 Today we're going to be doing an unboxing of the SteelSeries Shift Gaming Keyboard. So this is the replacement product for the Z-Board or ZedBoard and no matter what way I say it, somebody's going to complain so I don't care. So this is the Shift, the Z-Board is gone, this is a SteelSeries branded product. The Z-Board was kind of a legacy product left over from the Ideazon acquisition so it was originally the Ideazon. Anyway, I'm not going to talk about the Z-Board anymore, we're going to talk about the Shift. So just like the Z-Board, the Shift has replaceable keysets. Removable, replaceable, re-anythingable keysets. That means you can put in custom ones for a particular game that you like, you can put in the stock one if you don't have a particular game that you like, although there's a lot of gaming functions on the stock one. Let's just get this unboxed and talk about all of the different features and yeah, all the different features more than anything else. So this is the SteelSeries sticker that is included, very irrelevant. Next we have a professional gaming gear catalog where they actually show, here's one of the custom keysets, or two of them rather, for the Shift. So there's a World of Warcraft one, there's a StarCraft 2 one, there are a variety of other games, a lot of MMOs that SteelSeries does have custom keysets for. Hey, hey, look at this, no CD, download the latest drivers, SteelSeries says so too because they are serious about gaming and so am I. Now when you're a serious gamer you're never using drivers off the disk, you are always downloading your own. So that's in a variety of languages, SteelSeries is a worldwide company and they do sell into a number, large number rather, of different markets. So here under a little flap at the top we're going to find a little wrist rest, which hopefully I can remove the tape from and we'll show you that as well. And then once I've got the product completely removed from the box I'm just going to close the box back up and we'll have a look at what SteelSeries has to say for themselves on the back of the product here. Now the thing that stood out to me about the Shift more than anything else the first time I saw it, which was quite a while ago actually, mind you that was a prototype so the finished product may be slightly different, was the fact that the build quality of it, the overall fit and finish of the Shift is just worlds ahead, worlds ahead of the old Zboard. So here, I'm actually going to stand over here, don't shift your angle though, we're going to look at the Shift here so we can install the wrist rest just like that quite easily. Alright you can see the bottom of it's got like this weird texture thing going on, that's kind of neat. And then you've got, oh look at that, so you can either tilt it a little bit or a lot, or not at all, you've got three different settings for the rubberized feet there, that's a pretty neat little feature so we're going to not tilt it at all for the sake of this video. Okay and let's see what SteelSeries has to say. So first of all, one, they have, there are eight programmable hotkeys, so those are up here at the top, there's your eight programmable hotkeys and then number two we have on the fly macro recording so that is located right about here so you can just press record macro and you can record a macro. Next we have multiple media controls, so you can see the media control keys are right over here on the left, look at the keyboard not the blocks actually here, I'll point out where they are, sorry about that. Okay so we've got mute, volume up, volume down, play, forward as well as backwards. Next we have gold plated audio and audio headset jacks so that is on the quite long cord actually that's included on the Shift. Here's all of our plugs, so one of these USBs is for the keyboard itself, the other is for the integrated hub and the other two are for audio so if you do have a SteelSeries headset you can actually shorten the cable on most of them and then you can plug it directly into the back of your keyboard. So this is where all of that comes out, so there's your USB hub, there's your microphone and there is your headphone port. So that's a pretty neat little feature because it really reduces the amount of random cableness around your computer desk. Next we have two USB 2.0 ports, one powered, ergonomic design with three, yeah we already showed the three leg levels and then the detachable wrist rest which we already showed. Now I'm not going to be able to obviously use it for an extended period of time here and tell you guys my impressions but I can at least tell you how comfortable it feels right off the bat. So if I was sitting at sort of a reasonable typing level actually that's fairly nice. Now one of the things that is going to be a little bit different for people is the split in the keyboard. So you can see there's actually a hinge that goes right through the space bar, alright, and then there is another split right between the keyboard and where the number pad and the other keys including your arrow keys are. So the reason for that is over on this side we have a little latch and we can lift the whole thing up just like that. So that is how easy it is to remove the keyset. So here's the entire shift keyboard with just the key switches installed and nothing else and when you want to put on a new keyset you go ahead and you can either buy the shift in a bundle sometimes with an appropriate keyset or you can buy the keysets on their own. So all you need to do is go okay well you know I'm going to play some Starcraft 2, throw my Starcraft 2 keyset on there just like that and clip it on. That simple. Pretty neat. Okay let's look at what else we have here in terms of features. I'm going to cheat and I'm going to look at the box and see if there's anything that I've missed and I don't believe that there is. So there's a lot of keysets as I mentioned before for some MMO, some RTS, some FPS games. Normally it's going to be your more popular games, you know Age of Empires, Warcraft, those kinds of AAA sorts of titles. But yeah the thing that really stands out to me most about the shift compared to the old Zboard, oh yeah here's another good one. You can actually use your old Zboard keysets with the new shift. So like I said the overall build quality, the feel of the keys themselves, the switches that are underneath is much much better on the shift. It's just got an overall more robust feel to it. And if you just want a new shift and you want to use your old keyset it's as simple as just buying a shift, taking this off and throwing your old keyset on it just like that. So thank you for checking out my unboxing of the SteelSeries Shift. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews and other random tech stuff.