Driver

The driver for the CORSAIR K83 Wireless can be downloaded from their Downloads page. The latest version at the time of release was the new iCUE in its 3.13.94 variant, making iCUE effectively the third major update to the driver and bringing with it a massive change by unifying features of the older CORSAIR Link within it as well. The installer is 319 MB in size, and as seen above, its installation is fairly straightforward. The final package takes up approximately 545 MB even though it asks for a whopping ~860 MB for itself, all numbers which are ~150 MB more than when I last checked out iCUE earlier this very year. This leads me to believe this version has had support added for multiple products beyond just the K83 Wireless, which makes it come close to becoming a resource hog now. You will be prompted to restart Windows to finish installation, and this can't be ignored sadly. When you do open the program, it is best to have the keyboard connected, although you can still play around and get familiar with the program without any supported hardware connected.


Opening it for the first time, we see a homepage that is similar to the iCUE from the previous review, but it has been polished further. If you decide to open it before a system restart, you are greeted to a reminder, so you can't keep ignoring that either. When not in full-screen mode, some of the menu options under the Community tab get placed into the lower-right corner instead. Clicking on a device thumbnail takes you to the device-specific controls, which is as before. iCUE is not the lightest driver I have used in terms of consuming system resources, but it is by no means the heaviest. Given the extent of control and support involved, it does feel justified.

As we saw before, the dashboard tab allows one to customize previews for devices, which is useful for a quick look at your system's current status. Instant lighting allows for unified lighting across all connected devices, and then we get to the global settings tab that is laid out better than before, especially on a high DPI display. Given this is a review of the keyboard and not the driver, we will focus on the settings available for the K83 Wireless, which include the LED brightness and language layout to match your actual version, in addition to the ability to check for and update the firmware if an update is available. Device and dongle polling rates are not configurable, and there is a toggle to enable 100% brightness, which in turn allows for a total of four brightness steps (0%/33%/66%/100%). Other options specific to the device include keyboard auto shutoff (after 90 minutes), LED auto off (after 10 seconds), battery gauge indicator (all to preserve and monitor battery life), and gesture control as well as USB dongle pairing. Note that the keyboard comes with a paired dongle out of the box, so you will only have to use the USB dongle pairing option if you reset the dongle as well.

The CORSAIR K83 Wireless is not a performance keyboard, and there are no hardware profiles here. All profiles are thus software-based and need the driver to be running. Actions is the first device-specific menu for customizing the functionality of the keyboard past its global settings. By default, the keyboard does what the keycap legends denote (albeit the Fn row is actually set to have the media controls be default), 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. All these software controls make this a fully programmable keyboard within the limits of what is allowed for the device, and changing the language on the settings page opens up more options, too.

Gestures is a whole new section exclusive to the K83, thanks to the included touch pad. By default, Windows-native gestures work out of the box. This includes 4-finger gestures in Windows 10, 3-finger gestures in Win 8.1, and 2-finger gestures in Win 7 and older (as supported). The number of gestures is also lower the older the OS. There is an option to remap gestures entirely via iCUE, which makes use of the gesture control in the settings tab we saw before and now, the whole plethora of Action-menu items are accessible via gestures as well. This dramatically increases the productivity potential for the keyboard since gestures can now execute a lot of functions instead of keys, of which there are not many to begin with on the K83.

Lighting on the K83 Wireless is a simple affair owing to the single color white backlighting available. Lighting is applied throughout the keyboard, including the touch pad and the keys in its vicinity. Customers can choose the specific brightness of white in 256 steps via iCUE as a static color, turn it off entirely, or have a pulse effect in three speeds. There is not much else available, mostly due to the limitations of the hardware drivers/LEDs and the wireless connectivity in play.

The other options are all short enough to be collectively covered. The K83 Wireless has a joystick for navigation, and there is an entire calibration page dedicated to the joystick. This should have been a part of the settings or performance pages in my opinion, but works as intended. I do not believe the progress percentage is accurate given it is the same each time, likely a placebo effect to demonstrate progress is happening over the 1-2 seconds it takes. Navigation control has important options for the touch pad, especially if you use a high DPI display, and enabling pointer and tapping speed control, as well as the ability to invert the X/Y axes if you prefer to. The manual mentions more options pertaining to the joystick, including dead zone, max zone, and sensitivity, which are not present in this version of the driver. This is a shame as it would have helped customize the user experience even further.

The performance page is similar to that for most CORSAIR keyboards, with the addition of some K83-specific options. For example, you can turn off wireless encryption (128-bit AES on 2.4 GHz connectivity) if you want that extra ~0.1 ms response time. You can also control what happens when F-lock (Function lock) is triggered, which changes modes of operation on the keyboard by default. If you want the Fn keys to function as per usual, for example, this is where you would make said change.