You might think that a small-sized keyboard would be light, both inherently because of its size, and also by design, because a small keyboard does imply “portability.” The Corsair K65 Plus Wireless is, however, not particularly light despite being in a 75% form factor. It is, however, exceptionally sturdy and built like a brick. It is also very enjoyable to use.
The immediate stand-out feature for this keyboard is its pre-lubricated red linear switches, which are both precise, and so very soft to type on. The keyboard is also relatively quiet thanks to the two layers of sound dampening that have been built into the device, and while I’m sure that some people would prefer a more throaty clicking as their fingers dance across the keyboard, the discrete typing experience here is welcome, especially considering the breadth of use cases that you’ll be using it for.
Because the keyboard has both Bluetooth and 2.4GHz wireless, it’s an excellent keyboard to pair with a wireless mouse and your ROG Ally or similar handheld PC console/device, to be able to enjoy the full breadth of PC games on your TV when hooked up to the ROG via HDMI. For that living room experience, you don’t necessarily want to annoy everyone else in the house, so the quiet operation of the K65 Plus is welcome.
There’s also the option to plug the keyboard into your PC or office desktop via a standard USB connection, and for more conventional typing purposes, the extra size of the K65 Plus helps it stand out over other mini keyboards, such as the SteelSeries Apex Pro Mini. The extra real estate to work with at a 75 per cent size means that Corsair has been able to tuck traditional directional arrows in the bottom right corner, so you don’t need to hold down a function key just to move your cursor in a Word document or scroll through Excel cells. Additionally, the side of the keyboard has Page Up and Page Down keys, as well as a Home key. The presence of these keys immediately makes the K65 Plus more useful in a general capacity than many other mini keyboards.
I was less enamoured with the use of lighting for the keys, however. The keyboard has the standard RGB lighting system and plenty of customisation options for that (via SteelSeries’ software). The quality of the lighting is good, too, with rich, deep colours across the full spectrum. However, it’s a backlighting effect only, coming up from keys that have no internal lighting within them meaning that if it’s dark (i.e the kind of situation where you’d think that glowing, colourful lighting might actually serve a purpose), it’s still too hard to actually see what each key is. You’ll still need to rely on your touch typing skills in those circumstances. The SteelSeries Mini, in contrast, actually lights up each key’s letter or symbol, meaning each letter and function is easy to see in the darkest of circumstances. I do get that lighting is both standarised and pretty, and the absence of any lighting at all would have been a kind of blasphemy, but as it stands, this is still a design weakness within the keyboard.
The only other issue that might give some people pause is the polling rate – i.e. the frequency with which keystroke information is sent to the computer that the device is connected to. The K65 Plus has a maximum rate of 1,000Hz, which is a little low for professional gaming use. It’s more than fast enough for most normal people, however. “Casual” players are not going to care about this, and this compromise is probably one of the many reasons that the keyboard has such a modest asking price despite its many premium qualities.
With a spectacularly sturdy build quality, and 266 hours of use between charges (assuming that you turn the largely pointless lighting off), the Corsair K65 Plus is an excellent option for everyday, all day use, especially for people that have multiple devices that they may want to type on, across both work and play applications. The extra size gives it a “sweet spot” effect that elevates it over other mini-sized keyboards, and the typing experience is so silken smooth that even people with the most demanding of typing needs will find it comfortable, even after many, many hours of continual use.
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