Software and Testing
First off, in the introduction of this review I made a really dumb comment. I said that the wrist rest to the K90 didn’t look like much, and boy I couldn’t have been more wrong. The wrist rest that comes with the K90 looks quite inferior to the rest of the keyboard due to the immediate construction appeal it has. The wrist rest is plastic and thin and doesn’t fit the mold that the K90 makes with this rugged tank built keyboard. Now, you’re probably asking why I’m focusing on the wrist rest so much. To answer simply, the wrist rest makes the keyboard.
How does a wrist rest make a keyboard? Honestly I don’t know, but from the moment I added it to the bottom of the K90 the appeal, which was already really high, launched into another orbit. The sleekness and comfort the wrist rest add are unmatched. The texture is pleasant to the touch and the size is perfect for any hand or wrist size. It is the porridge I talked about. Goldie Locks would approve highly of this wrist rest and after she tried to steal it from me I would hunt her down and kill her.
The main thing I like about the K90 (beyond the wrist rest) is that Corsair seemed to take the K60 (which we reviewed in the past) and added everything to it to make it an amazing keyboard. The ‘G’ Keys are a perfect example of this. The ‘G’ section is obviously just an addition to the constructed platform that the K60 was built on but Corsair executed the addition so perfect you couldn’t find the hardware line if you tried.
They added illumination, which is always a nice addition and took away the textured “gaming” keys (which I could always live without) which is an okay subtraction. Most important of all, and I hate going back to it, is that they extended the ‘okay’ gaming wrist rest of the K60 the entire length of the keyboard.
Is this keyboard good to type on? Is it good for gaming? The answer it YES. This keyboard gives me the feeling of what a keyboard is supposed to feel like. It’s like pimp my ride, but instead of pimping a 94′ Ford Tempo we’re pimping a 2012 Escalade. It’s something that should be done. It’s something that was done.
The software, which you can pick up at the Corsair website, for the K90 isn’t the most robust. This keyboard isn’t made by Roccat so what I got I was expecting to get. The software is designed with some complex functionality and some very simple functionality.
The screen you get when you first install the software is Main screen. This is where you can see everything the software has to offer. Obviously the ‘G’ bank of keys is the primary focus. The primary keys on the keyset are not macro-able but I find no faults in that. I’ve always said Macro Keys are for macros and the other keys are for whatever the other keys are for.
The ‘M’ keys on the top of the screen are the profiles that could be saved to the keyboard physical keyboard. Just tap a single key to switch between the profiles. This is nice if you even go to LAN where you aren’t going to use your computer but don’t want to lose your macros.
To the right of that you have the illumination setting for the K90. You can change the brightness of the keyboard by simply pressing the ‘Light’ button on the keyboard or you can adjust it here and see a visual representation of what setting it’s currently at.
The Playback Options for these keys set the response you get from a single keystroke, whether you’d want a single depression to mean a single depression or something else. You can make a key rapid fire or simple stay depressed even after you physically release the key. You can also set the time delay of each one of these functions by changing the ‘Fixed Macro Delay Time’.
The Delay Options button changes the Main Screen to show you even more options in regards to the delay function of each macro. I don’t know what you’d use such a function for but I imagine some game out there could utilize this.
Lastly, we have the Advanced Options button. Here you can set the macro buttons to preconfigured functions programmed into the keyboard such as Application launching or a command like ‘Select All’
All in all the software isn’t bad. It gives you the ability to macro the keys that are meant to be macro’d and that’s all I ever ask.