Performance

The CORSAIR K63 Wireless supports N-key rollover USB out of the box even when connected wirelessly using the 2.4 GHz dongle, which tested successfully using Aqua's test. Switch Hitter confirmed no chatter with these keys either.


The keyboard lights up at 66% LED brightness in a static lighting effect when connected without CUE running, and this turns into a visor lighting effect if CUE is running, which will be shown off below. That brightness control button cycles through 0%, 33%, and 66% steps, and you need to enable 100% brightness in the software driver to get it as a fourth step. The blue steel plate does a good job of reflecting the light back, and there is no issue with light bleed here given the single-color backlighting. At 66% brightness, there is some disparity in the uniformity of backlighting on keycaps with two legends, with the one placed on the bottom not lit up as well. Things improve at 100% brightness, though it is still a factor even then.

Here are some more of the lighting effects demonstrated, including the aforementioned visor, rain (drop), breathing pulse, and wave effects, which make full use of the hardware and software alike. There are 256 levels of brightness to choose from with CUE, so you are not limited to the four steps available via the onboard button. Transition effects are smooth, and CORSAIR says they chose the blue color here based on market research, which showed that blue was preferred for gaming and night work in general, where blue backlighting would be used more over other colors, including red and white.

Let's talk battery life now, shall we? CORSAIR rates the K63 Wireless for up to 15 hours at 66% LED brightness, 25 hours at 33%, and 75 hours with the LEDs off. 100% brightness lowers the number to a maximum of 10 hours, so we can see here why CORSAIR decided not to have the LEDs run at max brightness. Note that these ratings are not specific to a particular lighting effect, and usually, static lighting with all LEDs on will consume more power than a dynamic effect where the LEDs turn on and off. My thought process here is simple - if a product has to compromise on lighting for better battery life out of the box, you should do better. I have had more than one of these keyboards here for a total of over a month already, and battery life has matched, if not slightly exceeded the rated numbers with static lightning mode on average. With the visor lighting mode at 33%, I had an average battery life closer to 30 hours as well, so take that for what you will. Most of the time, however, I ended up with the lights off because charging the keyboard every day or two is not fun. In fact, I even turned the keyboard off at night when I was not going to be using it to preserve battery life further. This had me get nearly a week of operation out of it before I had to charge it again, and here, CORSAIR did help out by including a micro-USB cable rated at 2 A, so assuming your PC or USB charger can handle it, you can charge the keyboard at 10 W to have it fully charged from nil within 3-4 hours.

The battery life indicator too needs a mention since CORSAIR went with a sensor that outputs an estimate and not a more precise mention similar to those used in phones today. This I have no problem with given those sensors would run nearly 10% the retail cost of the keyboard itself, and an even higher fraction of the manufacturing cost. As it is, the power indicator LED moves from a solid (98-100%) to a blinking green (51-97%) and, from there, to a blinking amber (31-50%) that changes to a blinking (16-30%) and then pulsing red (0-15%). The indicator comes up each time you power on the keyboard. However, you can also press Fn + F11 for a real-time indication. Similarly, the connection status LED goes from a blinking white when disconnected to a solid white when on the 2.4 GHz connection or a solid blue when on Bluetooth. Pressing Fn + F9/F10 allows you to switch between these two connectivity modes, though you would ideally want to be on the former to make the most use of the fast response times.

The K63 Wireless is a fast keyboard regardless of whether you have it connected wirelessly (via the 2.4 GHz connection) or not. Windows 10 will recognize it as a plugged-in keyboard if you use the provided cable. There is ~1.1 ms of input response time with the 2.4 GHz network and encryption turned on, and here, CORSAIR has built the current industry standard 128-bit AES encryption into the Wi-Fi signal to protect your data as it is being transmitted to and from the keyboard. You can turn off encryption in CUE, and it also turns off automatically when the Win lock button is active, so the intention here is that you get back to a 1 ms response time when gaming, or for other activities where encryption is not necessary. Personally, I would have rather seen CORSAIR decouple encryption from Win lock for a driver-only toggle, and note that it is on by default as it should be. For what it is worth, I only experienced input lag for a few seconds when turning on and off my living-room TV when using this for a couch-gaming setup (more on this in another article), and there was no perceived lag otherwise with the review unit under other circumstances.

There are four other pre-programmed functions tied into the F1-F4 keys, including application switching and searching, and the actions tab in CUE enables a lot more customization as far as key assignment goes. I have been using the K63 Wireless keyboard for a while now as part of both a workstation setup and a living-room setup (with or without the lapboard), and despite it being heavier than is the norm for a TKL layout, it has been a pleasure to use. There are some grooves that will accumulate dust, for instance, and you will have dust accumulate between the keycaps as a result of the floating keycap design as well, which makes cleaning from time to time a must irrespective of how you use it. I would have also preferred better stock keycaps, but their flagship keyboard also comes with the same keycaps, so I am not expecting this to change with the more budget-friendly solutions.



The key-assignment options in CUE allow for users to also go with layouts other than QWERTY, and here, I used the source code from an older keyboard review in a layout tester (courtesy of Patrick Gillespiep). The results above indicate how QWERTY is not even close to the most efficient layout for me, and very likely you as well. If you are willing, try out Colemak or Dvorak as they will result in lower finger travel and fatigue overall. As such, the driver offers a significant functional tool if you are willing to devote some time to adopting either Colemak or Dvorak. Here is the link to the full results if you are interested, including a detailed analysis on key presses and distances moved.


As always, the sound of a keyboard is based on more than just the switch type. So when comparing sound clips, consider the keyboard as a whole. In this case, I have provided above an example sound clip of me typing on the CORSAIR K63 Wireless sample at ~105 WPM as it comes out of the box. For context, you can find sound clips from other keyboards here, including those with linear switches. I did bottom out here, and the Cherry MX Red switches used were no different than any others tested before with their usual 4 mm of travel, 2 mm actuation distance, and 45 cN of actuation force along a linear travel path.