Software: iCUE

The software driver for most of the functionality with the CORSAIR K55 RGB PRO XT keyboard is iCUE and can be downloaded from their downloads page—the latest public version available at the time of testing was iCUE 4.9.318. A massive jump in numbers from the previous 3.x.xxx release, it indicates that a lot of internal and beta testing took place, which is a good thing since each major iCUE release thus far has brought with it an updated user interface, and CORSAIR aims to address some of the complaints with this update. The installer is bigger than anything else I have used for keyboards, coming in at ~760 MB. Actual installation has also been given a revamp with a more colorful skin as well as some embedded videos to play should the installation take a while. The install options are also on a single screen in four colored bars to either toggle or press for further options, which seems like a strange move, and animations and splashes of color are meant to keep your attention. As we saw before with the K65 RGB MINI, the final install takes up a whopping 1.1 GB. To be fair, it does seem to tax the CPU less than before even though it supports hundreds of products across CORSAIR and other hardware brands (MSI, ASUS, and Lenovo, to name a few).


When you do open the program, it is best to have the keyboard connected, although you can still play around and get familiar with it without any connected hardware. I also got a pop-up the first time around that asked whether CORSAIR can collect personal information, which I promptly did not consent to. We now finally get a look at the brand-new iCUE, and I have to say that I was never one to have a problem with the user experience of anything from CUE to iCUE. While perhaps because of all the CORSAIR reviews I have put together over the years, the more likely reason is that other software drivers have been much worse to navigate. With this redesign, CORSAIR has changed a lot of things, but some digging around revealed an iCUE skeleton that is still familiar to me. There is a sense of fun and play here with colorful skins and bolder widget-style modules on the home and device-specific pages. As seen below in the videos, we also have helpful hints and tips popping up the first time around, as well as highlights and hover-over effects as the mouse cursor is moved from one point to another.

The home page retains the ability to chose and create profiles, as well as a dashboard tab to customize previews for devices, which is useful for a quick look at your system's current status. Now in the form of "Scenes," instant lighting still allows for unified lighting across all connected devices, and we see a sensor module that is quite handy for quickly taking a look at system and device-specific information. Notification buttons have been added—one told me my wireless mouse was low on battery, for example. A help page consisting of embedded CORSAIR tutorial YouTube videos has also been added. We still get the global settings tab, and it is laid out better than before, especially on a high DPI display. However, unlike before, where we had device-specific settings here, including global brightness and polling rate, the only relevant item is a firmware update tool.

I am happy hardware playback has been included even here on the K55 RGB PRO XT, which by itself distinguishes it from the vast majority of membrane keyboards. This means you can take the keyboard over to another PC without needing the drivers for most applications. The Performance tab is very self-explanatory and has a small option set, so I added it here for a common discussion. Finally, the device-specific settings have been moved here, which I think is the better place for them anyway. Actions are still named in the keyboard's dashboard, but for the sake of better understanding, CORSAIR has renamed this section "Key Assignment." Unlike the K65 RGB MINI, we do not see hardware key assignment options here, which is likely a result of the hardware not supporting it. By default, the keyboard does what the keycap legends denote, but do not let that stop you. As the video illustrates, you can record a macro, edit it completely, and assign it to a key—make a key stroke input pre-configured text, assign mouse actions to keys, completely change the typing layout if QWERTY is not your cup of tea, etc. All these software controls make this a fully programmable keyboard within the limits of what is allowed for the device, and changing the language in the settings page opens up more options, too. It just means that you will need iCUE running for most of the complex actions, however.

Gone is the three-column approach for lighting, and we instead see a similar approach to the key assignment section in that iCUE software-profile-based lighting effects are separated from hardware lighting effects, which of course have fewer options. The actual customization of backlighting is still similar to before with layers being the name of the game to create all the complex iCUE lighting profiles others have and which really would take me too long to create myself. The effects themselves are still split across three groups. Presets are for the dynamic and reactive effects, Custom for static and gradient effects, among others, and Lighting Link goes back to the "Scenes" on the home page. Each effect has associated sub-options, including brightness level, speed, direction, and the actual color chosen from among 16.8 M options (256 brightness steps per R/G/B channel). New with iCUE are custom and preset zones to more easily set the lighting effects to specific groups of keys, although you can still manually select them. The custom zones can be saved for use with any lighting effect.

As it stands, this is one of the better user experiences to be had, and iCUE—at least in its current version and pertaining to this keyboard—is easier to use than most of the competition despite being one of the most powerful in terms of customization options. Also, it is a unified driver for the CORSAIR ecosystem, which is mostly why it takes up so much room on your storage drive. Finally, I will say right here that I experienced none of the issues with iCUE that I had with the K65 RGB MINI, and here, it was a great experience without any bugs or issues I noticed.