Corsairs statement

After reading the review of the Vengeance K90 and K60 keyboards, we felt that it was important to clarify an important point about the design of the products. Specifically, the use of both Cherry MX Red and silicon-dome keyswitches on the keyboards was criticised, but the reason for this design decision was not explained in the review. We feel it’s important that the reasons for these design decisions are explained.

Most importantly, the select use of silicon-dome keyswitches was not a cost-saving measure. We designed the K60 and K90 from the ground-up, rather than taking pre-existing or “off-the-shelf” keyboard designs and simply rebadging them, and this provided us with an opportunity to incorporate several important innovations. One valuable innovation was the combination of tuned silicon-dome keyswitches with Cherry MX Red switches.

Corsair’s VP and General Manager of the Components Business Unit, Ruben Mookerjee, wrote about these design innovations on the Corsair Blog last year. I’d encourage you to please read the blog in full. But to summarise the important points, we used Cherry MX Red mechanical keyswitches for the main keyboard because we found that their light spring-force of 45g and linear actuation are ideally suited to gaming.

They are quick, responsive and easy to double and triple-tap. However, we also found that multi-taps, while critical on the gaming keys, were undesirable on other keys, especially macro keys and other keys that are pressed infrequently and/or used for single functions/commands, such as the F-keys.

The use of Cherry MX Red keyswitches for these keys would have introduced the possibility for accidental multi-taps. This is a problem for macro keys, for example, because you want to be sure a macro will execute only once per keypress. After considerable experimentation and testing, we decided to use tuned silicone dome switches in some key positions where it was important to prevent accidental keystrokes.

Silicon-dome switches were used because this allowed us to carefully tune the switches for extra damping, ensuring that they are triggered reliably in a single press. The need for extra damping is why we didn’t just use a different type of Cherry MX key, such as an MX Black, as this would only have made the keys “heavier”, and not allowed us to tune the damping.

We believe that this design innovation is actually of great benefit to gamers, and that in-use you will love the “feel” and performance of the K90 and K60. We’ve had really great feedback from customers so far, including from the hundreds of gamers who came to see us at Dreamhack Winter 2011, and we continue to welcome your feedback.

In short, we believe we’ve used the right keyswitches for the right tasks. This means tuned silicon-dome switches for keys where it’s vital to prevent accidental multi-taps, and light, fast, and responsive Cherry MX Reds for the gaming keys.

Thanks for taking to the time to read this!

Gareth Ogden (Blackbeard)