SteelSeries Apex 5 Hybrid Mechanical Gaming Keyboard –...

Most Helpful Review

"First of all: this is a USB 3 keyboard! It WILL NOT WORK PROPERLY WHEN PLUGGED INTO A USB 2 PORT. A typical USB 2 port does not provide enough power. The Apex 3 is reasonably quiet, no better or worse than many a keyboard in this category/price range. For some strange reason the manufacturer decided to reverse the position of lower case vs upper case printed on the keys; for instance, the forward slash (/) is now on top, while the question mark (?) on the bottom, of the key. Another example: the numbers are now above the characters such as @, #, % etc. But the keys work the standard way and therefore to get the $ you still have to press the Shift key. This is very, very silly and may inconvenience many users extremely. Also, the standard command to launch mail or browser are absent (or I cannot find them, but they should be available right off the bat). On a different note, I like the feel of the Apex 3, as well as the multimedia keys. For instance, pressing the volume roller down mutes the sound, which is useful when taking phone calls. The wrist support suffers from weak magnets, yet I find it OK and useful. And setting RGB colour schemes is relatively easy (you must download and instal software to do it); plus, you are able to control intensity of the given scheme. Given its price and its obvious limitations (there is huge room for improvement here) I am unwilling to give this keyboard more than three stars. I hope that it will redeem itself through its build quality, but that remains to be seen. If anything untoward happens, I will update this review. I will keep it - only for the sake of the aforementioned multimedia keys, wrist support, and unobtrusive RGB lighting.ADDENDUM: Indeed, you can assign keys such as Function Keys to, say, launching applications. You need to use the SteelSeries GG software. It takes a little bit of time to figure it out, but it works alright. I can now launch my mail, browser and calculator software using the keyboard. I am changing my rating from 3 to 4 stars."