So.

The Corsair K63 Wireless Mechanical keyboard with Cherry MX Red switches. Bought one a few months ago to go with the lapboard, was extremely expensive but whatever, it's corsair so it's generally worth it. My Strafe is built like a tank and feels great and my old Sabre is still going strong with a friend since going wireless.

First things first, that claim of '15 hours' with the backlight on? Yeah, no. From a full charge to low with the backlight on low, you get 6 hours. Maybe 7. There's a theoretical lower power state you can use software to get to that maybe gets close to 15 hours, but out of the box that's not happening. The battery life being disappointing is fine though, after all you can just plug it in and keep using it right?

You can't have the keyboard plugged into a power source and keep using it wirelessly. That means that the big blank spot on the lapboard behind the mouse which is perfect to velcro a power bank to? No point. It has to be plugged into the computer, which if used like corsair want you to, is going to be across the room tucked under a TV. Alright, so a USB extension cable, fine. Except now you find out the K63 won't charge while in use. Oh, it will say it's charging. The light will blink, the ique software will say it. But nope. Unplug it and there's a blinking red light. Maybe its getting shit power? Powered USB hub, test the exact cable setup with my tablet and USB power meter. Tablet pulls 1.9A. K63 says 0.5A max on the bottom of it (despite corsair stating on forums it will only charge properly on USB3's 0.9A or up. Whoops, huh?) The end result of all of this is that unless you charge the keyboard outside of use, it will just decide to turn itself off mid game. No warning, the light blinks as if it's charging. Once it does this it will refuse to charge or turn back on until plugged into another computer.

Corsairs technical solution is great. Turn the keyboard off, unplug it, hold down escape for a few seconds, turn the keyboard on while holding it, wait a few seconds and release escape. Magically the keyboard now has a 'full charge'. A clunky as hell solution for something that shouldn't be a problem on a $150 keyboard.

Light modes. You have full brightness, and half brightness with the button press. If you want to actually control the brightness, off you go to download 170mb of software to have constantly run in the background. You know, rather than having 3 brightness modes on the button like a rational person would expect (low, medium, high).

As a mobile product, being able to pick up and move it is a fairly important thing. In the advertising it's shown to be easy to slide in and out of the lapboard, which sounds great. Use it at a desk, slide it into the board to chill on the couch. So why are the keycaps held on with hopes and dreams? So much as brush one of them while holding the side of the keyboard and they shoot off onto the other side of the room. I'm not being petty now, the keycaps are held on probably 5-6x stronger on my strafe and have never once fallen off outside of CSGO rage smacks.

Now we come to the most important part. Corsair, in 2018, decided to fit this keyboard with a MicroUSB connector. Instead of a Type-C. The MicroUSB connector is extremely fragile, everyone with a phone that used it (years ago before every phone maker stopped doing so) knows this. So guess what happens when this cable gets tripped over, or the lapboard falls off, or any number of other potential problems?

This results in a ruined connector that no longer charges the keyboard and a disassembly. Where you discover that the plastic on top of the keyboard is held on with extremely strong clips, which overpower the thin plastic itself along the edges and causes it to break. It lets you see that corsair decided that boring media controls are more valuable than the extremely obvious place where a second 18650 originally went to give more real world battery life, and lets you see that the connector is attached straight to the PCB and is thus a nightmare to repair.

This is the worst Corsair product i've ever used. It's beta hardware, it has bugs both in the keyboard itself and in the software, but it's being sold as a high priced, good product. It belongs nowhere near any of Corsairs other products and does not at all meet the standards i expect, especially after dropping a combined $260aud.

So this is my strong warning to my PCMR bros considering buying one, just don't do it. Oh sure you can tell me i should have gotten another one and tried that, or done this or done that. At the end of the day, why should anyone have to work around so many problems, half of which are just in the product design rather than any potential DOA unit?

the manual says its replaceable.

what im really keen to do is modd some sort of massive battery bank under the mousepad.

would be really cool if logitech made an almost identical lapboard with powerplay and a massive battery bank.

Slow for games