Back in 2020, my daily driver was the absolutely massive Corsair K100 RGB. This beast of a gaming keyboard was equipped with optical-mechanical switches and a bevy of other features that made it bleeding-edge for its time, and actually worth the eye-popping $290 price. However, what we expect from a premium keyboard and what we’re willing to pay for that experience has shifted quite a bit in the past five years. Features such as hot-swappable key switches, Hall effect (magnetic) switch designs, and built-in noise dampening have become increasingly standard among premium gaming keyboards. Corsair is falling in line with its first-ever Hall effect keyboard, the K70 Pro TKL ($179.99). It's not bad, but you'd do better to choose the similar Logitech G Pro X TKL Rapid or, if you can afford it, the Editors' Choice-winning Sony Inzone KBD-H75.

Design: Not Hot to Swap

The K70 Pro TKL features a brushed-aluminum top plate on a plastic chassis that measures 1.1 by 14.4 by 5.2 inches (HWD). This has the benefit of making the keyboard relatively lightweight without feeling flimsy. The rear-left side of the chassis has a port for a detachable USB-C cable, and the board is limited to wired connectivity, with no Bluetooth or 2.4GHz support.

A couple of nice touches include the magnetic wrist rest that ships with the keyboard and the raised switches, which make it easy to clean out any debris that might collect under your keycaps. The overall design and aesthetics of the keyboard are clean and inoffensive, but the K70 isn’t intended to be disassembled, making modding or repairs difficult.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The $179.99 base configuration of the K70 Pro TKL comes with ABS doubleshot keycaps. You can upgrade to PBT keycaps for an additional $10. The layout is fairly standard compared with other tenkeyless designs. It excises the number pad while keeping the function row intact, along with a small grid of navigation keys. Above the navigation keys, you’ll also find a pair of raised, plastic buttons and a single metallic dial.

By default, the rotary dial controls volume on your PC, but it can also perform several secondary functions that you can toggle via the iCue software that I'll discuss in more detail below. These are limited to brightness control, horizontal/vertical scrolling, and zoom. You can cycle through each function by pressing the Function and F12 keys simultaneously. While it's nice to have some additional utility packed into this particular feature, I would have preferred a different selection of functions.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

A pair of additional buttons flank the dial on the left side—one with the iCue logo and the other with a speedometer. The iCue button serves as a play/pause button for media playback, while the speedometer enables gaming mode, which swaps to a custom profile with different settings.

The inclusion of Hall effect switches enables the K70 Pro TKL to incorporate several gamer-centric features commonly found in other contemporary high-end gaming keyboards, including the Asus ROG Falcata, the Logitech G Pro X TKL Rapid, and the Inzone KBD-H75. The most important are analog inputs and dual actuation, which allow for variable, per-key actuation points and the ability to map multiple inputs to a single key based on the actuation distance.

While it isn’t a novel inclusion, the Hall effect switches on the K70 Pro TKL also support Corsair's version of Razer's Rapid Trigger function, dubbed FlashTap. Each keyboard maker has a different name for this feature, but it remains functionally identical across brands. It prioritizes the most recent input from a pair of assigned keys, allowing you to switch inputs quickly without releasing them. It's a small change that can have a big impact in competitive shooters, where quickly strafing your opponents is a key strategy.

Because Hall effect switches rely on magnetic actuation as opposed to mechanical inputs, they all feel similar to each other. For a tactile comparison, I tried some Gateron magnetic switches after using the proprietary Corsair MGX V2 switches on the K70, and they felt virtually identical.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

However, an important distinction with the switches in the K70 Pro TKL is that they’re soldered onto the PCB, which means they're not hot-swappable. While this was the industry standard for gaming keyboards for a long time, many contemporary Hall effect keyboards offer hot-swappable switches. This doesn’t affect the performance either way, but it does make the K70 Pro TKL more difficult to mod or repair.

Brands like Asus and Keychron have managed to make keyboards that sound fairly amazing out of the box, so at this point, I fully expect a seasoned manufacturer like Corsair to be able to do the same. But that isn’t the case with the K70 Pro TKL. A pair of sound-dampening silicone sheets is sandwiched between the tray and the PCB in an attempt to improve acoustics, but the sound profile is far from the smooth, rich “thock” you’d expect from a premium gaming keyboard. Instead, it reverberates with a hollow rattling sound.

Real-World Use: Loud and Fast

I put the K70 Pro TKL through its paces in games like ARC Raiders and Battlefield 6, in which it performed admirably. The response to my inputs was quick and snappy, thanks to the 8,000Hz polling rate, while the FlashTap inputs allowed me to quickly juke my opponents. However, I found the loud clacking associated with each key to be a little distracting.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

While the gaming performance of the K70 Pro TKL is excellent, I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who is particular about how their keyboard sounds, or who shares their space with others who might take issue with this particularly boisterous peripheral.

Software: Adjust It, Then Lose It

Corsair’s iCue software feels a bit clunky, but it still offers a cleaner experience compared with Razer’s Synapse application. The home screen displays some extraneous information you don't need, but your connected Corsair peripherals show up prominently at the center. The software allows you to configure lighting effects, remap keys, adjust the polling rate, and determine how Game Mode will affect your keyboard.

(Credit: Corsair)

Because the K70 Pro TKL is equipped with Hall effect switches, the actuation and reset point for each switch can also be fine-tuned on a per-key basis. You also have the option to add a secondary actuation point with a different input. For instance, you'd be able to sprint when you fully depress a key, while a half-press makes you walk. This also gives you the option to have an input register constantly when pressed past a certain point, rather than rapidly mashing a single key.

In testing, I found that iCue only consumes about 250MB of RAM when running in the background, provided it doesn’t have any of its optional plug-ins running in parallel. However, the K70 Pro TKL also supports up to five onboard memory profiles, which allows you to save your settings directly to the keyboard instead of being controlled by software running in the background. Nearly every feature available in the iCue software is accessible in this mode, though you won’t be able to utilize some of the more advanced RGB lighting effects. Nevertheless, I used this mode throughout my testing without any issues.