Best Corsair K83 Wireless Black Friday and Cyber Monday Deals & Sales 2020:
Best known for its video game mechanical keyboards, Corsair is foraying into living room keyboards with its K83 Wireless. A backlit model with integrated touchpad that highlights the brand’s expertise while retaining a player side.
Presentation
If Corsair has already made a few forays into the living room with its peripherals, it has so far only been through impressive supports for players, designed to accommodate a keyboard and a mouse of the brand, such as the Lapdog in 2016 and more recently the K63 Wireless Lapboard . A complete and efficient solution, but not very elegant for multimedia and compact and discreet peripheral lovers. It is precisely to seduce the latter that the American manufacturer offers its K83 Wireless, a wireless living room keyboard that comes in particular to rub against Logitech models, such as the K830 Illuminated Living . Its positioning is therefore intended to be rather high-end, with an introductory price placed at € 129.99.
Best Corsair K83 Wireless Black Friday and Cyber Monday Deals & Sales 2020
1. Corsair K83 Wireless Keyboard – Bluetooth and USB – Works w/PC, Smart TV, Streaming Box – Backlit LED
2. Corsair K63 Wireless Special Edition Mechanical Gaming Keyboard, Backlit Ice Blue LED, Cherry MX Red – Quiet & Linear
3. Corsair K95 RGB Platinum XT Mechanical Gaming Keyboard, Backlit RGB LED, CHERRY MX SPEED RGB Silver, Black
4. CORSAIR K57 RGB Wireless Gaming Keyboard – <1ms response time with Slipstream Wireless. Connect with USB dongle, Bluetooth or wired – Individually Backlit RGB Keys, Black
5. Corsair K55 RGB Gaming Keyboard – IP42 Dust and Water Resistance – 6 Programmable Macro Keys – Dedicated Media Keys – Detachable Palm Rest Included
Ergonomics
Corsair has taken the habit of affixing a metallic finish to its keyboards and this little K83 Wireless also benefits. We are thus entitled to a beautiful anodized aluminum plate of dark gray color, fixed on a grainy plastic frame of good quality. The finishes are impeccable and the rigidity is there.
Multimedia living room keyboard requires, compactness and lightness take precedence: the K83 Wireless weighs only 482 grams and is just long enough (381 mm) to fit well on the legs when you are comfortably seated in your armchair or sofa. Its reduced height (125 mm) and its small thickness (28 mm) make it fairly discreet and easy to store.
Logically, the numeric keypad gives way to other control devices. We take advantage of a touchpad of very good quality, multipoint and thus supporting the gestures of Windows 10 to have functions determined by the number of fingers that we slide on the surface: page scrolling or zoom / zoom in two fingers, switching from one application to another with three fingers, from one virtual desktop to another with four, you can choose the actions in the Windows settings.
The precision is there, but we find the choice of a disc rather strange while a classic rectangle would have offered a larger surface. A design bias, most likely, which is not necessarily very disabling, but which is more limiting than anything else. In the absence of a button integrated directly into the touchpad (right and left clicks are done by touch, by tapping: tap with one finger for the left, with two fingers or in the lower right corner for the right), we find under it the classic left and right click buttons, of good quality and made of the same metal as the cover plate.
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Above the touchpad, two other aluminum buttons are used to activate / deactivate the backlight and lock certain keys or key combinations (game mode, configurable effects in the keyboard software). A wheel finds its place just above, ensuring a simple adjustment of the sound volume.
Last element of this command area, a small joystick finds its place in the upper right corner. It is mainly used to navigate in application and game menus, but can also be used simply to play with the keyboard by holding it like a joystick. To simplify the use of this joystick, Corsair had the right idea to have two other buttons on the upper edge and below of his K83, in order to be able to easily navigate through a menu with the single right hand.
The last additional button happens to be the keyboard on / off button. It finds its place on the upper edge, right next to a micro-USB port used for charging or wired use. Because if the Corsair K83 Wireless can hold 40 hours on its battery, it will run out much faster if you activate the backlighting of the keys. Fortunately, the power saving options play their role by quickly turning off the backlight when the keyboard is not in use, and there are always a few dozen minutes of battery life before the battery is completely empty. Enough to finish its activities blindly, the backlighting being deactivated to allow maximum time before having to reconnect the 1.8m flat cable – a classic length
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We are delighted in any case to benefit from a backlight on such a keyboard, multimedia use in a living room is often done in the dark. We simply regret not being able to modify the light intensity directly via the keyboard; you have to go through Corsair iCue software. Preservation of autonomy requires, not RGB LEDs here. But white LEDs ensuring a sober white backlight which we will not complain about.
In terms of multimedia and office automation commands, there are shortcuts placed on the function keys, active by default (no need to use the Fn key in combination). The initial function of the keys F1 to F12 can nevertheless be found by simply activating the game mode via the dedicated key.
On the side of the wireless link, we find on this Corsair K83 Wireless a double connectivity. Corsair thus provides a USB adapter for an ultra-fast 2.4 GHz radio link, equivalent to a wired link (1000 Hz / 1 ms) and therefore ideal for video games, but also offers a Bluetooth 4.2 Low Latency link in addition, if we accept a slightly higher latency. The K83 Wireless can then be paired with two other devices and switch from one to the other with a single press on the dedicated button (keys F5, F6 and F7). We can therefore use the keyboard on his main computer, before taking it to the living room to use a television and finishing with his tablet to send an email without having to return to the computer, for example. So there is flexibility. Security question,
Hit
The K83 Wireless has flat buttons ( chiclet type ) similar to those used on laptops. They are arranged on scissor switches, offering pleasant touch and allowing a rapid and relatively silent typing. Strangely, Corsair has chosen to reverse the position of the special characters compared to a conventional keyboard (numbers at the bottom, comma and semicolon at the top …). This does not change much for those who know the position of these symbols by heart, but one can be a little destabilized when looking for a symbol not often used.
Good news for players, Corsair has not only thought of offering them reduced latency thanks to the use of a faster radio link than the classic Bluetooth, but has also worked on the electronics of its K83 Wireless to offer a technology of antighosting with rollover of 20 keys; perfect for pressing several keys at the same time without risking errors of interpretation by the keyboard.
STRONG POINTS
- Manufacturing quality / Aluminum finish.
- Backlight.
- Integrated multi-touchpad and joystick.
- Good typing quality.
- Fast radio link (which comes in addition to Bluetooth).
- Suitable for video games.
WEAK POINTS
- Touchpad round rather than rectangular (less surface), a bit small.
CONCLUSION
Complete and very well finished, the Corsair K83 Wireless is a beautiful multimedia keyboard. Its versatility is appreciable to use it as well on a desk as in the living room, to work, watch a movie or even play.
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