Thank goodness Corsair’s ‘Elite Tactile Distractors’ aren’t a real product, or else I’d never get anything done
April Fools’ is a weird day for anyone who covers PC gaming hardware. We get slammed with press releases and trailers for joke products and games. The strangest thing is that sometimes I’ll see a joke product and think, “Damnit, I’d actually buy that.” Well, Corsair decided to send over its April Fools joke to me, and I’m a little relieved that no one actually sells these things.
Corsair calls the FT 100 Keycaps ‘elite tactile distractors,’ which will replace your more useless keys (looking at you, SCRLK) with something more practical like a full-sized fidget spinner, a knob, or a dial.
Inside the package are five fidget-friendly keycaps, which include a fidget spinner, a small dial, an on/off switch, a trackball, and a very clicky button. So, of course, I wouldn’t be a hardware writer worth my salt if I didn’t try out these silly keys, jokes or not.
I thought I had moved on from fidget spinners years ago (opens in new tab), but I’ll admit having one on the keyboard feels kind of great, especially during long meetings. I put the large spinner on my ESC, and while the build quality of the keycaps seems ok, I did have problems with the fidget spinner flying off the keyboard occasionally after more intense spins. What can I say? I’m an extreme fidgeter.
I like the feel of the tiny trackball keycap against my fingertip as well as flicking the light switch on and off. The dial and clicky button keycap are the weaker keys and don’t deliver the same level of satisfaction as the other keycaps. Though if you plan to annoy people, the clicky keycap is nice and loud, and the fidget spinner has a really good obnoxious hum to it on really big spins.
The FT 100 keycaps might not actually be for sale, and that might be a good thing since if I had to sit near a co-worker using these they wouldn’t be my coworker anymore because I would have murdered them.
However, I’m still annoyed Corsair never sold these giant fans they made for Fan Week (opens in new tab).
