Switchable plates and brighter LEDs?

So I was wondering if there's going to be switchable plates for the Corsair Logo on the Corsair RGB keyboards? Since Newegg won't be able to restock until December 31, 2014, assuming Corsair is producing lots more or waiting until discussions on how to improve the keyboard since everyone is kinda stingy about the new Corsair logo or how the LEDs aren't that bright. (Been reading, hearing comments, saw the keyboards at PAX Prime)

In my opinion, I like the Corsair Gaming logo but having the ability to switch out the logo with the original is nice to have.

Is it possible to have the keyboard LED to be brighter? Enough where it'll shine on your table a little? I think it looks too dark.

Example: Super bright :D

[ame]

So I was wondering if there's going to be switchable plates for the Corsair Logo on the Corsair RGB keyboards? Since Newegg won't be able to restock until December 31, 2014, assuming Corsair is producing lots more or waiting until discussions on how to improve the keyboard since everyone is kinda stingy about the new Corsair logo or how the LEDs aren't that bright. (Been reading, hearing comments, saw the keyboards at PAX Prime)

 

In my opinion, I like the Corsair Gaming logo but having the ability to switch out the logo with the original is nice to have.

Is it possible to have the keyboard LED to be brighter? Enough where it'll shine on your table a little? I think it looks too dark.

Example: Super bright :D

To quote Yellowbeard -

Just to go ahead and clear it up, there is no plan to offer stickers.

And the LED's at their brightest are already bright enough, Any brighter and you will be in Razer territory with their blindingly bright Blackwidow 2014 which was too much.

They are perfect as they are and if people are still complaining then there's always other brands they can try out.

One thing to keep in mind is that the LEDs are by nature going to produce lower levels of brightness depending on the color being generated.

When you look at something like an LED TV or monitor, the reason you get super bright colors all across the range is because the color is being illuminated from behind by a bright white source. Multicolor LEDs like the ones on our keyboards are generating both illumination and color themselves.

So with that, a dark blue is going to give you less light than a bright blue.

That said - I'd also prefer to be able to switch out the logo plate. The "Crabknife" thing really looks garish. Unlike a lot of other posters I've read, I do actually like the yellow "Gaming" text. If they had simply left the Crabknife off and kept the sails, I don't think nearly as many people would have complained.

That said - I'd also prefer to be able to switch out the logo plate. The "Crabknife" thing really looks garish. Unlike a lot of other posters I've read, I do actually like the yellow "Gaming" text. If they had simply left the Crabknife off and kept the sails, I don't think nearly as many people would have complained.

Yellowbeard already said there is no plan to offer stickers which logically also translates into plates etc...

Yep, I'm aware of that. Just pointing out that I'm not defending *all* of Corsair's decisions here lately. ;)

It would be nice don't get me wrong to have a replacement click in plate with either the gaming logo or sails logo but at the end of the day it's just 1 tiny logo and the keyboard itself is a lot more important :):

And the LED's at their brightest are already bright enough, Any brighter and you will be in Razer territory with their blindingly bright Blackwidow 2014 which was too much.

 

They are perfect as they are and if people are still complaining then there's always other brands they can try out.

This is an incredibly arrogant and short-sided statement. The LED's might be bright enough for you, but they're clearly not bright enough for the OP and myself as well. Everyone has different needs and expectations. I expected them to be at least as bright as the non-RGB keybaords, they are not. My computer room has a lot of natural light coming in and during the day I can barely see the lights on my RGB keyboard. That is clearly not bright enough for me. This is a huge disappointment. Furthermore, as shown in that modded video at the top, because they can't get super-bright, we can't do neat effects like having the trailing edge of a ripple shine extra bright and then have the ambient color remain more subdued. If I used anything less than full bright on this keyboard the light might as well be off for anytime except when my room is pitched black.

And if you're concerned about them being too bright, that's what brightness controls are for. You can never go brighter than they support, but you can always tone it down.

Also, telling me to go to a competitor is not really an option. I use the standard k70 at work and need a matching piece of hardware for home. Building muscle memory is important when you do a lot of typing. it took me a week just to get used to where the esc key was placed relative to the other keys when I switched from my old logitech. Not to mention the superior build quality and the fantastic media keys.

TLDR: Don't claim absolutes about subjective feelings.

This is an incredibly arrogant and short-sided statement. The LED's might be bright enough for you, but they're clearly not bright enough for the OP and myself as well. Everyone has different needs and expectations. I expected them to be at least as bright as the non-RGB keybaords, they are not. My computer room has a lot of natural light coming in and during the day I can barely see the lights on my RGB keyboard. That is clearly not bright enough for me. This is a huge disappointment. Furthermore, as shown in that modded video at the top, because they can't get super-bright, we can't do neat effects like having the trailing edge of a ripple shine extra bright and then have the ambient color remain more subdued. If I used anything less than full bright on this keyboard the light might as well be off for anytime except when my room is pitched black.

 

And if you're concerned about them being too bright, that's what brightness controls are for. You can never go brighter than they support, but you can always tone it down.

 

Also, telling me to go to a competitor is not really an option. I use the standard k70 at work and need a matching piece of hardware for home. Building muscle memory is important when you do a lot of typing. it took me a week just to get used to where the esc key was placed relative to the other keys when I switched from my old logitech. Not to mention the superior build quality and the fantastic media keys.

 

TLDR: Don't claim absolutes about subjective feelings.

Arrogant and short sighted ? Get over yourself and grow up, It's a keyboard not a surgeons tool.

One thing to keep in mind is that the LEDs are by nature going to produce lower levels of brightness depending on the color being generated.

