Driver

The driver for the Corsair K68 can be downloaded from their downloads page. The latest version at the time of release was the new iCUE in its 3.5.111 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 266 MB in size, and its installation process is fairly straightforward, as seen above. The final package takes up approximately 365 MB even though it asks for a whopping ~630 MB for itself, which makes it the largest peripheral driver package I have used to date. 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 is similar and yet so different to the CORSAIR CUE driver from before. For one, iCUE (and I still detest the name) has a new logo and shows off the connected devices as thumbnails you can further interact with. 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.

The dashboard tab allows one to customize previews for devices, which comes in handy when using the driver to get a quick look at the current status of your system. Instant lighting allows for unified lighting across all connected devices, and then we get to the global settings tab that is now 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 here for the STRAFE RGB MK.2, which include the polling rate, LED brightness, and language layout to match your actual version, in addition to the ability to checking for and update the firmware if an update is available.

One thing the STRAFE RGB MK.2 has over its predecessor is the inclusion of hardware playback, meaning that up to three profiles can be saved on to the device itself to go along with the profile switch button we saw before. There are some limitations to this given iCUE allows layers of programming to exist simultaneously, so more complex profiles will still be software-based and need the driver to be running. For most people, however, being able to save onboard key assignment and a lighting effect is plenty enough, and this means you can also take the keyboard over to another PC without needing the driver. There is one limitation here, however, as we no longer have the profile imports built-in as of this driver version. CORSAIR says they are working on it, and it may well have come out by the time this review is out. The Performance tab is very self-explanatory and also has a small set of options, so I added it in here for a common discussion.

Actions is the first device-specific menu for customizing the functionality of the keyboard past its global settings, and note the useful pop-ups for most menu items to 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 all these software controls to choose from makes 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.

Gone are the segregated lighting options as Basic or Advanced from before, and instead, we have everything bundled in together but still organized in three columns in the lighting tab. The driver shows a preview of the active lighting scheme, which can include a single layer or multiple ones together. The options here are rich, going from preset static and dynamic effects to custom versions taking full advantage of the 16.8 M RGB per-key backlighting. The side lighting on this keyboard is also displayed here in the preview to give you a better idea of how it would fare along with the rest of the keyboard. As it stands, this is a big user experience improvement, and iCUE—at least in the current version pertaining to this keyboard—is easier to use than most of the competition despite being one of the most powerful in terms of customization options. Also, it is finally a unified driver for the CORSAIR ecosystem, but that is a topic for another time.