop.
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Re: Corsair K95 Mechanical Cherry Brown keyboard mini-review

Post by psypher »

As a developer, I'm a big fan of DAS keyboards. My current one is a Das Keyboard 4Q. I haven't gotten around to doing much more than setting up color profiles.
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Re: Corsair K95 Mechanical Cherry Brown keyboard mini-review

Post by FlyingPenguin »

Exec, if you have no use for the macro keys, or key remapping, consider the slightly cheaper K70 RGB: https://www.amazon.com/CORSAIR-MK-2-Mec ... B07D5S54C6

Although the K95 is on sale right now (one of the reasons I decided to pull the trigger) so you'd only be saving $30.
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Re: Corsair K95 Mechanical Cherry Brown keyboard mini-review

Post by Executioner »

Thanks Bob. Yeah I probably won't use the macro keys or any remapping.
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Re: Corsair K95 Mechanical Cherry Brown keyboard mini-review

Post by Losbot »

Oh, I could have told you about that Corsair keyboard. I picked that up over a year ago and I've been very pleased with it.
As for the LED lighting, I have mine configured so that it monitors my GPU temps. When I start up, the keyboard is backlit in green. The colors get warmer as the GPU temp rises so I always have a visual indicator as to how it's doing. ;)

I might have to buy a 2nd one to store, for when this one finally dies, if ever.
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Re: Corsair K95 Mechanical Cherry Brown keyboard mini-review

Post by Executioner »

Curious - how did you configure it so it monitors your gpu temps?
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Re: Corsair K95 Mechanical Cherry Brown keyboard mini-review

Post by FlyingPenguin »

Part of the iCue software. You can have parts or the whole keyboard change color based on a temp sensor. There's dozens of sensors you can link to. If you have compatible fan lights, you can do the same with them.
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Re: Corsair K95 Mechanical Cherry Brown keyboard mini-review

Post by Losbot »

:said:
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