There is a specific audience who’ll be over the moon about this keyboard, and happy to pay the $260/£240 Corsair’s asking for it. The thing is, it really is a specific audience. While some of its best assets can be universally enjoyed, like the creamy-smooth key actuation and Corsair’s trademark construction quality, a lot of what you’re paying premium price for here is useful only in very particular use cases and tastes.
Let’s take the defining spec of the Vanguard Air 99 Wireless, for example: low-profile, optical keys. It’s obvious from the first keypress that Corsair’s design team have lavished all kinds of care and attention on getting the feeling right, from the gasket-mounted design to the 2.5 mm of travel these low-profile keys have, just enough to lend a satisfying feel to each keypress while still fulfilling the low-profile brief. There are apparently five layers of sound-dampening at work to deliver the right sound, and the right feeling. And they got it right.
