Cougar 700K Mechanical Keyboard Review

Performance

One things that really stands out about the Cougar 700K is the software, it’s really easy to use, has quick and easy access to all the major features and of course you have the bonus of being able to save all your settings directly to the keyboards internal memory; this means it’s perfect for eSports tournaments, which don’t allow the use of software.

The backlighting is nice and bright, giving a clear illumination to all the major keys. It also provides a soft under-lighting effect that gives off a warm glow against the brushed aluminium chassis.

Gaming on the 700K is exceptionally good, although I wouldn’t have expected anything less from a high-value keyboard such as this. The Cherry MX Red switches that Cougar has used on this keyboard never disappoint and they’re as light and fast as you would expect; after using the 700K for a few hours, it’s easy to see why so many gamers love these switches.

N-Key rollover is a wonderful thing for gaming, especially when you’re in a particularly heated battle on games like Starcraft II or League of Legend. You can frantically bash your way through key strokes and you’ll never have to worry about a key not registering, even mashing the palm of your hand on the keyboard will result in every keystroke being triggered; although it’s not really a great tactic in many games.

The G-keys are located at a good distance from the keyboard; they’re easily reached, but not so close that you hit them instead of Shift or CTRL. One of the best features is easily the G6 button, which is located on the right side of the split space bar. The split design of the space bar gives you an extra thumb key, which I find works pretty well for push-to-talk or an alternative melee button in FPS games.

The multimedia controls are a welcome bonus, but I still think the mixture of mechanical keys, membrane keys and buttons is an odd choice overall; although I think it’s just the volume keys being membrane that are the issue, not the rest.

One bonus of the Cougar 700K is that it’s fairly quiet, at least as far as mechanical keyboards are concerned. The most notable difference is the spacebar, which is much quieter than any I’ve tested before; this is likely due to its reduced size, as it’s split into two separate keys.