Last year Corsair stepped into the world of enthusiast keyboards with the MAKR 75, an incredibly well-made bit of kit that unfortunately failed to garner more than a 70% score from our reviewer Phil Iwaniuk. Now there's a new version, and this one might go at least some way towards boosting that up.
That's primarily because this is a Hall effect keyboard. One of Phil's problems with the first version was that it all added up to quite a lot of money after adding the various parts to the DIY kit, and you didn't have the option to get Hall effect switches for that price tag.
The just-announced MAKR Pro 75, though, has Hall effect switches, and they're included in its price tag… which is still steep at $250/£220, so it's not exactly a clear value improvement overall from first glance.
For those who want Hall effect switches in a dinky 75% form factor that thocks as good as many other enthusiast keyboards, it should be a good shout, though. Phil said the non-Pro has a "tank-like chassis construction", and it looks like that'll be the same with the new one, too. Apart from the chassis, we're talking an FR4 plate, gasket mounting, and 8-layer sound dampening, which will all help that sound profile.
The new switches are 'Corsair MGX Hyperdrive' magnetic ones and, as we'd hope for such an expensive keyboard, they do come pre-lubed. That they're magnetic is the whole selling point compared to the previous one, of course, because these will allow you to make use of all the competitive gaming benefits the tech provides such as rapid trigger and SOCD.
The latter isn't as important these days, given games like Counter-Strike 2 have banned the tech anyway—so we can thankfully gloss over yet another name for SOCD, this one from Corsair, called 'FlashTap'.
Rapid tap, however, is still useful, this being where you can re-activate a key the moment you start lifting up on it. Arguably more useful than this though is just the general ability to set your key actuation point wherever you want, for instance a little higher—and therefore quicker and easier to press—on the WASD keys.
Apart from that, though, you're getting all the lovely tippy-tappy, high-quality build of the non-Pro, except it's all built for you already, no screwdrivers required. It comes with the wheel at the top-right, but you can swap it for a LED screen rather than that if you pay a bit extra, and you can pay extra for a wireless module, too.
Corsair has also announced two new versions of my favourite gaming mouse of the last few years, and those, too, are a little on the expensive side. It looks like high-quality with a suitably premium price tag is what Corsair's going for right now.
