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Corsair K70 Pro Mini Wireless gaming keyboard review

Corsair's best board yet?

Updated: Oct 19, 2023 11:50 am
Corsair K70 Pro Mini Wireless gaming keyboard review

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When it comes to gaming peripheral companies, you don’t get much bigger than Corsair.

And now they’ve added another wireless gaming keyboard to their fleet, the Corsair K70 Pro Mini Wireless.

This gaming keyboard has a true 60% form factor, and surprisingly, some great features that even the pickiest keyboard enthusiasts like the folks over at /r/mechanicalkeyboards will appreciate. Let’s take a look.

Corsair K70 Pro Mini Wireless specs

Excellent

Corsair K70 Pro Mini Wireless keyboard

corsair k70 pro mini wireless gaming keyboard

Switch type

Cherry MX Red

Form factor

60%

Connectivity

USB Type-C, Bluetooth 4.0, 2.4GHz wireless

Hotswappable?

Yes, with 3-pin Cherry-style switches

Keycaps

Double-shot PBT

Pros
  • Great build quality with very little flex
  • PBT keycaps
  • Hotswap switches (Only 3 pin)
Cons
  • Limited height adjustability
  • Very expensive for a 60% board
Tech Specs

Switch type

Cherry MX Red

Form factor

60%

Connectivity

USB Type-C, Bluetooth 4.0, 2.4GHz wireless

Hotswappable?

Yes, with 3-pin Cherry-style switches

Keycaps

Double-shot PBT

Weight

618g/1lb,5.8oz

Layout

ISO or ANSI

Backlight

Per-key RGB

Stabilizers

Cherry MX style

What’s in the box & setup

  • Corsair K70 Pro Mini Wireless gaming keyboard
  • USB Type-A to Type-C charging cable
  • Keycap puller
  • Key switch puller
  • Alternate branded escape key and spacebar
  • Corsair slipstream wireless 2.4GHz USB dongle
  • Safety information and warranty guide

The box is made from impressively thick cardboard and features the same yellow and black color scheme that all of Corsair’s gaming peripherals have had for over a year now.

It features the standard spread of product imagery and feature lists, with stickers to indicate which switch type and which layout you’re getting. (In our case, Cherry MX Red switches and an ISO layout).

Opening the box, we’re greeted by the Corsair K70 Pro Mini Wireless shrouded in a plastic bag and positioned on a cardboard plinth.

We’d prefer some uses of high-density foam or a more protective plastic bag as the board could become damaged in transit, despite the thick cardboard mentioned earlier.

Underneath the board, we find the cable, dongle, and spare keycaps in vacuum-sealed bags. Alongside these, we find the key switch and keycap pullers. Unfortunately, there were no stickers included with our sample. Shaun will be very upset about this.

The setup process amounts to plugging the dongle into your PC and flipping the switch on the front side of the board. After a few seconds, the K70 Pro Mini Wireless will come to life in all 16.8m vivid colors and you can get to gaming.

It is worth mentioning here that you won’t be able to get full functionality out of this board without Corsair’s iCUE software.

But you can use it in wired, wireless, and Bluetooth mode without the software just fine, but you won’t be able to play with the lighting or aside macros in quite as much detail.

Design

Corsair has done well here, understanding that the sort of people who like keyboards with minimal form factors, mostly enjoy a minimalist approach in terms of design, color, and build.

We particularly enjoy the absolutely tiny bezel of the K70 Pro Mini Wireless as it only extends past the keys on the sides and bottom by about 3mm/0.1 inches.

The bezel is far thicker on the top, but this is where the on-switch, charging port, and dongle-holder live so we can allow that.

Additionally, this section of the keyboard is obscured from view when you’re using it, so only the most staunchly intense minimalists will have a problem with it.

One of the best visual improvements Corsair has made over the last few years has been with its branding. OG’s will remember the cursed tramp stamp “Corsair Gaming” logo they had for a while.

Even after cutting that, they have continued to improve, they’ve kept to the elegant simplistic ship logo and continued to use the “/ /” sort of designation that can be found hidden on the flank of their various peripherals and internal PC components.

Additionally, they have continued to use the less stylized font on the keycaps that we first saw on the Corsair K70 RGB Pro gaming keyboard and we really like it for its clarity and simplicity.