 

When you look at something like an LED TV or monitor, the reason you get super bright colors all across the range is because the color is being illuminated from behind by a bright white source. Multicolor LEDs like the ones on our keyboards are generating both illumination and color themselves.

 

So with that, a dark blue is going to give you less light than a bright blue.

This is not how light works. A full spectrum is white light. The way an LCD tv works is by backlighting white then blocking all the colors except the one it wants you to see, thus the photons actually being emitted are of the desired wavelength. An LED just projects the desired wavelengths directly. Thus, blue from an LCD tv is the same as blue from an LED. The only thing that's going to affect brightness is how many lumens that white backlight can produce is vs how many lumens your LED can produce.

There are two things that are preventing the kRGB from being very bright. First, the LEDs are set deep into the switch which causes a lot of light to be lost on it's way through the casing and through the key itself (the key's are translucent white, not clear, so that diffuses a lot of light as well). Secondly, the lights are PWMed. Even at full brightness, a keen eye can see that they're not running at full duty cycle which means they're not spending 100% of their time on. The way an LED dims is not by changing voltage, but by blinking it very quickly - called Pulse Width Modulation - so that to our eye, it appears to be dimmer. My guess why the LEDs of the kRGB aren't being run at full duty cycle is probably a matter of voltage. USB 3 provides 0.9 amps of power, USB 2 provides 0.5 (which is why we need both plugged in). That being said, one amp is not a lot of power when you're driving over 300 LEDs (each RGB LED is just 3 individual LEDs in one package). I have a board of 64 bright RGB LEDs and that think chugs over 2 amps at full brightness!

Chances are, if they wanted to run this thing at full duty cycle (full brightness) we'd have to plug it into the wall. Though, I'd totally be fine with that personally.

To quote Yellowbeard -

 

 

 

 

And the LED's at their brightest are already bright enough, Any brighter and you will be in Razer territory with their blindingly bright Blackwidow 2014 which was too much.

 

They are perfect as they are and if people are still complaining then there's always other brands they can try out.

One person commented below Yellowbeard's post, they're making keyboards/mice with the original Corsair logo?

Arrogant and short sighted ? Get over yourself and grow up, It's a keyboard not a surgeons tool.

Because it needs to be a surgeon's tool to be a good product? If a company is going to make a premium product, there's no excuse for issues like this. More importantly though, my comment was more directed at you telling people that it's 'bright enough' which is purely subjective.

The explanation given is...convenient but, under that argument, having the lower part of the switch black would have prevented wasting some of the "brightness" illuminating the keyboard instead of the...key.

The only ways to increase the light output of LEDs of the self-illuminated style such as what are being used in the Corsair RGB keyboards or those from other companies all come with drawbacks.

First option: More light from each LED.

Drawback 1: More power draw. These keyboards already take more power than a single USB 2.0 port can output according to the official USB specification. In order to illuminate these keyboards you're looking at a minimum of 500mA worth of power, at low settings of brightness/energy output. As these keyboards use 500-1000mA worth of power now, they require either two USB 1 or 2.0 ports in order to function properly, or a single USB 3.0 port putting out the higher 900mA+ required.

Drawback 2: Lower lifespan. More light equals more heat, and these are intended to last.

Second option: More "channeling" of the light to where it's intended to be.

Drawback: This may be possible, but very difficult with the design of a mechanical keyswitch. Blacking out parts of the keyswitch base would not actually provide more appearance of light, but mirroring and channeling the light might - but the design of these keyswitches would reflect light inward rather than upward. There's just no room to try and pull that off without re-engineering the entire physical design.

That's really all there is to it - it is technically very, very difficult to produce multicolor RGB lighting, with (# of keys * 3 LEDs) within a range of 500-1000mA especially with all the processor logic that is also involved.

Another aspect is that our keyboards also appear to have a processor in them that runs at up to 50MHz, which is easily well over 50 times the power of the Apple II or Commodore 64 computers from 30 years ago, and at least equivalent to what most people had for home computers in the early 1990s. These are powerful, efficient little computing systems with lots of light.

Would it be *nice* if they were brighter? Absolutely. And when the technology improves and comes down in price to where that efficiency can come to market at the same prices we have now, I'm sure we'll see updated models.

But also remember that light at different parts of the spectrum has different levels of visibility and brightness. If you want a bright keyboard, choose bright colors. This is always going to be the case.

You used a huge number of words to make an obvious but unconvincing argument. I've got plenty of USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 to spare. Designers decided to make backlighting the board more of an important feature than really necessary. Rethinking and then modifying the translucence of the lowest part of the switch assembly does NOT require a technological feat.

If you're trying to do it right, yes, it does. You need to make the plastic clear enough to transmit the light without altering the color from what a user expects based on the screen and with enough diffusion to at least partially illuminate all areas of the various key cap designs that are going on the switch. And there may absolutely be enough USB ports and power on your machine, but that's not all of Corsair's market. There is a lot of engineering here, even though it's the boring kind.

Personally I'd like to see less light bleed and more focus on the key caps as well, but we're dealing with a three LED solution, which means you need the diffusion were getting now instead of direct light piping. You could always try and cover the lower half of the assembly or paint it with a mirror coat facing inwards but the angles would likely be all wrong to reflect any more light upward.

To see how tricky this is, pull a cap and look at the plastic right above the LEDs. See the outlines? That little detail isn't just for fun, that's part of the focus design and is very similar to what you see on car headlights. It may look simple, but that was likely not an easy little thing to figure out at all.

That all said, look for comparisons with competing RGB lighting brightness. Maybe the other guys have ideas I don't. I'm personally just fine with the lighting the K70 has.