Corsair is best known for its large family of Cherry-equipped mechanical keyboards, but did you know the company also offers a lone entry-level membrane gaming keyboard? The Corsair K55 RGB, which anchors the low end of Corsair’s product line, now has a bigger brother.
The newly introduced Corsair K57 RGB Wireless (see it at Amazon) dials things up a couple of notches, delivering compelling features that might ordinarily be beyond the reach of budget gamers. That’s possible because the K57 dispenses with the priciest part of high-end keyboards – mechanical keys – to sell for a very affordable $99. But are the trade-offs worth it? We decided to take a closer look.
Corsair K57 RGB Wireless - Design and Features
Even for a full-size keyboard, the K57 is enormous. Including the removable palm rest, it measures 19 x 9 inches, dwarfing my personal Corsair K70’s 17.25 x 8.4-inch form factor. Overall, the keyboard should be familiar to anyone who knows the signature Corsair look. It has the same media controls over the keypad, with forward/back track controls sitting in line with the function keys, and volume in the top right corner. Rather than a dial or roller for volume control, the K57 gives you a mute button and a pair of up/down volume buttons. They aren't as convenient, but are a reasonable trade-off to bring down the price.
Also along the top you’ll find a macro recording button, a button for adjusting the LED lights, and a Windows key lock for gameplay. On the opposite side of the keyboard, a column of six macros keys sit waiting to be programmed.
The K57’s flagship feature is its wireless connectivity. Taking advantage of Corsair’s new 2.4GHz “Slipstream” proprietary wireless tech, Corsair claims the keyboard has a sub-1 ms latency and uses intelligent frequency shifting to keep the signal strong regardless of ambient RF activity. In theory, that should make its performance more-or-less indistinguishable from a wired keyboard, which I tested (more on that in a bit).
To enable Slipstream, the K57 comes with its own USB dongle and requires no software to configure – just plug it in and you’re in business. You can also connect the keyboard with traditional Bluetooth – handy if you’re using the keyboard on a PC that has no spare USB ports. And in a pinch it even works as a wired keyboard, with an included (and fully detachable) six-foot micro-USB cable which is also used to charge the keyboard.
Speaking of charging, the keyboard is rated to deliver about 175 hours of runtime with the lighting off. Turn on the LEDs and the performance drops substantially – 35 hours at the dimmest setting, or just a quick eight hours with the lighting cranked to max.
And for what it’s worth, at that highest setting (you can choose from three pre-set levels) it’s perhaps the brightest lighting I’ve ever seen on a keyboard, thanks to the Capellix LEDs.
The keyboard itself appears to be plastic through and through, from keycaps to top plate to backplate to the (somewhat rubberized) palm rest. The ABS keycaps look gorgeous fresh out of the box, with a crisp, readable font that’s large and highly legible whether the LED lighting is on or off. That said, ABS being what it is, expect the keycaps to begin to shine in short order.
Corsair K57 RGB Wireless – Software
The K57 uses the same iCue software as Corsair’s pricier mechanical gaming keyboards, so it gets the benefit of the same great desktop experience as its bigger siblings. It’s well organized, with tabs on the left for Actions, Lighting, and Performance, and a handful of menus across the top for extras, like an “instant lighting” option that sets the whole base to a solid color with one click, and a dashboard that reports the battery status of the keyboard and your laptop, as well as fan activity and CPU temperature and load.
But the real meat here is the ability to fine-tune lighting effects and program macros.
iCue offers about two dozen lighting profiles – rainbows, waves, pulses, and the like. I found the per-key programming to be a little cumbersome. You build your lighting profile in layers, where each layer represents the color or effect that you’re applying to a particular set of keys. But once you get the hang of it, it’s super powerful and flexible. You can combine dynamic lighting effects in one part of the keyboard with different effects or static lighting for others.
That said, all of the most interesting lighting effects, including many of the dynamic lighting modes and the per-key lighting, are only available when the keyboard is plugged into the PC via the USB cable; when wireless, you just get a small handful of pre-defined effects. It was super disappointing to unplug the USB cable and have most of the lighting options disappear, especially since this keyboard is clearly intended to be used wirelessly the vast majority of the time.
If all you want to do is assign macros to the six special macro keys, you can do that without iCue at all, using the macro record button on the keyboard. But iQue is a macro recording powerhouse and is well worth learning how to use. You can use iCue to apply up to two macros to any and every key on the keyboard. The recorder generates a visual script for every part of your macro, which you can tweak line-by-line. You can include mouse activity, but it’s unfortunately all relative movement, with no option for recording activity based on absolute mouse positions.
In addition to the traditional macro recorder, you can assign media controls to keys, start timers, and launch apps. You can inject blocks of text from a key and even use a keystroke to switch to a different profile. And that’s not all; you can remap any key on the board, and unbind keys as well. All in all its one of the more powerful and flexible software suites on the market for keyboard customization.
In the Performance tab, you can control the extent of the Windows Lock button – you can specify if it disables just the Windows key, or also inhibits combos like Alt + Tab and Shift + Tab.
Corsair K57 RGB Wireless – Gaming
I was especially interested to see how the K57’s Slipstream wireless performed in the heat of combat, so I fired up Call of Duty and Fortnite to see if I could tell the difference between this and a wired keyboard. To conduct a fair, blinded test, I covered the wireless status light and left the USB cable attached to the keyboard at all times. Then I asked a friend to either plug the cable into the computer’s USB port or detach it while I was turned away.
The result? Somewhat surprisingly, I couldn’t tell when the keyboard was wired and when it was wireless – the performance was indistinguishable in my human testing. It's possible lab-like testing may identify minimal latency that doesn't impact day-to-day play. To complete the test, I disconnected the Slipstream dongle and connected the keyboard via Bluetooth. Using Bluetooth there was minor noticeable latency – movements felt not quite as snappy, and I sensed a hint of lag when I was changing direction in a game or typing quickly in a chat window. It's passable for day to day use or casual gaming, but was noticeable enough to be avoided for more serious gaming sessions.
One great bonus I didn't expect: I loved the six macro keys that flank the left side of the keyboard. It was awesome to be able to bind actions to those keys rather than hunting for the right key in an alphabet sea. In fact, I missed having those keys when I reverted back to my own personal keyboard.
As a membrane keyboard, the K57 does require substantially more finger pressure to activate a key than a typical mechanical keyboard, which meant in practice that I felt like I was really pounding on the keys when I was maneuvering around on the battlefield. If you’re eyeing this keyboard, you’re likely coming to it from another membrane keyboard anyway, and already used to the force needed to actuate the membrane. But anyone used to mechanical keys may be in for a somewhat rough adjustment.
On the other hand, the large footprint of this keyboard meant the key spacing is slightly greater than I’m used to, and that was a boon – I made fewer errors, both in gaming and routine typing – thanks to having a little more breathing space. Whether this is a pro or con for you personally may depend on the size of your hands.
I used the K57 for a lot of typing between gameplay, and while I would never give up my mechanical keyboard, the K57 is a solidly comfortable set of keys. The gently sculpted keycaps are a natural fit under your fingers, and say what you will about the imprecise, sloshy nature of membrane keyboards, it was refreshingly quiet. And though the keyboard could be stiffer – the top plate is plastic, not aluminum – I the flexing while typing or gaming wasn’t a distraction.
Purchasing Guide
The Corsair K57 RGB Wireless has an MSRP of $99.99 and it's available now.