Closer Examination

The keyboard comes housed in a thick plastic sleeve, and removing it, we get our first good look at it. As noted before, this is a larger-than-full-size keyboard featuring dedicated media buttons, a volume scroll wheel, gaming/profiles section, and dedicated macro keys. All extra buttons are membrane buttons, aside from the six G-keys that are meant for macros but can of course be programmed to do anything the software driver allows. The scroll wheel feels great and has a textured finish, though a start and stop position to help physically tell when the full range of travel has been achieved would have been nice. There is even a brightness button to control LED brightness, right in-between a lock button that deactivates the Windows keys and a profiles button that is new to Corsair keyboards. The color scheme is mostly black with some gray/platinum accents. The keyboard also comes in a gunmetal plate color option, at least in the USA, which might look better overall.

The K95 Platinum is their first keyboard to feature hardware playback, and joins their new Scimitar Pro mouse as one of their peripherals with the feature. This keyboard has 8 MB of onboard storage for up to three profiles on the device, profiles you can configure and save to the device in their software driver, which allows for the use of stored actions and lighting profiles on any computer without their installed software driver (only one layer of basic lighting but five layers of advanced lighting per profile, owing to the limitations of the hardware controllers available). The profiles button, marked by a humanoid shape on the keycap, toggles between these profiles, although there is no way to tell which profile you are on, which is disappointing. Sure, you could assign different lighting to each profile, but that takes away your one and only lighting scheme per profile.


On the back, we see four rubber pads, and two rubber feet which can be raised to provide a steeper angle for those who wish it. Also seen here are cutouts for cable management, and those for the cable of a device you've plugged into the USB pass-through port, say a headset's cable you would route through under the keyboard. This is also why the wrist rest is not flat along the surface the keyboard is on, which allows for a cable to pass through.


The cable is non-detachable, fairly thick, and braided. The braiding was already starting to come off slowly by the time I was done with this review, but that was also due to a lot of movement most end users won't put it through. It terminates in two USB male type A ports with markings for which is the keyboard's and which is the pass-through's port. It is recommended you use a USB 3.0 (3.1 Gen 1) port, which is not much to ask for in 2017. The cable and ports have a subtle color scheme that does not attract attention, which is also how I prefer my cables.


A light bar is affixed near the top and extends down both sides of the K95 Platinum. You get additional RGB lighting zones here you can configure - nineteen of them, in fact. Whenever I think RGB keyboards have run out of places to add lights, I am proven wrong. I personally liked the effect, and it is a natural progression from the lit side plates Corsair implemented in their Strafe series of keyboards. But as with most RGB keyboards, you can opt to turn the light bar off completely, so the choice is yours. It is not very bright, and is low enough to where I did not get a reflection on my monitor. If you have your monitor very close to the keyboard, it might be an issue. The keycaps are "floating" in that there is no top-panel piece here, and this allows for their easier removal and installation or modding and cleaning while also creating a more striking lighting effect at the expense of light bleed. The G-keys actually have a hard plastic finish, although they look a lot like the replacement keycaps with the soft rubber finish. The keycaps generally follow the Cherry OEM profile, though the G-keys and replacement keycaps do not and have a more pronounced, sculpted finish.

The numpad also has secondary legends on its keycaps, which is nice to see as well, and these are also pad printed, as are the rest of the keycaps. With thin ABS plastic used, the keycaps remain a weakness in my books, especially for a flagship product coming in near the $200 mark. It does not help that the bottom row (left control through right control) follows a "non-standard' spacing scheme, meaning your choices for replacement keycaps are limited as well. Max Keyboards has some replacement sets, although those are thin-walled ABS with pad-printed legends as well, so it would be a side-grade at best in terms of quality. Vortex has a couple translucent doubleshot PBT keycap sets which also include keycaps that fit the K95 Platinum (not for the G-keys, but you have no restrictions there), which are a big step up but do not allow a lot of light to pass through, and their secondary legends are not well lit. There are similar aftermarket options from Asia, but of the most interest will be Corsair's own doubleshot keycaps (still unsure if ABS or PBT) that will hopefully be announced sometime this year. Until then, these stock keycaps will have to do.