Corsair Galleon 100 SD Review

The Corsair Galleon 100 SD is a full-size gaming keyboard whose number pad doubles as a Stream Deck, fully customisable through Elgato's official application. It is an unusual proposition: the control surface from Corsair's Elgato division grafted directly into a full-size mechanical board, with the desk-space saving that implies for smaller setups.

Corsair has not cut corners on construction. The aluminium chassis conveys a real sense of solidity, which also explains the 1.38 kg registered on the scales. This is a resolutely sedentary keyboard, which makes sense given its brief. The brand's usual visual language is present, with a plastic trim strip near the top edge and a rigid plate sitting above the integrated number pad and Stream Deck section on the right-hand side. That technical curiosity has no major effect on the footprint, which stays in line with other boards of the type at 159 x 448 x 42 mm.

The legends are all upper case and play it safe, favouring three-letter abbreviations in most cases, which avoids the cluttered look of some gaming keyboards. The keycaps are PBT plastic, a choice that gives them greater resistance to wear and finger oils over time, and the legends are translucent so the backlighting shows through when it is switched on. A magnetic wrist rest is included, which is welcome for comfort on a board with an otherwise standard high profile, and adjustable feet provide two additional typing angles.

Attention naturally falls on the right-hand side. The SD in the name stands for Stream Deck, though the number pad is not quite one in the traditional sense: it is an island of 12 programmable keys with a plastic finish and a feel identical to the buttons on Elgato's well-known module. In other words, these are not as responsive as conventional mechanical keycaps. Their edges are easy to catch and they are not especially pleasant during intensive use, so this is some way from being a true replacement for a classic number pad. Above those keys sits an LCD screen with a relatively generous diagonal, capable of displaying all manner of widgets or decorative banners depending on the preset chosen. Two notched, clickable dials complete the layout, and the construction overall is close to faultless.

That amount of technology inevitably brings compromises. The Galleon 100 SD works over a wired USB connection only, through one of three dedicated USB-C ports. Three, because one serves the board itself and is the only one required for it to function, while the others enable USB passthrough by connecting one to the machine and another to an external device, whether a peripheral or external storage. The catch is that the connection is limited to the USB 2.0 protocol, well short of what any USB-A port from the past decade can manage.

The Stream Deck functions of the pseudo-number pad also require the dedicated software to be running in the background, exactly as the standalone module does. That is a logical enough trade-off, but it may throw anyone unfamiliar with the Elgato ecosystem. Without the software, the keyboard falls back on a default hardware mode with two presets installed: a number pad, and a pad of assorted macros including control over the RGB backlighting and the polling rate.

Getting the most out of the Galleon 100 SD requires an investment of time. Once the Stream Deck software is installed, the scope for customisation is more or less identical to that of the standard Elgato modules, with a set of official and community-created plugins covering a wide range of applications. Certain profiles, downloadable from the manufacturer's website, are purpose-built for specific applications and give quick access to macros — for Cyberpunk 2077 or Twitch, for example — without having to configure them yourself. Each profile still has to be assigned to the correct software manually before it will appear automatically.

It amounts to a discipline in its own right, but a rewarding one given the range of possibilities on offer — provided you can live with the Elgato Stream Deck software, which under its veneer of simplicity would benefit from being brought up to date, both to speed up macro assignment and to improve overall stability, which was not entirely dependable during the recorded test sessions. Customising the keyboard itself is handled instead through the Corsair Web Hub, a browser-based interface that runs on Chromium and is therefore operating-system agnostic. It is immediately easy to grasp, clear and comprehensive, and there is little to criticise.

The switches fitted to the Galleon 100 SD are Corsair's MLX Pulse: entirely conventional linear switches in their construction, with an actuation force of 45 g and a total travel of 4 mm, but perfectly suited to gaming. The return is consistent and smooth, and they are pre-lubricated for a pleasant feel. Better still, the board is hot-swappable, so the MLX switches can be replaced with any other three- or five-pin switch — a genuine plus for its longevity. An 8000 Hz polling-rate ceiling rounds out the picture of a board firmly aimed at performance.

The operation could easily have gone wrong, and yet Corsair has managed a complete transplant of Elgato's Stream Deck into a keyboard that makes no compromises on typing quality. For anyone looking to make the most of limited desk space, or to experiment with a macro controller alongside their keyboard, the Galleon 100 SD is a thoroughly viable option. Its own segment is fairly sparse: among full-size boards, Razer's BlackWidow V3 Pro and the Be Quiet! Dark Mount, with its own detachable take on the number pad, are the alternatives worth weighing up.