Cooler Master SK650 Limited Edition White Mechanical Keyboard Review

The Limited Edition White Sk650 from Cooler Master is their full-size offering in their SK Series of keyboards. We’ve already looked at the SK621 on this site. They also make a 10 keyless variant in the SK630. So, they have you covered for any style you’d prefer. The Sk650 measures 430 mm x 125 mm x 25 mm and weighs only 629 grams, or 1.387 pounds. The weight is without the cable.

The Cooler Master SK650 is a slim mechanical keyboard with Cherry MX low profile switches. We’ll touch on that more in a moment. The response time of the SK650 is 1ms and the polling rate of the SK650 is 1000Hz. The polling rate is how often your PC checks for information from the keyboard. A polling rate of 1000Hz means the computer checks for information 1000 times each second. The SK650 has the latest and greatest in anti-ghosting technology. N-Key rollover works together with Hybrid 6-key rollover to guarantee each keystroke is registered. Hybrid key rollover just means the keyboard has both 6-key and N-key rollover.

The Cooler Master SK650 has 512KB of onboard memory. The SK650 has “On the Fly” controls for the multimedia keys, macro recording, and the RGB lighting control. You can change the settings of the RGB lighting on the SK650 using the on the fly system. On the Fly system even allows you to adjust red, green and blue each separately to achieve different colors on the color spectrum. The SK650 uses the latest 32bit ARM Cortex M3 microcontroller. For more details and technical specifications on the ARM Cortex M3, click here; https://www.silabs.com/products/mcu/32-bit/arm-cortex-m3-32-bit-microcontroller

The underside of the SK650 doesn’t have feet to adjust the height or angle the keyboard. Instead, the SK650 has ant slip, rubber feet to hold it in place. Also, the SK650 is slightly angled. This raises up the back of the keyboard ever so slightly. Each keycap also has a slight contour to it. It’s so slight that it’s hard to see in the pictures. However, you can feel it when using the SK650. This helps with comfort while typing and also to hit each key dead center while typing. Like most keyboards, the F and J keys have a small protrusion on the lower edge to better locate the home row.

The actuation on the Cherry MX Low Profile switches feels almost identical to that of traditional Cherry MX Reds we all know and love. However, the travel distance has been reduced from 4 millimeters to 3.2 millimeters. It’s such a minute difference, that only the foremost connoisseur of Cherry MX red switches could tell the difference. I know I can’t.

Behind the chicklet style keycaps, the Cooler Master SK650 has a brushed aluminum backing, not plastic, made to look like brushed aluminum. It’s very stylish and looks great with the white keycaps. Especially with the RGB lighting illuminated.

The Cooler Master SK650 is powered by a single USB Type-C cable. The Type-C port is on the back edge of the keyboard, the opposite side of the cable is USB Type-A. The 1.8-meter removable cable is also braided. Being removable, when the keyboard is not in use, you can store the cable to prevent any damage. Being a USB Type-C cable, you could also use it to charge any number of mobile devices. However, I tried to use a different cable to power the SK650 and for whatever reason, it wouldn’t work. Now, I only tried two other USB Type-C cables, so maybe it was that specific brand of cable as they were both Choetech cables. But personally, I could only use the included cable to power the SK650.

Now, the SK650 wouldn’t be a modern peripheral if it didn’t have RGB lighting. I’ll have to admit that over time, I went from hating RGB lighting to being able to deal with it to now, not having a set up without it. The lighting on the SK650 can be controlled through the on the fly system or through the Cooler Master Portal software. Both are easy to use and the Portal software is very user-friendly.