Corsair’s K70 gaming keyboard updated with more responsive optical switches

Corsair is announcing an updated version of its K70 mechanical keyboard today that comes with more responsive OPX optical mechanical switches. It costs $149.99, $10 more than the standard K70 released last year with more traditional Cherry mechanical switches. Aside from the switch change, the new K70 is broadly identical to last year’s model, with a detachable USB-C cable, RGB lighting, and a tenkeyless layout.

The reason you might want a gaming keyboard with optical switches comes down to debounce delay, which typically affects keyboards with traditional mechanical switches. When you press a mechanical switch, there can be a brief period when its metal contacts clatter together before eventually settling, and this means the keyboard can take a moment to register a keypress. Optical switches simply interrupt a beam of infrared light when pressed and don’t suffer from this delay by default, making them a great choice for gaming.

But the benefits of optical switches on Corsair’s keyboards are a little more complicated. Spokesperson Justin Ocbina tells me the company’s Axon technology can already avoid any debounce delay incurred when you first press a mechanical switch. The benefits of an optical switch on Corsair’s keyboard come when you repeatedly press the same switch. There’s no 5ms period when a key can’t register a second press after a first; it’s ready to be pressed again instantly — handy for any games where speed is of the essence.

Ocbina declined to share who is manufacturing Corsair’s OPX optical mechanical switches but said it’s a linear switch with a 1mm actuation distance. That compares to a 2mm actuation distance for Cherry’s MX Red switch or 1.2mm for its speed-focused Silver switch. The K70 scans for keypresses at 4,000Hz internally (four times faster than many mechanical keyboards) and reports them to a connected PC at up to 8,000Hz (eight times faster than most). Corsair says this keeps median latency below 0.25ms.

Other features of the K70 include durable PBT double-shot keycaps, a hardware tournament switch to disable macros during competitive play, media keys, a volume roller, and the ability to coordinate the keyboard’s lighting effects via Corsair’s iCUE software. For an idea of how the non-switch parts of the keyboard perform in practice, check out our review of the Corsair K70 from last year.