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Corsair K95 RGB PLATINUM Review! Best New Gaming Toy?

2017-01-23
hey there you little fur ball of evil why don't you I want you to do one of those tricks that I taught you for the camera oh that's right you don't know any because you're dumb dumb you just sit there you don't pay rent you don't do anything you don't do anything wait whoa what who okay who in the right mind just leaves this here like come on seriously well I guess we should unbox it all right this is the Corsair k95 RGB platinum and as you're all very aware any gaming peripheral with the word platinum in it is clearly 100% infallible in every way shape or form but just to verify we're going to be taking a closer look at it today and seeing all the new fun features that come along with it because there are quite a few and despite there being many similarities between this and the original k95 RGB Corsair has taken a lot of user feedback to heart made a lot of revisions that weren't so hot with the original k95 RGB and fix them with this board as well as added some new features that you guys are probably never seeing unless you were watching all the CES coverage on this particular model so with that said should be a very fun board to check out mechanical of course we've got some cherry MX speed switches which are currently advertised as being the fastest mechanical switch on the market we'll take a closer look at that as well if you're watching this video right now which obviously you are this keyboard should be available right now worldwide in black at the very least if you happen to be living in North America then you'll also have the option to get it in gunmetal gray they may extend that availability to a world wide release at a later date but keep your ear to the ground for that MSRP 199 199 USD that's not cheap by by any stretch so we are talking about a high-end keyboard here that is pretty much cream of the crop when it comes to mechanical gaming keyboards these days so whether or not it's going to be worth your hard-earned dollars is like always going to heavily depend on your needs as a user in order for you to figure that out and decide whether or not you should buy this we have to take a look at all those features first so why don't we take this out of the box and have a closer look so here's the keyboard plugged into a PC that I've got back there you can see kind of just defaults to this rainbow wave sort of effect as far as the backlighting goes and these are of course individual back wit you can customize each individual keeper key lighting so to speak so that's really nice pretty much familiar with what we've seen on previous RGB boards from course share you can see they've actually enlarged the lettering the cutouts on the lettering just a bit to allow more light to bleed through which is really nice it looks very very bright and vibrant and all that sort of thing the LEDs are not the LED bulbs themselves are not visible whatsoever it's very nice even in diffused glow and also the aluminum chassis that we're dealing with here is pretty familiar for the most part but there are some big notable changes first of which being this light bar that kind of goes across the back end here and even kind of curves around to the sides of the edges there this is really nice it's actually got 19 different zones that are configurable and customizable within the cue software of course and you can actually program those independent of the keys themselves or you can sync them all together there's actually quite a bit you can do with this light bar in terms of just the different lighting effects and what we'll play around with those in just a bit apart from that you've also got this nice Corsair logo here which has kind of a glossy finish which I'm okay with because it's so small and pretty discreet but that's also you can see backlit illuminated with RGB lighting of course now one of the main revisions that I really like about this keyboard is that there's now only one column of programmable G keys whereas in the past the original k95 RGB had three columns which for my needs as a user it was just a bit overkill plus it added quite a bit of whisk to the profile to keyboard itself and was and quite frankly was one of the reasons why I never went with a k95 for my daily driver because I have limited desk space so this kind of gives you the best of both worlds there they are fully programmable you can do macros you can launch applications they are fully backlit as well just like the rest of the keys with cherry MX speed switches and all that jazz they do have this kind of gray textured finish I don't mind the texture at all but I would prefer them to be black just to be more cohesive with the rest of the keys on the board in the top left corner of the keyboard you get three buttons one of which is your Windows lock key we've also got brightness adjustments with four different levels of brightness including off which is nice if you want to go stealth and then finally you've got this button on the very left which is new this is a new addition this actually allows you to switch between three different user defined profiles via the hardware so there's eight megabytes of on-board storage you've got a 30 two bit ARM Cortex processor that's handling all the lighting effects macros all that sort of thing so even if you plug this into a different computer that doesn't have the cue software loaded up onto it you can still have up to three user defined profiles to switch between on the fly at any time which is super handy moving on over to the right side of the keyboard here you've got your mute button as well as a new and improved volume knob it does feel very nice to the touch it Scrolls and glides along with ease and just beneath that you've got four multimedia keys just like you had on the original board however these are raised there now a little bit elevated so that you just get easier access I remember on the on my k95 arm sorry on my k70 rapidfire which have the older style of multimedia keys if I'm leaning back too far in my chair the top row of number keys on the numpad actually kind of overshadow the multimedia keys because they're just so low to the board itself and make them a little bit less accessible than I'd like them to be so that's kind of been solved here with this raised sort of platform now due to popular demand Corsair has brought back the USB 2.0 pass-through port which is located right on the back of the keyboard next to the braided cable it's a very nice I believe is six foot maybe a six foot braided cable with the US two USB type a connectors at the end one for the keyboard of course and the other for the pass-through port now the pass-through port is very useful for things like connecting your gaming mouse or maybe even a wireless receiver for your gaming headset however if you were wanting to connect a wired headset to that