Photos and Features
Right away it is clear when you look at the 700K from Cougar that they were going with an aggressive gaming styling, just like their 700M gaming mouse. You get a full mostly traditional key layout, I will touch on what it different farther down in this section. You do get a full number pad, direction pad and everything else. They even included a whole list of programmable keys as well as media keys that don’t require the use of a function button. In fact there isn’t a function button at all. The sides of the keyboard are angled similar to a stealth plane. The larger portion of the keyboard is aluminum but there is still plastic along the top and bottom edges as well as on the back.
Cougar included a wrist rest with the 700K along with a really unique FPS pad as well. When I first opened up the 700K I actually though that the keyboard was missing one of its two rubber pads. As it turns out Cougar just incudes the one as a way to raise your hand up a little more for playing games. They mention FPS specifically but RTS and MOBAs would also apply as well. I kind of feel like the wrist rest is a little unfinished looking, adding the rubber pad helps but with there only being one it feels lopsided. I kind of wish the whole wrist rest had that thick rubber finish.
Cougar went with a similar design to what Corsairs has been doing by using the aluminum backplate for the key switches as the main piece of the entire keyboard. What I mean by that is they didn’t put a plastic cover over everything to fill in the space between keys. This makes keeping your keyboard clean much easier because you can just push it right off the side where you would normally have to remove keycaps and vacuum and wipe everything out.
Along the back of the 700K we have the USB cord. Cougar used a thick sleeved cable to bundle up the two USB cords and the two passthrough audio cords as well to keep things cleaner. Also on the back of the keyboard over on the number pad side are the passthrough USB and audio connections.
To the left of the main keyboard Cougar did include five programmable keys. These are unique because they are all angled towards the keyboard and none of them have a traditional square shape. Logitech, Corsair, and Razer have all used similar keys but they normally have a standard keycap shape.
I think the most unique part about the 700K is its space bar. For starters the overall length is a little shorter than a standard spacebar. On top of that Cougar has split it into two keys, leaving he left half as a standard space bar and the right as one of the programmable keys. I’m really curious how this will work out for both gaming and typing, it has the potential to be a really cool feature but it also has the potential to really mess with your typing as well. I will find out in the performance section.
Up along the top of the keyboard Cougar included buttons to flip between three macro modes or profiles. They also give you a button to be able to create a macro on the fly. Over on the top right you also get media controls like play, pause, skip forward, and skip back. Up under the media controls they also included volume controls above the number pad. So all of the buttons along the top use a switch that is similar to a mouse switch but the volume controls are membrane switches. It’s especially a bummer because the membrane switches feel even worse when next to the other two switch types. I really wish they would have gone with a mechanical for them or the mouse switch.
So for switches you are getting Cherry branded switches. The 700K is available with four different types, the standard black/red/brown/blue. The model tested here has red Cherry MX switches though. Each switch has its own backlight LED as well. Cougar doesn’t actually mention what color the backlighting is on the 700K. It is a mixture of a red and an orange although I’m sure with orange being one of their main colors that that is most likely the color they are aiming for. I was a little surprised that the programmable keys over on the left were actually mechanical, the weird key shape made me question it. The keycaps are made of ABS in a transparent white and then are painted black so the legends will glow with the backlighting. Speaking of that Cougar went with a font that is similar to the Razer and Cooler Master fonts. This is what we consider a more gaming focused font but some people aren’t a fan. I’ve grown so used to it that I didn’t even notice until as I was writing this. Last but not least, for stabilizers I was happy to see that they went with Cherry stabilizers. This makes pulling the key caps off much easier because you don’t have to fight with the stabilizer wire.
On the back of the 700K we can see that the wrist rest attaches down at the bottom in the two notches. For feat there are rubber pads next to those notches and then rubber pads on the flip out legs along the back. When the feet are flipped down the rubber still touches the ground giving you a little traction, but as a whole this is a little less than most keyboards have. In the center of the back we also have a sticker with all of the requires regulation badges along with the serial number and model number for warranty use.
