Cougar 700K EVO Gaming Keyboard Review
Features & build quality
Let’s start with the build quality and choice of materials. Cougar has used a combination of plastics, and an all-aluminium frame. This frame is robust as you’d imagine and prevents any flexing you might find with other gaming keyboards (some costing more than the 700K Evo). Even when I tried to torque the keyboard, it wouldn’t yield. Yes, it’s not an infomercial, so there’s no need for it to survive Festivas feats of strength or some such gauntlet. That said, for the ones prone to abusing their peripherals, this one is built to last.
Overall, I do appreciate the construction quality of the keyboard. It feels far better than the looks would suggest to you and by all accounts is quite premium in quality, able to stand with the best of them in the industry.
The buttons around the keyboard frame don’t stand out in anyway and because of their shallow depth can feel a little on the budget side. That said, they don’t have much play so they sit and travel snugly in their housing. You’ll not be pressing these a whole lot, so while the quality can be improved, it isn’t something I’d hold against the 700K EVO in the least.
Finally, we get to the features. Well seeing as it is a keyboard, it has that feature of course. However around it, Cougar has included audio pass through capabilities, (Mic in and stereo out). Something that I believe should be on all $100+ keyboards. With that you also get a USB pass through, even though it’s only USB 2.0 I suppose this is acceptable given that it’ll be used mainly for your mouse (Do consider the Cougar Surpassion RX) more than anything else.
Past the USB and audio features, the 700K Evo features five dedicated programmable keys. These are of course for the MOBA/MMO crowd who this keyboard is actually designed for. There’s are three profiles in total, which one can store on the keyboard, for a total of 15 key functions in essence. Simply press M1 to M3 to switch between them and all programmed key functions and lighting schemes will change accordingly.
The media keys close out the rest of the features list. These function as you’d expect, which means dedicated volume up/down and a mute key. I would have liked to see a scroller for this, maybe clickable for the mute functionality. That said, I’m glad Cougar hasn’t chosen to use combination (Fn) keys for this like some other gaming keyboards in the price range.