I love mechanical keyboards. I love building them, and tweaking them, and customizing them. I won’t buy one for myself without the ability to hot-swap the switches. So Corsair’s new MAKR 75, the first in what looks like a new line, is instantly appealing to me. The company will sell it to you barebones, with upgrades for everything from wireless to a tiny screen. Don’t buy that last one, please.
With a 75% layout, The MAKR 75 looks a lot like the K65 Plus Wireless, my current pick for the best gaming keyboard on the market. But in a similar fashion to the GMMK 3, you can customize pretty much every element on Corsair’s Custom Lab online interface. Options for different elements and upgrade include the plate material, MX-compatible switches (hotswap, naturally), a variety of keycaps, a wireless radio plus battery, and a choice of an LCD or volume knob.
That’s a lot of options! Unfortunately it also costs a lot of dollars. Looking at the online building tool, the barebones model starts at $215, sans switches, keycaps, and those wireless powers. That’s a high price for a barebones board, and adding on the bells and whistles can bring it up to $375 at the most premium. You won’t save anything by foregoing the assembly and doing it yourself, either. Again, the high price of upgrades is an instant turn-off for a consumer product, even if it’s fairly typical in terms of more custom or customized keyboards from boutique makers.
Corsair
I appreciate the work that went into making all these options for the MAKR 75 configurable from the get-go…but I get the feeling that anyone looking for a keyboard in this price range will look at other options. The only exception will be those who need access to gaming software for heavily-tweaked, game-specific programming options. And admittedly, Corsair’s iCue is among the better software tools for the gamers…even if that’s damning with faint praise.
The Corsair MAKR 75 is currently only offered via the build tool, shipping out within the week.