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

Ultrahuman Ring Pro Brings Better Battery Life, More Action and Analysis

The company’s new flagship smart ring stores more data, too. But that doesn’t really help Americans.

Sick of your smart ring’s battery not holding up? Ultrahuman’s new $479 Ring Pro smart ring, unveiled on Friday, offers up to 15 days of battery life on a single charge. The Ring Pro joins the company’s $349 Ring Air, which boosts health tracking, thanks to longer battery life, increased data storage, improved speed and accuracy and a new heart-rate sensing architecture. The ring works in conjunction with the latest Pro charging case.

Ultrahuman also launched its Jade AI, which can act as an agent based on analysis of current and historical health data. Jade can synthesize data from across the company’s products and is compatible with its Rings.

«With industry-leading hardware paired with Jade biointelligence AI, users can now take real-time actionable interventions towards their health than ever before,» said Mohit Kumar, CEO of Ultrahuman.

No US sales

That hardware isn’t available in the US, though, thanks to the ongoing ban on Ultrahuman’s Rings sales here, stemming from a patent dispute with its competitor, Oura Ring. It’s available for preorder now everywhere else and is slated to ship in March. Jade’s available globally.

Ultrahuman says the Ring Pro boosts battery life to about 15 days in Chill mode — up to 12 days in Turbo — compared to a maximum of six days for the Air. The Pro charger’s battery stores enough for another 45 days, which you top off with Qi-compatible wireless charging. In addition, the case incorporates locator technology via the app and a speaker, as well as usability features such as haptic notifications and a power LED.

The ring can also retain up to 250 days of data versus less than a week for the cheaper model. Ultrahuman redesigned the heart-rate sensor for better signal quality. An upgraded processor improves the accuracy of the local machine learning and overall speed.

It’s offered in gold, silver, black and titanium finishes, with available sizes ranging from 5 to 14.

Jade’s Deep Research Mode is the cross-ecosystem analysis feature, which aggregates data from Ring and Blood Vision and the company’s subscription services, Home and M1 CGM, to provide historical trends, offer current recommendations and flag potential issues, as well as trigger activities such as A-fib detection. Ultrahuman plans to expand its capabilities to include health-adjacent activities, such as ordering food.

Some new apps are also available for the company’s PowerPlug add-on platform, including capabilities such as tracking GLP-1 effects, snoring and respiratory analysis and migraine management tools.

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Technologies

Spotify Expands Into Audiobook Rankings With Weekly Charts

The feature is available to both free users and Premium subscribers. Wuthering Heights is reaching the heights on both the US and UK charts.

If you’re a Spotify user, you may be familiar with features like the year-end summary Wrapped, as well as your daily usage stats. Now, the service has a new popularity chart tracking audiobooks.

Spotify’s audiobook charts are now available to free and Premium users within the service’s Audiobooks hub. While only Premium users receive 15 hours of audiobook listening per month, the company offers a larger selection of titles you can buy.

US charts and UK charts are both available now.

Read more: Best Music Streaming Services for 2026

Spotify says that the audiobook charts will help customers discover new and popular titles in real time.

«As we’ve proven with Music and Podcasts Charts, when content is easier to access, discover, and enjoy, the demand grows,» said Duncan Bruce, Spotify’s director of audiobook partnerships and licensing, in a statement on Friday.

Spotify launched audiobooks in 2022, and has since added features such as the AI catchup tool Recaps and PageMatch, which lets you swap more easily between a printed book and the audio version.

Spotify Premium currently costs $13 a month and includes more than 100 million songs, as well as audiobooks. Spotify Premium is currently CNET’s Editors’ Choice for best music streaming service.

The current US audiobooks chart lists Emily Brontë’s romantic classic Wuthering Heights as the top listen, followed by James Clear’s self-help book Atomic Habits and Freida McFadden’s psychological thriller The Housemaid. Audiobook popularity is also broken down by genre, with charts for romance, mystery and thriller books, self-help, science fiction and fantasy, biography and memoir, business and careers, teen and young adult, religion and spirituality, history, and parenting and relationships.

Powered by its blockbuster movie adaptation starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, Wuthering Heights also leads the overall chart for the UK.