Corsair K60 Pro TKL Gaming Keyboard

 Two-Minute Review 

For all intents and purposes, the Corsair K60 Pro TKL is a decent keyboard. It offers the company’s new OPX RGB optical-mechanical key switches with 1mm actuation force, PBT keycaps, 8,000Hz polling rate, per key RGB lighting, and a solid build quality.

But mechanical keyboards are as much about its features as it is about how they feel to type on. The pleasant ‘thock’ of the switches and the smooth ‘thump’ of the stabilizers adds to the overall appeal of a mechanical keyboard - something that high-end keyboard manufacturers strive to achieve on their pre-built models.

The Corsair K60 Pro TKL, unfortunately, falls on the other side of this spectrum. The keycaps feel scratchy when typed on, and despite being PBT, they feel cheap in the hands. The stabilizers haven’t been near to any lubing process whatsoever, and they smash onto the aluminum board with a loud crash. As a result, the keyboard feels extremely unpleasant to type on, and can create a ruckus if you are a fast typist.

Pricing

The Corsair K60 Pro TKL cost $149.99, which is slightly pricier than some of its competitors. You can get the GMMK TKL for around $110 with your choice of switches (except for optical) and a hot-swappable board. The excellent Logitech G915 TKL (Clicky) can be found for the same price too. There is also the Razer Huntsman TKL which offers most of the features of the K60 Pro TKL along with Razer’s own optical switches for $129.99. 

Design and Features 

The Corsair K60 Pro TKL is your standard-size tenkeyless keyboard with a base aluminum plate to add durability. It’s a relatively good looking keyboard with some snazzy RGB lighting and no garish branding except for the subtle Corsair logo above the arrow keys on the right side of the keyboard. 

Like most TKL keyboards, dedicated media controls are absent, and are instead tucked away under the Function keys which can be activated in combination with the FN key. You get the whole range of controls though, from volume and media controls, to the ability to lock the Windows key while gaming. 

The keycaps are made of PBT material, which is great as they should be resilient to fading and picking up shine over time. However, they do not have a pleasant texture to them, and feel like cheap plastic under your hands. Thankfully, if you are not a fan of the keycaps, they are easily replaceable with any Cherry-profile keycaps available from the market. 

A cool addition to the keycaps, however, is the support for Arabic language. This will be excellent for Arab gamers who want built-in support for the language on a mechanical keyboard, which admittedly not many manufacturers support.

The star of the keyboard is obviously the Corsair OPX RGB optical-mechanical switches. These keys actuates at 1mm distance with a super fast debounce time, resulting in far lower travel time than any switches available in the market. This will be great for those looking for super quick reflex times in competitive games, as well as for fast typers who want the quickness of a laptop keyboard but the feel of a traditional mechanical one. Corsair has claimed 150m key presses for these switches, so you can be assured that they will probably outlast your use with the keyboard itself before they decide to conk out. 

Besides that, the keyboard also features the Corsair AXON Hyper-Processing which enables 8,000Hz hyper-polling, which supposedly transmits keystrokes up to 8x faster than a standard gaming keyboard. Will you actually see the difference? Probably not - we certainly didn’t - but it’s a cool feature to have, I suppose. The keyboard also supports 100% anti-ghosting and full n-key rollover, which are pretty standard for gaming keyboards these days.

The K60 Pro TKL comes with a detachable braided USB-C cable, making the keyboard more mobile and easy to carry. However, if you are using a custom USB cable, you might want to cross check if it will fit properly with the keyboard. The USB port is rather recessed into the frame, and despite its reasonably large opening, we had trouble fitting our USB-C cables which had a thicker end to them. 

The back of the keyboard features four rubber feets which keeps the keyboard well-planted on any surface. We tried placing the keyboard on wood, glass, and even on a cloth mousepad, and the keyboard had no issues being steadfast in its position. You also get two height-adjusting kickstands, but they only offer one additional position. 

 Software 

Image 1 of 5

The keyboard uses the Corsair iCUE software for customization, where you can assign custom commands for each key, adjust the RGB lighting, disable a number of Windows-related keys (Alt+Tab, Alt+F4, Winkey, etc), as well as adjust device settings to enable the 8,000Hz polling rate and check for firmware updates.

One thing of note here is the two separate lighting sections on the iCUE software. The ‘Lighting Effects’ tab is for when iCUE is running in the background, and the ‘Hardware Lighting’ section is for when iCUE is not running in the background. Both of those scenarios can have separate lighting profiles. We are not sure what purpose this serves to be honest, but it’s there if you want to…know when iCUE is not running?

Typing Experience

Coming from a traditional Cherry MX mechanical keyboard, the K60 Pro TKL’s OPX optical-mechanical switches did take us some time to get used to. With only 1mm linear travel time, the OPX switches feels like a cross between an old-school chiclet-style keyboard and a modern mechanical keyboard. 

The debounce time is ridiculously quick, which means that the keys bounce back almost immediately after depression allowing you to really fly on the keyboard if you have the typing speed of a god. The low travel time is also excellent for games where you can execute commands quickly and efficiently without having to deal with the - now what feels like a really long - travel time of say, a Cherry MX switch. 

After about a week of using the K60 Pro TKL, we grew to appreciate the quickness of the switches. We wouldn’t necessarily say we were typing faster or better, but the low travel time truly offers a unique typing experience that most traditional mechanical switches don’t.

However, as mentioned before, the keyboard isn’t all that pleasant to type on. For one, there is an extreme amount of rattle on both the switches and the stabilizers, which makes the keyboard sound like an off-branded $30 keyboard. The K60 Pro TKL is in dire need of some greasing to eliminate the unpleasant rattle and scratchiness of the stabilizers and the switches, however since this is not a hot-swappable board, lubing any part of it will require some high-level technical skills. 

There is a lot of wobbling on the switches as well, which again reeks of an ill-thought out keyboard design. You don’t necessarily feel it while typing, but give the keyboard a good shake, and you will find the entire thing rattling inside the aluminum case.

We have tested plenty of mechanical keyboards from mainstream brands like Steelseries, Razer, HyperX and Asus, and Corsair’s latest offering is by far the worst we have tested in this regard. For a premium of $149.99, we expected far better than this.

Buy this if...

Don't buy this if...