Driver

The driver for the Corsair K68 is called the Corsair Utility Engine (CUE) and can be downloaded from their downloads page. Version 2.22.83 is the latest public release as of the time of testing, and we made a point of using it for this review. The installer is 212 MB in size, and its installation process is fairly straightforward, as seen above. The final package takes up approximately 290 MB even though it asks for ~410 MB for itself, which makes it one of the largest peripheral driver packages I have used. Once installed, it will prompt you to open the program. It is best to have the keyboard connected before opening it, although you can still play around and get familiar with the program without any supported hardware connected.

Opening it for the first time with the keyboard connected, we see a homepage that has some features we have covered previously, such as changing the background picture. We will, as such, focus more on the functionality of the driver as it pertains to the K68 keyboard. Begin by ignoring the demo products, if applicable, and clicking on the global settings page for connected devices, which in this case allows us to set the polling rate, LED brightness, and language layout in CUE to match your actual version. I had a notice in the bottom-left corner about a firmware update being available already for this extremely new peripheral, which is a good sign of frequent updates in the future. In the video above, the firmware was updated and as I was initially running an older version of the driver, it also notified me of an available driver update, which is another way to get to the 2.22.83 version aside from doing a clean install as shown previously.

Actions is the first tab for customizing the functionality of the keyboard past its global settings, and note the useful popups for most menu items that tell you what each item does. 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 a pre-configured text, re-assign keys in case QWERTY is not your cup of tea, etc. The presence of software controls to choose from 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. The Performance tab is very self-explanatory and also has a small set of option only, so I added it along with the Actions tab for a common discussion.

The Lighting tab has always been CUE's big distinguishing feature when comparing it to most other keyboard drivers. By default, you are in a basic/non-advanced mode wherein you can choose between preset animations you can customize based on brightness, speed, and direction of effect, and you can even add/order multiple effects to run together. It may not always look pretty, but the hardware supports it and the software takes advantage of it to give you the option to go even further now with 16.8 M RGB colors available. Toggle over to advanced mode and you get even more customization options ranging from per-key gradient settings for static lighting to a combination of gradient animation effects. The on-screen preview option really helps as well should you not have the keyboard in front of you, which means you can create profiles for a demo K68 RGB for later as well.

You can also create multiple software profiles (no hardware playback here) to have a new set of pre-configured settings for each application or game, for example. In addition, there is a rich library of pre-existing lighting profiles created and shared by CORSAIR end users and contributors alike, which you can preview and import as desired. The active community support goes a long way towards giving the keyboard a new look whenever you desire, and CUE 2.x has come a long way in terms of being more user-friendly even with the amount of control options here. I still think CORSAIR needs to do a comprehensive guide with audio-visual elements to help newcomers get past the steep learning curve, but things do feel natural once you have familiarized yourself with the driver.