Corsair K70 RGB TKL

Slick updates all around

- ZAK STOREY

TENKEYLESS KEYBOARDS—you’ll either love them or hate them. Or, if you’re like our other resident keyboard reviewer, Dave, you'll think they don’t go far enough, and want to chop off the top F keys, too. This reviewer, however, falls firmly in the former camp—namely, what’s wrong with a good old numpad? Well, ergonomics mainly.

TKL keyboards and their skinnier counterparts position you far better during long sessions at your desk, and it’s all to do with your mouse, bizarrely. Get rid of the numpad, and you shorten the length of the keyboard, meaning you naturally bring your mouse closer toward you. In an ideal world, you should be sitting with your hands shoulder-distance apart, one resting on the WASD keys, and the other placed on the mouse, somewhere near where a numpad traditionally sits—not sprawled out across your desk. This is, we’ve been told, better for your posture, although there doesn’t seem to be much research on this. But many a game developer has proclaimed their messed-up right shoulder as proof of this concept. And what’s to blame? The numpad.