Technologies

Corsair K100 Air Gaming Keyboard Review: A Sleek Design for a Steep Price

This ultrathin mechanical gaming keyboard does it all and looks good doing it, but all those features don’t come cheap.

There are a couple reasons a keyboard can get as expensive as Corsair’s $280 K100 Air (£280, roughly AU$415): If it’s a modular gaming keyboard that you essentially build yourself or if it’s wildly feature-packed while supporting wireless operation. The K100 Air falls firmly into the latter class, with $250 competitors like the Logitech G915 Lightspeed and the Razer DeathStalker V2 Pro. And I feel the same way about the K100 Air as the DeathStalker — I love it, but that’s a high price to pay.

Corsair K100 Air

$280 at Amazon

$280 at Best Buy

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Like

Thin enough to slide under things like monitor stands
Can store the multidevice wireless dongle on board
Dongle is PS4 and PS5 compatible

Don’t Like

Secondary key functions (like @ or %) aren’t backlit well enough
Crumbs can get stuck under keycaps

The broad set of features includes 2.4GHz wireless, three Bluetooth pairings and wired operation, four dedicated macro keys, 2.4GHz compatibility with the PS4 and PS5, and 8MB memory to store up to 50 custom profiles on board. That’s on top of the usual per-key RGB lighting, gaming features and media keys. As with all these keyboards, some of the features aren’t available on console, such as customizing the backlight rather than cycling through the presets. It also lets you boost the polling rate to as high as 8,000Hz when connected via USB, which I’m not sure you really need.

It’s also the thinnest of the bunch, mostly because the Cherry MX Ultra Low Profile mechanical switches it uses are laptop-thin (Logitech and Razer use their own), with the keycaps sitting much closer to the surface. Normally I don’t care much about relative thickness, but in this case it means I can slide the keyboard underneath my monitor stand.

The flip side is that if you get crumbs beneath the keycap on the other models you can easily shake them out. They’re less likely to fall in under the K100’s keycaps, but if they do, they’re hard to dislodge. And they’re not replaceable. I had one brief incident where a key got stuck, but a little pounding seemed to do the trick and I haven’t had any other issues.

Corsair K100 Air showing wireless adapter docked in the rear of the keyboard — It comes with one of those easy-to-lose wireless dongles, but there’s also a place to dock it in the keyboard to minimize its chance of going MIA.

Josh Goldman/CNET

It’s a full-size keyboard, and pretty well designed; stiff, with balanced keys (no spacebar wobbling) and concave keycaps that prevent finger slippage. It uses one of Corsair’s small Slipstream multidevice USB dongles, which has a little nook to slide into. That’s not an issue if you stick it into your system and forget it, but my box o’ dongles overfloweth. The multidevice dongle is only compatible with a handful of Corsair devices at the moment, though.

The edges of the aluminum top plate feel a little sharp, but just annoyingly sharp — not bloodthirsty. It also suffers from one of my pet peeves, a lack of backlighting on secondary characters like «$» and «%».

The K100 Air only comes with tactile switches. Because of the laptop-like short travel distance, it’s hard to feel a separate actuation level — you kind of press hard and they bounce — and I’m not sure that they’re well suited for games where a quick, light touch is required. But if all you’re doing is WASD-ing around with some interaction, it’s nice.

And it’s comfortable for typing, with enough force to minimize accidental strokes. It’s especially suitable if typical wireless keyboards leave you cold (raises hand). Because it’s relatively quiet for a nonlinear mechanical switch, it’s appropriate for work as well.

Corsair rates the battery for about 50 hours with the backlight off. I work and play in the dark, so my backlight is always on, and I get a few days on it before I feel compelled to plug it in.

A close up of the media roller, media keys, macro keys and other typical groups of keys like the number pad. — The K100 Air is a full size keyboard with the typical accoutrements you expect from a pricey model, like a volume roller and media keys.

Josh Goldman/CNET

Switching among the various wireless connections is seamless, though it’s a little frustrating that there doesn’t seem to be a way to switch between wired and the Bluetooth connections — you can switch to Bluetooth, but not back. So, for example, gaming wired on your system and answering Slack messages or taking notes on your phone (raises hand again) is cumbersome.

It took me a while to get used to the feel of the keyboard, but I’ve come to like it a lot. It’s definitely great for typing and general work, and decent for casual gaming. (That’s «casual» in the «what-comes-below-enthusiast» sense.) That price tag is probably a big sticking point for some people, but if you’re OK forking over $250 for the competition then it’s certainly worth the extra $30. And if it goes on sale, it’s definitely worth thinking about.

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Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for June 9, #463

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle No. 463 for June 9.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Todays NYT Strands puzzle features a bunch of mysterious words. Some are a bit difficult to unscramble so if you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: What you see isn’t what you get

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: Hiding in plain sight

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

CALL, CALLS, FALL, FALLS, SAME, SEAM, LAND, ROSE, COVE, CANE, CANES, FLUME, FLUMES, DIGS, MEAL, COLA, CARD, CASE

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

MASK, CLOAK, COVER, FACADE, DISGUISE, CAMOUFLAGE

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is FALSEFRONT. To find it, start with the F that’s two rows over from the far left and two letters down. Wind around into a question mark.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for June 9, #729

Here are some hints and the answers for Connections for June 9, No. 729.

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Do you play the NYT Spelling Bee? If you do, you should be able to ace the purple category in today’s NYT Connections puzzle. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times now has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group, to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Control-C.

Green group hint: Don’t wait till the last minute.

Blue group hint: Pals to plan a heist.

Purple group hint: Think another NYT online game.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Keyboard shortcut commands.

Green group: Secure in advance.

Blue group: Crime organization.

Purple group: Spellling Bee ranks minus a letter.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is keyboard shortcut commands. The four answers are paste, print, quit and save.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is secure in advance. The four answers are book, order, request and reserve.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is crime organization. The four answers are crew, family, ring and syndicate.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is Spelling Bee ranks minus a letter. The four answers are genus, goo, mazing and slid. (Genius, good, amazing and solid.)

Technologies

I Made Google Translate My Default on iPhone Before a Trip and It Saved Me More Than Once

Google Translate supports far more languages than Apple’s app, and it’s easy to make the switch.

If you’re traveling overseas this summer, the Google Translate app can come in handy to quickly translate a road sign or conversation. The latest Google Translate update allows you to pick the app as your default translation app for Apple iPhones and iPads running iOS and iPadOS 18.4 and later. Previously, you were limited to the built-in Apple option.

Google began leveraging AI to boost Google Translate’s offerings, adding 110 languages last year to increase its total support for 249 languages. Compare that to Apple Translate, which supports 19 languages. Neither Google nor Apple responded to a request for comment.

Both apps offer voice and text translation, including a camera feature that lets you instantly translate by pointing your camera at text. Both also allow you to use translation features without an internet connection, which can come in particularly handy when traveling to more remote locations.

After using both, I found that the Google Translate picked up speech a little quicker so I didn’t have to constantly repeat myself, and the audio pronunciations were a little easier to understand than on Apple Translate. I switched to Google Translate as the default on my iPhone, and here’s how you can, too.