The ‘&’ symbol still looks weird though, more like a foreign currency symbol than an ampersand.

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Taking a look at the main body of the board we see a grey & black color scheme that looks nice enough, contrasting very well with the brushed aluminum top plate of the keyboard.

Surrounding the perimeter of the bottom of the board we see Corsair’s ‘Radiant 360° RGB Lightedge’. Not sure why they decided to come up with an actual name for it but it looks cool.

We were hoping that it would fire light down onto the desk surface to create a sort of under glow reminiscent of the neon lights people used to mount on the underside of their cars.

Unfortunately, it’s not nearly bright enough to create this effect. It’s noticeable in very low lighting conditions, however. Additionally, the lighting isn’t directly visible from the user’s perspective so we wonder why it’s there at all.

The per-key RGB lighting is more impressive, however, with some cool effects saved to the board and it gets pretty bright too. Unfortunately, the LEDs are north-facing, which is fine for simple keycap legends but leaves a more extensive key cap designed under-illuminated.

This is made obvious by the cool geometric spacebar and branded escape key that Corsair has included with the K70 Pro Mini Wireless.

Build quality

The Corsair K70 Pro Mini wireless feels like a solid piece of kit, with very little flex even when subjected to an aggressive twisting motion. A lack of flex is one of the inherent benefits of a 60% keyboard, but we’re still impressed with the solidity.

The construction is almost entirely plastic aside from the top plate, but it feels like quality plastic so we aren’t too worried amount the board sagging over time or the case cracking when dropped.

Additionally, we love that Corsair has finally blessed a gaming keyboard with PBT keycaps out of the box and they’re Doubleshot too! While they aren’t the best of the best we’ve experienced when it comes to keycaps, they have a pleasing texture and wouldn’t be out of place on a fully custom keyboard, which is considerably high praise for a keyboard from Corsair.

Additionally, the geometrically-designed alternate spacebar they included has a really cool feeling to it, so much so that we’ve already transplanted it to another board.

Typing & gaming performance

The story here is good, mostly.

We are pleased to report that the Corsair Slipstream wireless protocol performs very well, with no latency noticeable either in gaming or during normal use. Additionally, we were pleased by the absolutely tiny dongle.

It only extends out from its port by about 5mm, which is particularly impressive when compared to the overlong dongles we’re used to that usually end up getting beheaded by an oblivious roommate or careless spin of a gaming chair.

When it comes to gaming the story is good too. We’ve always preferred a TKL or smaller form factor for FPS gaming as it allows for more usable space for a mouse. This is especially important for competitive FPS players who keep their DPI well below 1000 as they really need room to drag the mouse.

This makes it an ideal keyboard for first-person shooters, especially if you get the Cherry MX Red variant for speedy keystrokes. Of course, this means that if you’re more of an MMO player you’ll be left wanting for keys so we’ll recommend a more extensive full-size keyboard or bigger.

Here we get to mention Corsair’s best addition to the K70 Pro Mini Wireless, hot-swap switches. Yes, friends, they’ve finally wised up and allowed the consumer to pick any switch they want, so long as it’s a 3-pin Cherry MX-style switch. While we would have preferred 5-pin compatibility, we’ll take a win where we can.

Corsair K70 Pro Mini Wireless: Final word

Corsair, you’ve impressed us here. Not only have you made your best keyboard to date, but you’ve outfitted it with hot-swappable switches and PBT keycaps. This is an unusually conscientious move from a big gaming brand and we appreciate it big-time.

Allowing for expandability and upgrades is always a good thing, but we are equally impressed that the Corsair K70 Pro Mini Wireless is a perfectly cromulent keyboard out-of-the-box. You don’t need to do anything to it to make it a great keyboard.

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This is pretty rare given the current gaming keyboard landscape, where the more famous the brand, the worse the keyboard generally is. The Corsair K70 Pro Mini Wireless has given us a little, 60% form factor ray of hope.

Excellent

Corsair K70 Pro Mini Wireless keyboard

Switch type
Cherry MX Red
Form factor
60%
Connectivity
USB Type-C, Bluetooth 4.0, 2.4GHz wireless
Hotswappable?
Yes, with 3-pin Cherry-style switches
Keycaps
Double-shot PBT


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