Corsair has managed to build a keyboard that is both the smallest and the biggest I have ever seen. While the K65 Mini has a miniscule footprint, its nearly two inches of height makes for a somewhat imposing presence on your desk.
And I absolutely love it. Despite the plastic shell it is a remarkably sturdy piece of gear with absolutely no deck flex, a satisfyingly smooth (though not at all tactile) typing experience, and all the top tier features you’d expect from a premium keyboard from Corsair.
It is over the top, showy, and absolutely glorious. For those who haven’t tried mechanical “gaming” keyboards before, I should probably explain that they are one relatively few examples of gaming specific gear that actually does have a measurable impact on your gaming performance.
Standard membrane keyboards register a keypress only when you bottom out a key – and generally struggle to accurately register keypresses when you hit several keys simultaneously or in close succession.
Standard mechanical keyboards use individual switches for each key. These switches can be designed to trigger (aka: actuate) with much less travel, so you don’t need to bottom out the key before the computer registers you’ve pressed it.
Good ones also feature microcontrollers that can better track keypresses as they occur, providing full n-key rollover (registering multiple keyboard presses) and eliminating ghosting (when a keyboard fails to register a keypress because it happened too close to one that was already being processed.
) Gamers love them because the more responsive and reliable control inputs improve reaction times and make it easier to use complex keyboard commands or combos. They’ve also proven to be quite popular among particularly fast typists, who can sometimes have issues with random typos appearing as a result of ghosting when they’re going at full tilt.
Corsair, in their typical fashion, has decided to fully embrace overkill with the introduction of their AXON microcontroller. AXON is able to check for new keypresses 8000 times every second. This is far, FAR more than any human should ever be able to take full advantage of, but on the flip side that also means that there’s even less time spent waiting between the moment you press the key and the moment it gets sent to your CPU.
And as if this weren’t enough they also built this particular board with Cherry MX Speed switches (also known as Cherry MX Silver, depending on who you ask. ) These actuate after just 1. 2mm of travel and require 25% less force to use than the standard clicky blue switches that have been the defacto standard for the last few years, making the keyboard even more twitchy.
They’re also linear switches, meaning they don’t have the tactile “bump” to let you know when the switch has fired and make significantly less noise as a result. Having used both I can tell you that typists will likely not find linear switches to be nearly as satisfying as tactile ones, since being able to feel each keypress land can greatly assist with overall accuracy, but for any kind of twitch gaming you’re going to be hard pressed to find much better than these speed switches paired with the AXON Controller.
And it doesn’t hurt that the keyboard looks great either. Corsair’s iCue software has come a long way since it first released and allows you to set up all manner of complex lighting effects and animations if you want, and the diffusion plate installed beneath the keys means that the entire thing glows with a softer and more pleasant effect than you get with most per-key lighting.
It’s particularly stunning with the optional “radiant” spacebar installed, though sadly this and the optional Corsair escape key are both painted single shot keys rather than the more durable molded double shot keys that the rest of the keyboard uses, which you can definitely tell if you look close enough as the surface finish doesn’t quite match.
As far as my actual usage experience goes, the only issues I really ran into come down to the fact that I’m just not used to using a 60% keyboard, which is really just a matter of practice. These keyboards are basically what you get when you decide that the already diminutive tenkeyless designs are just too big for your liking.
60% keyboards have no dedicated arrow, function, or navigation keys, requiring you to use function key combos for all of them. Corsair, to their credit, packed in a lot of these key combos. In addition to the usual arrow keys and function keys there’s a virtual mouse (which is just as clumsy as you’d expect trying to replace a mouse with a keyboard would be, but really nice to have if you ever find you actually need it,) media keys, macro keys, lighting controls, and the ability to lock the Windows key to prevent you from accidentally minimizing a game while you’re playing it.
There is a definite learning curve required to get good at these, and it feels a bit clumsy if you’ve gotten used to having a full keyboard available, but some will no doubt find it worthwhile to reclaim the desk space.
In my case, for example, I’m planning to mount the keyboard in a VR simpit I’ve built for games like Elite Dangerous or Microsoft Flight Simulator. The fact that I can attach it to a miniscule tray that I can swing out of the way without worrying that I’ll accidentally smash something in the process because I can’t see out the VR headset more than makes up for having to hold FN-K to scroll to the right.
I’d primarily recommend this to any gamers looking for a way to save space without compromising on quality or comfort who also don’t anticipate doing a ton of word processing.