Corsair K65 Plus Wireless Review – A Corporate Take On A Custom 75% Keyboard

Corsair’s K65 Plus Wireless is a corporate take on a custom 75% keyboard. It makes all the right noises, looks the part, but there’s just something a little off. Don’t get me wrong, this is a great board and by the end of this video you’ll understand why I still recommend it, but there are definitely some things you’ll want to know before dropping your cash on one. The K65 Plus is actually a 75% board, comprising of a full centre section, a full F keys row, and full sized arrow keys, but a condensed mid-section with Home, Page Up and Page Down as dedicated keys, where things like Print Screen, End and Insert are left to second layer functions. One nice addition is a knob. I love a good knob. This one is nice and hard – I’m pretty sure it’s metal in fact! Sorry, I couldn’t resist. But yeah you’ve got a nice knurled knob at the top right – with enough space to actually use it too which is great.

Switches wise, you get Corsair’s own Cherry clone red switches – they are 45g linear switches that come pre-lubed, with 4mm of total travel and an actuation point at 1.9mm. Personally I’m not a massive fan of linear switches – and these ones weirdly don’t feel that linear. The initial force is ridiculously light – to the point I was accidentally pressing keys when I didn’t realise, but the lower end is super spongy. It’s like there’s a bit of open cell foam under each key that you have to push past to bottom it out. It’s a weird feeling for sure. Certain keys – mostly the stabilised ones, but enter and backspace being the main culprits – feel like the foam is inside the switch the whole way. It feels noticeably stiffer and takes more effort to actuate them. Typing sounds wise, well the K65 Plus is ridiculously quiet – take a listen.

It has a pretty soft, muted sound to it, with only slight tapping from the caps themselves. Everything else is muted. For a more workplace environment – assuming you don’t mind the switch feel – this would be absolutely perfect. To me, it’s hard to describe but it’s ironically perhaps a little too refined. It feels – I don’t know – artificially quiet? I’m really struggling to put my finger on what feels just slightly off about this, but if you try one yourself maybe you’ll see what I mean. The good news though is that if, like me, you don’t like the feel of Corsair’s MLX reds, these are all hot-swappable. Pull em out and stick whatever else you want in. 

Part of the feel comes from the build quality – while this is a plastic case in both top and bottom, there is a steel reinforcement plate inside that adds a fair bit of heft and stiffness. There is next to no deck flex here, despite the plastic case. I must admit that I’m quite impressed at how well Corsair matched the plastic shell’s finish to an aluminium finish – it’s really quite uncanny! That, coupled with the keycaps I think round out my weird feelings about this board. The caps themselves are dual-tone PBT dye-sublimation caps with a slightly textured finish. They aren’t shine-through, which considering how bright the RGB LEDs in this thing are is a curse and a blessing. We’ll come back to that in a second – but the caps themselves, at least to me anyway, have a bit of a cheap feeling to them. I’ve felt the same with similarly made caps, so perhaps that’s just personal preference showing through, but it feels a little cheap to me. 

Getting back to the RGB – of course you can control that in iCUE if you want, or surprisingly you can access ten different RGB modes just by holding FN and pressing any one of the number keys. Since the caps aren’t shiny-through, you don’t get the useful illumination of the keys – nor the tiny secondary or tertiary functions – which is something I definitely prefer, although it’s hard to argue the board doesn’t have bright and visible RGB lighting. Speaking of those secondary functions, it’s worth noting that the keycap design is actually a little cluttered. First you’ve got the Mac AND Windows keys at the bottom – plus a toggle switch on the top of the board to switch between the two – but then you’ve got absolutely tiny printing for things like End, Print Screen  and Insert. Hell even the RGB mode icons are tiny. While I do like having this laid out on the caps themselves rather than an instruction sheet you need to memorise fully, I don’t know I’m totally happy with this design either. I’m trying to think of what I’d rather have instead – ninja printing the secondary functions maybe, or just a larger font – but maybe you can let me know what you think in the comments below.

One thing I can’t argue against is the styling. The bottom, especially is genuinely really cool and it’s a shame it’ll spend its whole life face down. The two tone keycaps are pretty nice too – subtle but stylish. I like it. It is worth pointing out that this is a pretty basic profile that is really quite easy to get to grips with, and you’ve even got two sets of adjustable feet for height adjustment. On the top side is where you’ll find the wireless controls – either for use with the included 2.4GHz dongle that has a handy storage slot up there, or bluetooth with up to three devices. You’ve also got the USB port for charging – although you can use this fully wired if you’d rather. Battery wise it’s a 4200mAh cell, which Corsair claims can give you 266 hours of usage – that’s 11 days – IF you turn the LEDs off. They don’t seem to quote a more sensible usage figure, but from my admittedly limited experience with it, even with the LEDs on it’s a good for an average week’s worth of usage. You do have a battery indicator on the top left, right next to the RGB off microswitch, should you want to instantly go stealth-mode. 

Of course, we can’t talk about a gaming keyboard and not talk about the gaming experience. This is where the K65 Plus Wireless really picks up for me. The hair-trigger sensitivity and non-linear actuation force were actively annoying for typing this script out, but for gaming it was exactly what I wanted. It felt fast and responsive, and honestly kind of like I was rolling a joystick around rather than pressing keys. I did miss-type a fair bit at first, but you get used to it, and it ends up feeling more like an advantage. 

The hinge point here, as always, is price. The MSRP for this is £150 – which while that is actually pretty cheap for a wireless mechanical keyboard, feels a little too high for what you get. Luckily, at least at the time of filming, Corsair has lowered the price to just £110, and for that it is a lot easier to recommend. The foundation of the board feels pretty solid. The build quality is good, it’s customisable, you can switch out the switches and caps if you want, and personally the 75% layout makes a lot more sense just from a practicality aspect. At £150 I’d be seriously considering ponying up the extra for the Keychron Q3 Max I reviewed recently, but at £110, especially if you want the wireless features, I’d say it’s a good shout.