Setup & General Usage
Getting the K65 Plus Wireless setup and ready to use is pretty easy. You can of course use this keyboard three different ways (wired, wireless, bluetooth), so we will be going over getting the keyboard connected using all three of these connections. The first is the easiest, which is wired. All you have to do is take the included USB cable, plug it into the keyboard and then plug it into your PC or other device. When the keyboard is in wired mode it will also charge the internal battery.
Next is to use the included 2.4 GHz dongle. Plug the dongle into your PC, it will automatically be recognized like any other USB device. Once recognized move the slider switch on the front-edge of the keyboard to 2.4 GHz mode. The keyboard will turn on and automatically be paired to the dongle.
Bluetooth is very similar. When you move the slider switch on the front-edge of the keyboard to Bluetooth mode the keyboard will go into pairing mode. You’ll know it is in pairing mode as the Home or Bluetooth 1 connection button will blink blue. From here go on your device and you’ll see K65 PLUS BLE1 listed under the Bluetooth devices. Select it to pair. There are three different Bluetooth connections available, so you can easily pair this keyboard to more than one device.
As I did mention this keyboard makes use of Corsair’s own MLX Red linear switches. So here is what it sounds like to type on the keyboard.
Software & Lighting
You do not need to use Corsair’s iCUE software for this keyboard to work, but if you want to do any type of customization you will need it. Opening up iCUE, on the main screen you should see the K65 Plus Wireless listed as one of your devices. If you are using it in 2.4 GHz wireless mode you’ll also see the wireless receiver listed.
Clicking into the keyboard the first thing you can configure is your key assignments. You can fully reprogram the keyboard and iCUE has an entire built-in macro editor.
Next is lighting effects. Corsair offers multiple lighting layers as well as a bunch of different effects, which can all be configured to your liking.
When it comes to the lighting even though we do not have see-through legends the lighting is quite bright and can easily be seen, even with the lights on.
After lighting is performance. Here you can set what gets disabled when Windows Lock is on and the indicator colors on the keyboard.
Control Dial allows you to set what the control dial does. Unfortunately it is not completely reprogrammable. You can select between 5 different modes which include volume control, brightness control, vertical scrolling, horizontal scrolling, and zoom. You can toggle which modes are active on the keyboard.
Under device settings you can check for firmware updates, set your polling rate, see how charged the keyboard is, set the brightness, change the keyboard layout, set how long till the keyboard goes into sleep mode, as well as enable a few different things.
It is worth noting that while in wireless mode you do not have access to all of the lighting effects you get while in wired mode. All of the lighting effects which are available cannot be customized either. And it seems if you set a lighting mode in wired mode it does not carry over to wireless mode, you have to use one of the wireless lighting modes only.
