Corsair K70 Pro Mini Wireless Keyboard Review

A Closer Look & Performance

The Corsair K70 Pro Mini Wireless is promising to be many things all at once, but let’s start with the “mini” part. Well, it certainly is mini, and it’s not often I see a 60% keyboard come in for review, or even out in the wild. It is exceptionally compact though, and easy to hold in one hand. The size is great for those limited on desktop space, and it frees up a lot more space for moving your mouse too.

It comes with a USB Type-C cable and can be used in a fully wired mode. Actually, in wired mode, you get the benefit of a blisteringly quick 8000Hz polling rate, and that’ll certainly be the go-to for people using it for eSports. However, the cable is there to charge it too, and it’s suggested you give it a full charge on your first use. If I was to own this keyboard, it’d likely just stay on my desk, and I’d go for USB mode.

However, if you want to break free, there’s a little USB dongle tucked into the back here. This uses 2.4 GHz bandwidth and offers the latest Corsair Slipstream Wireless technology. That means a 2000 Hz polling rate, 10M of range, AES 128-bit encryption, and you can use a single dongle for multiple Corsair Slipstream products; keyboard, mouse, headset, etc.

Switching to Bluetooth mode will give you ultra-low-latency too, but overall, there’s not a whole lot you cannot connect to. For PC and Mac, you can get up to 8000 Hz polling, However, Xbox and PlayStation devices will cap at 1000 Hz polling rate. Bluetooth doesn’t really work that way, but you do get the ultra low latency regardless.

The keyboard is quick enough to charge, taking anywhere from 3 hours to 5 hours, depending on if it’s simply low on power or completely flat. What’s cool though, is that you’ll get up to 32 hours of wireless performance with bright RGB lighting. Turn the lighting off and it’ll go for up to 200 hours, so you won’t be reaching for the charging cable in too much of a hurry on this one.

It may be missing 40% of its size, but it’s not missing 40% of its functionality. As you can see, every single key is also another key. There’s an Fn shift button and with the K70 Pro Mini Wireless, you’ll likely be using it quite a lot!

There’s basic stuff, such as a set of arrow keys here on IJKL.

There are multimedia keys here, and volume keys below them.

Multiple Bluetooth device profiles, great for quick swapping between two devices.

Even the F-keys are on the Fn Shift, although you can lock the top row to F-keys also if you prefer.

There’s even another layer beyond that, with FN-Shift giving way to FN2, which is the same but one better, leading you down a blackhole of customisation options and layers for macros, custom shortcuts and launchers, etc.

You can command the lighting from the keyboard too, with profiles, brightness, effect, speed and direction controls here. There are a lot of profiles too, so even while you could customise every single light with 20 (or unlimited) layers per light, most of you will likely be happy with some of the presets.

The space bar looks amazing, but there’s a secondary option included in the box. Here’s the “stock” one.

Here’s the other one!

Don’t like this escape key?

Here’s the other one!

The keycap removal tool is great, as it makes maintenance a bit easier. As you can see, I have the Cherry MX Red keys here, which are rated for 100m keystrokes. Or to put it another way, it’ll last until the heat death of the universe. Should you EVER need to replace a broken switch though, there’s a tool included for that too.

Of course, you may simply want a different kind of switch too. There’s no reason why you can’t add your own custom switches anywhere on this keyboard, which is pretty cool.

The only thing I haven’t spoken about yet is performance, and that’s because it almost goes without saying that this is a bloody good keyboard. The only downside, as far as I can see, is the learning curve. I’m used to having arrow keys, I use a numberpad extensively, so learning that they’re not there, well that’s going to take me some time. This is not the keyboard for me, but if I get back and use it the way it’s meant to be, it really starts to shine. For FPS and MOBA gaming, it’s legitimately fantastic. Plus it has all the letter keys as you would expect, so bitching in lobby chat is a breeze.

The keys feel every bit as you would expect, it’s a classic switch from Cherry and it still feels as good as they come. However, it’s the aluminium frame, the durable plastics, the robust build quality and precision engineering in general that make them really shine. Put great switches into a flimsy cheapo shell and they feel like dogs*** and sound awful when you’re bashing away at them. In this keyboard, everything is right and tight, and the tactile feel of it all is sublime. It’s not a cheap keyboard, so you’ll be glad to hear it feels and performs like a premium product from front to back, top to bottom, inside and out.

The iCue software is only available on a PC/Mac, but it’s well worth checking out. This keyboard can pretty much be controlled entirely from itself, as there are a LOT of shortcuts here. However, custom configurations of keys, macros, shortcuts, lighting layers and more are done through the software. The powerful AXON processor on the keyboard allows for ultra-fast performance and a lot of complex configurations.

There’s 8MB for ul to 50 profiles on the keyboard, with up to 20 lighting layers. However, while running in wired mode with the software, there are unlimited profiles and unlimited lighting layers. Let me tell ya though, 20 is a stupidly large amount already, most meme gifs have fewer layers/frames than that.