In any case, the keys do a fairly good job when it comes to typing. 10 Cheap PC Keyboards (Under $20) Ranked from Best to Worst.I don't really see the benefit, but your mileage may vary. SteelSeries claims that this marries the 'feel' of a mechanical switch to the 'smoothness' of a membrane version. That's because underneath the switches, there's still a series of electrical membranes that process everything. There's indeed a little noise, and you need to press a key only halfway down to register a command, but the Apex 5 doesn't really feel like a traditional mechanical model. The oddest thing about the Apex 5 is its inclusion of SteelSeries' 'hybrid mechanical gaming switches.' These blue-capped switches try to mimic the loud sound and tactile feel of Cherry MX Blues and get about halfway there. As with previous SteelSeries keyboards, I feel like the Apex 5's OLED screen probably adds a lot of cost without conferring much benefit.

Even after shrinking a United Federation of Planets logo to the proper size and resolution, it looked grainy and indistinct. (You can't control any keyboard or game functions with this screen the way you can with fancier SteelSeries keyboards.) But, you could just as easily differentiate profiles with colored lighting, and it's tough to find images that look good on such a small screen. This black-and-white 128 x 40 screen lets you program in a little animated icon, which is kind of useful for telling apart multiple profiles. The other interesting feature is the small OLED screen in the upper right.

My learning curve was less than an afternoon, and I started to wonder why other keyboard manufacturers have been content to let multiple buttons take up so much space. One is a small, clickable volume dial, which is extremely helpful the other is what SteelSeries calls a 'multimedia button.' Instead of cluttering up valuable keyboard space with three or four separate media buttons, this single button lets you play, pause and skip tracks, depending on how many times you press it in rapid succession. Beyond that, the Apex 5 is a pretty standard full-size keyboard, with only two extra additions in the upper-right corner.

Steel series apex 5