Was just cruising through today's deals on Amazon and saw this gaming keyboard is at an ATL according to CamelCamelCamel. Reviews seem favourable but there are a handful of complaints about LEDs burning out or becoming discoloured. Possibly the most "Nephew Christmas gift" item of all time.
CamelCamelCamel.
I wish I could say the same, the hardware itself is nice but the software that comes with it kept on causing my Windows to freeze completely all the time. I don't know what it was but I eventually gave up and returned the keyboard and went with Razer instead.
razer software is a nightmare
I would've done Corsair / Logi before Razer
$449 RRP for a keyboard is nuts IMO
Yeah could build a custom one for way less.
Great deal and very good keyboard. +1.
Note that this is not the latest version. The latest is SteelSeries Apex Pro TKL Gen 3. I have a gen 1 and while the keycaps are getting shiny, it works fine.
Two of my blue LEDs died within a year but I keep it on solid orange anyway and I swapped the keycaps at some point. Apart from that pretty happy with it.
Custom mechs are so good, cheap, accessible nowadays that these big brand keyboards with bloated ass software are simply not worth.
Something like a MAD68 @ <$55 (plastic) or <$120 (aluminium) will outperform this in latency + RT, as well has have higher build quality.
The Steelseries Apex line specifically is known for not having sufficient plate / padding design and having metallic ping sounds when typing.
Back in 2022 - 2023 this was alright as customs prebuilts were prohibitively expensive, but nowadays for ~100 you can get both:
gasket mount / acoustic foam + metal housing boards for typing performance
midrange hall-effect / rapid-trigger boards for minimal latency.
This does neither.
For ~200, you might even be able to nab an older version Wooting 60HE or one of the more budget Venom60 kits for the absolute best in performance.
If not, then the MAD68 or any other hall effect keyboard at around $50 (with rapid trigger) using the gateron HE switches are essentially good enough to go pro on.
$120 in 2023 when the apex pro was launched was barely enough to buy a 60% aluminum casing (with no keyboard), nowadays you can get full prebuilt boards using them for that price.
https://ausmodshop.com/products/madlions-mad68-pro-aluminium…
I have the full sized version and it's a great plank - but yeah, it's had a few keys lose one or more of the LED colours.
It's definitely the nicest keyboard I've used among the higher end ones though.
I owned one of these and returned it straight away. Unfortunately everything about it is sub-par and I can’t understand why people raved about it so much in 2022/23.
The new Corsair K70 Pro TKL for $249 is an absolute steal when comparing these 2 side by side
I owned this thing and for a linear keyboard it was and felt very nice, but you could most certainly build one better just by watching YouTube with no specialized knowledge.
I bought hall effect thinking that it would last much longer, and while the hall effect switches did last longer, half the LEDs burnt out after 2 or 3 years. Really disappointing
Great hardware
Software and brains can be frustrating and glitchy, imo, but they do fix issues regularly
Overall steelseries is probably the finest quality gaming peripherals, in my tried-and-tested-everything opinion