port Corsair has you covered they've actually thought this through quite a bit always one step ahead by including this kind of cross channel on the underbelly of the keyboard itself so you can route the cable directly underneath the board instead of having to just let it dangle and hang around up at the top of your keys where it could easily get in the way while your games so I might have to swap out my k7 rapid-fire for this as my daily driver for that feature alone if nothing else before I forget there's also two fold out underneath the keyboard with rubber pads underneath them to keep it from slipping and sliding around if you just want to give your board a little bit more of an ergonomic incline while you're gaming or typing but the cooler thing that I want to talk about is the wrist rest here this is a new-and-improved wrist rest it snaps on very easily boom it's that's it it's super easy it's not a magnet or anything it's so just a latch mechanism but you just place the keyboard down yet the fiddle with it too much taking it out is a little bit more difficult you kind of got to like pull the gotta like squeeze together a little the little latches I do which the latches were metal just to make it a bit more secure feeling when you are detaching it but attaching it is super super easy and the cool thing about this wrist rest the other nice thing is that depending on which surface your dainty wrist prefers there is an inlay here that's magnetic you could just pop it out and either have a very smooth finish for your wrist or a more bumpy textured surface so whatever your heart's content there it is again perfectly magnetic slots and really easily I do wish there was like a little tiny tab just so you can kind of grab it and get an easier grip on it to peel it up initially but once you flip it and once you set it your the way you prefer it's probably going to stay there for forever for the most part so I think the other thing that I want to mention before we dive into the software and just take a look at some of the RGB effects is are the mechanical switches of course it's easy to forget them because they're hidden most of the time but there you go they're Cherry MX speed as I as I mentioned before one point two millimeters actuation distance 45 grams of operating force and a crazy ridiculous durability of over 50 million keystrokes so this thing will be lasting you quite a while to say the least let's go ahead and jump into the software now and take this bad boy for a spin alright so here we are in the q software and really quick I forgot to mention that this board also features any key rollover and 100% anti-ghosting so you never have to worry about pressing too many keys at once all those keystrokes will be registered no problem but here we are in the software looks a lot different than when I last used it about a year ago with my original k70 RGB it looks a lot better it looks more user-friendly the UI looks Gorge compared to what it used to look like and I think it's actually a lot more functional as well easier to navigate that sort of thing so this is just a really quick basic look I'm not going to go to the detail here this could be is this is a really a video on its own just a cue software but some of the presets here you've got about a dozen or so to choose from lots of variety if you just want to fire something up really quick boom to do boom boom boom little bit of a boom boom boom boom okay pipe gliding all all the good stuff you've also got these three user profiles these are the hardware profiles that we mentioned earlier that you can switch between using the button a little onboard button on your keyboard isn't that nice that's super cool and also there is the Advanced Mode for all of you hardcore lighting effect users out there who want to just you know really tweak and and tune your your LEDs to make them your own I did fire up something right here here we go as I just whip this up in a minute or two these are just random effects that I applied with you know typical hot line colors you can see that there's just a lot going on here you can really make everything act independently of each other we've got the G keys that are seizuring out here and whites we've got a nice ripple effect in the middle here with kind of the teal and pink and then just a bunch of other things going on here you can see the light bar also is doing its own sort of pulsing effect and I did want to mention that the Corsair logo here that's just one of the xix owns that also is sharing the the top middle part top middle portion of that bar actually and that's I got that illuminated right there should unclick that there so it's better and finally here's a quick look at all the different actions that you can apply to any of these keys not just the GPS but any one of these keys on the board is programmable guys so whether you talk in macros text remapping Keys media functions launching applications having a timer if you want to give yourself some cues while you're in game disabling the key entirely and profile switching they're all pretty much any of these keys can do any of those actions so pretty sweet overall let's go ahead and wrap this video out with some closing words so to sum up my thoughts on the k95 RGB platinum in a nutshell in my opinion it is currently the best gaming mechanical keyboard you can buy for $200 whether or not you should spend $200 on a key is entirely up to you and depending on again whether or not you're going to use half of the features that this thing offers but if you do have 200 bucks to spend and let's say you're upgrading from a $50 crap keyboard that maybe has membrane keys that's just way too old and outdated in need of a change then this is a very good option that will probably last you a super long time I always tell people if you're going to buy an office chair spend a lot of money on it because you'll be using it everyday the same goes for your keyboard however the thing said if you already own like a k70 or k95 RGB it's probably not worth upgrading to the platinum because there's just not enough new stuff to make the investment worthwhile but again you're coming from a potato keyboard this is a fatty upgrade that's going to last you a very long time and I'm sure most of you guys will be very happy with it as well the features of super solid build quality and quite frankly one of the most if not the most sophisticated software for keyboard in terms of both macro programmable functionality and lighting effects if you're into that sort of thing so those are my thoughts on the k95 RGB platinum guys let me know in the comments whether or not you agree and feel free to toss me a like on the video if you enjoyed it that's all for now y'all thank you for watching subscribe if you haven't already for more tech stuff coming at you really soon and I will see y'all in the next video
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