KitGuru KitGuru.net – Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards
The Cooler Master MK730 ships in a dark box that sports Cooler Master's signature purple accents. A photo of the keyboard itself is visible on the front, while some key features of the board are highlighted on the back of the box.
The outer box gives way to an inner box, which is plain black apart from the Cooler Master hexagon logo printed in purple.
Inside that, we find some accessories – namely, the 1.8m USB-C cable, a quick start guide, and then a total of 9 spare keycaps with a keycap puller also included. These keycaps are purple PBT caps for the WASD, arrow and ESC keys.
Before getting to the keyboard itself, there is also the detachable wrist rest included in the box. This is a cushioned rest with a faux-leather covering, while the underside is made from plastic and sports six anti-slip rubber pads.
Finally we get to the MK730, and first impressions are positive thanks to Cooler Master shipping the board in a soft fabric sleeve – no chance of any scuffing happening while the MK730 is in transit.
Once that is off, we get a good look at the board itself. We've already mentioned it is a TKL, or 80%, form factor, so no numpad here. It's also fairly low profile for a desktop mechanical keyboard, with the official dimensions listed as 360 x 192 x 41.5 mm.
The wrist rest is also very easy to attach as it just lightly snaps into place via magnets. It's not a super-strong hold – if you move the keyboard forward on your desk, the wrist rest won't move with the board – but it won't fall out of place if you're just typing or gaming.
In terms of build materials, the MK730 is pleasingly premium. The bottom half of the casing is made of black plastic, but the upper section of the case is made from sandblasted aluminium which has a lovely texture to it. On top of that, the MK730 also sports a dark grey brushed aluminium top plate – similar to Corsair's top plate implementation on the likes of the K70.
The keycaps used are fairly standard black ABS caps with semi-transparent legends to allow the RGB lighting to shine through. Removing these keycaps reveals the Cherry MX Brown switches used here – these are again MX RGB switches with the clear housings.
On the topic of mechanical switches, it is also worth making clear that while the MK730 is available with Red, Blue and Brown switches, this is very much region dependent. UK customers, for instance, can only buy the MK730 with MX Browns.
Elsewhere, we can see a lot of on-board functionality is programmed to the F-keys. F1-F4 keys, as well as F5-F8, can be used to customise the RGB lighting, while there are also secondary media keys on the INS/HOME/PGUP keys. We talk about this further on the next page.
Flipping the keyboard over reveals the black plastic casing, with the Cooler Master logo in the middle. There are two feet for adjusting the height of the keyboard in both of the top corners, and also two rubber pads in the bottom corners to help prevent the keyboard from slipping.
The USB-C connector is positioned centrally in a small cut-out, while there is also a dedicated cable channelling area just above this so you can route the cable to either the left or right side of the keyboard.
