SteelSeries Apex [RAW] Keyboard first impressions

[Xaring]

I have just received my new keyboard, an Apex Raw from Steelseries. The first impressions about it are excellent.

 

 

I will list the Pros I think this keyboard has.

 

• Epic looks. It looks incredible, the keys have big and clear branding.
• Nice backlighting. It is not too strong, but it really helps out (I come from a non-backlit keyboard...)
• "Chiclet keys", short travel distance, if you like laptop keyboards, like I do, this is your keyboard.
• Tons of macro keys. The 5 to the left are very accesible, the ones at the top are perfect for chat commands or auxiliary things.
• It is incredibly silent. It's got long-lasting membrane keys, so it is not noisy at all. 
• Steelseries Engine. Great, I've programmed a couple of macros to try it out and it is very intuitive and practical.

Now some Cons...

 

• It is not mechanical.
• It has a shiny vessel that gets dirty extremely quickly (I have it 2 hours and its got 10 or 15 fingerprints).
• i had some difficulties to get my PC to recognise it, I will explain below.

The Steelseries Engine is a little bit tricky. I used up the first 1/2 hour trying to make it sync up with the keyboard.

 

You need to download the Driver Utility from SS and then install the general steelseries drivers and then update the firmware from the keyboard...

 

 

 

Once you have done this (which is what I missed), you can use the Steelseries Engine and configure the Keyboard properly.

 

Here is the main configuration screen for the SS engine:

 

and here is a nice feature it has, the ability to count keypresses, I find it quite usefull, to see how I use each champ in lol, or to check APM in SC, etc.

 

 

 

 

 

Edit: Spelling and random stuff

[Scia]

LOL you use your Caps-Lock quite a lot u flamer ^^

[Xaring]

It was just a test run not an actual game session

[Bloodyvalley]

Nice

[Kira0172]

WTF you actually use rshift? I use lshit all the time. Rshift only when i am eating and i want to typ a "?" so i can do it with one hand lol.

[RatedBlam]

WTF you actually use lshift? I use rshit all the time. Lshift only when i am eating and i want to typ a "?" so i can do it with one hand lol.

Looking at the keypresses he did not use lshift at all

[Kira0172]

Looking at the keypresses he did not use lshift at all

Meant to say r. Just editted my post lol

[RatedBlam]

Meant to say r. Just editted my post lol

No problems, we All mistype. And to the OP a Nice review I really liked the little tutorial about the ss engine

[Xaring]

Meant to say r. Just editted my post lol

 

it was a test run... i just randomly typed keys to allow you to use the functionality.

 

No problems, we All mistype. And to the OP a Nice review I really liked the little tutorial about the ss engine

 

Thank you man! I thought it would be necessary as I did have problems with it until I got everything setup correctly