Software

The software driver for the CORSAIR K70 RGB PRO is iCUE and can be downloaded from the downloads page. Normally, I would use the latest public version supporting the product, but with embargo releases, it tends to be an advanced version sent to the media before the public release, in this case iCUE version 4.19.170. The installer continues the trend of being larger than previous iCUE versions and comes in at a whopping 821 MB by itself. Actual installation has been given a revamp from iCUE 3, with a more colorful skin as well as some embedded videos to play if the installation takes 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. The final install is still well over a gigabyte, so iCUE is not light on system resources, and you will sometimes have a few weird things, such as the entry "iCUE service for MSI motherboards process," take up more CPU and RAM utilization than necessary. Having multiple complex lighting profiles will do the same, so be aware of this lest iCUE not be for you. 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). Still, I would like to see a modular installation system sooner rather than later since the average end user will only be using a tiny fraction of that ecosystem.


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. The first time around, I immediately got a pop-up for a firmware update, which was strange as it hadn't even been released yet. Updating the firmware was smoothly done, as seen above, taking less than 2 minutes and including visual confirmation of the same.


We now get a look at iCUE in its latest iteration, which we have seen twice already by now—the "Install voicemod" segment on the home page is a turn-off and might as well be an ad I close immediately. On the plus side, helpful cues pop up with a fresh install and can be toggled to appear again in the settings. Scaling with high DPI displays and Windows 10 worked flawlessly too, but iCUE is going the way of becoming more of a platform to integrate game libraries similar to ASUS Armoury Crate, and I'd rather all this be cut down to save on system resources. I can't even say this is still the most polished keyboard software experience I have had in terms of UX design and product support since Razer has done some great work recently with Synapse. iCUE now seems to have become a victim of its own previous success, and I am sure CORSAIR is aware of what needs to be done to address the system resource utilization, UI trimming, and extended product support complaints voiced more often now.

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. 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 did go through to update the keyboard firmware prior to further testing. As seen in the video above, the rest of the settings now have their own tabs on the device page.

Actions are still named in the keyboard's dashboard, but for the sake of better clarity, CORSAIR renamed this section "Key Assignments." 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. Given the increased onboard functionality of the K70 RGB PRO and storage we saw before, there is plenty of hardware playback too, separately put into "Hardware Key Assignments" to exactly show what is available with iCUE running and what can be saved onboard.

We see a similar approach with lighting in that software profile-based iCUE lighting effects are separated from hardware lighting effects, which of course have fewer options since they are saved on the keyboard itself. Actual backlighting customization is still similar to before with layers being the name of the game to create all the complex iCUE lighting profiles others have, any of which would take me too long to create myself. The effects themselves are still split into 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). There remain per-key options as expected, and groups/zones to choose from and create as desired.