 This video is brought to you by our trusted graphics partner, NVIDIA. Welcome to my unboxing and first look at the SteelSeries Apex RAW gaming keyboard. This is also the first unboxing that we're doing in our all-new SteelSeries-themed gaming den set that we're going to be using for SteelSeries unboxings, as well as SteelSeries product videos showing you everything that there is to know about their products, which are somehow different from unboxings... in a certain way that is different. Alright, so let's start with what they have to say for themselves about this. Designed for quick reflexes, this is a low-profile keyboard, meaning that the keys don't need to be pressed down as far in order to actuate them. It does use membrane key switches rather than mechanical key switches, but given the price, this should pretty much be expected. It has raised macro keys, and we're going to show you how this is used for fast key combinations, as well as a brilliant white backlight with eight different levels of brightness. Other than that, I pretty much know everything else there is to know about this keyboard, having already looked at all this stuff, so let's go ahead and get it open. So SteelSeries has a plain black box with a black mat inside, and then once you open it up, you find pretty much the keyboard itself in a plastic sleeve, which I am having a great amount of difficulty removing. Eh, there we go. That was my big effort. That's like, uh, you know, some kind of combo that I unlocked. It's like the plastic removal and put the product down combo. There we go. Okay, we've also got a quick start guide, which should be pretty much plug the thing into the thing, although they might give you a few little instructions about how to use the software that's included, because there's some neat functionality in there. And last but not least, you've got a couple of rubber feet that can be used to adjust the angle of the keyboard. So those just come in a little ziplock bag here, so we're going to go ahead and put that behind it and show you guys first the bottom of the keyboard. And there was a cat incident, so yes. All right, so on the bottom, you've got these two rubber feet that do not move, and then you've got these two here, which can be removed just by popping them off, and then you can plug a new one into it to give the keyboard more of an angle compared to if you don't plug it in. So there you go. You can see that raises it about a centimeter or so, maybe a little bit more than a centimeter. And that's pretty much it for the bottom of the keyboard. Other than that, it's, uh, well, a keyboard. So let's move on to the top. Layout wise, I'm so happy to see SteelSeries has not committed any cardinal sins, as I like to call them in terms of the layout. Long shift key, long enter, long backspace, and I love to see that. Macro keys are also sort of uniquely positioned on this particular keyboard in that they are here on the left, where we've seen them many, many times, and they are also, da da da da da, above all of the F keys. This is for a number of reasons. So the ones here are because when you're on the WASD keys, which are, you know, pretty much the most common gaming keys, you can reach this, you can reach this, you can kind of reach this. You definitely can't reach another row over, and we've seen keyboards with as many as two or three banks of keys there. Past two, it gets a little bit on the impractical side. These ones up here are meant for people who often use their F keys for binding abilities or whatever else. So what you can do is you can either hit a macro key and you can actually see, I'll give you guys a better angle here, you can see that the macro key is raised significantly above the F key. This allows you to feel where the macro key is without actually actuating either of the buttons, or you can actually program the keys to do a particular thing and then a particular thing. So you can actually hit a couple of them, one, two, or even three buttons as a combination move. So this could be like, you know, fire one bank of missiles, fire two, fire all of them because we're, stuff's getting real, so go for it. So that's really neat. So there's five here, twelve here for a total of 17 macro buttons, and you can use the L1 or the L2 buttons to switch the functionality. So you can have an unlimited number of profiles within the SteelSeries engine software, and then you can have two layers of macro functionality per profile. Another really cool thing, I mean this is one of the things they actually don't talk about that much in the marketing, but I think it's really cool is you can completely reprogram any key on the keyboard to do pretty much whatever you want. You don't have to leave it the way it is, stock. So you can see SteelSeries has relocated the Windows key from the right to the left, and the SteelSeries key from the left to the right. You can see my older 7G here has a SteelSeries key on the left and a Windows key on the right. So according to the feedback they've gotten, people want the SteelSeries, or they want the Windows key back on the left, so they've gone ahead and done that. Now this is an ergonomic thing that Slick, Diesel, and I all agreed on when we saw this keyboard in the SteelSeries suite, and that is this longer space bar. So I'm going to try and give you guys a good look at this. I have two different feet on it right now, so don't worry, it doesn't normally do that, but there you go. So what this does is when you're typing, a short space bar is fine. It doesn't make any difference because you rest just the side of your thumb on the key. However, when you're gaming, you're much more likely to end up in a situation where you have your thumb resting down like this, because you're not sitting on the home row, you're actually a little bit further up than that. So what this does is it's just meant to be a more natural way to press the space bar without actually interfering with normal typing. So I think that's a pretty cool little thing as well. And moving right along, oh yeah, I should probably show you guys just the overall design of the keyboard. I mean I talked about how it's low profile, but it has sort of a cool low profile shape to it as well. So I'll do my traditional iPhone size comparison, although with the HTC One coming soon, I might be doing away with that pretty soon. So at its thinnest point, it's actually a little thinner than an iPhone 4. And then at the thickest point up on the top, it is significantly thicker than an iPhone 4, so it has kind of a curvy sort of angular shape to it overall. You can actually see, I'll show you guys right here up close if you want to see how much the buttons actually need to be depressed. That is not to say sad, but pressed down in order to actuate them. One thing I missed about the layout is they've added little bumps on the W key, so this allows you to more easily find your way back to them. I personally don't find something like that that helpful, because my landmarks are usually more to do with the positioning of my space bar and my shift, and then I can find my way back to WASD. But if you have trouble finding it in the dark, then that's something that you can definitely benefit from. Now I'm going to go ahead and plug it in, and we'll be back in a moment. So there are only a few things that are really left. We've got it plugged in. Now you can see the backlight, but we're going to turn the lights off to show it to you in more detail. So the SteelSeries key is used to control backlight brightness, as well as your media keys, volume up, volume down, all that good stuff. And they have re-added the diagonal keys over here, so they had taken them away on some keyboard, and then a bunch of people were upset, so they have now brought them back. If you wanted the diagonal keys back, then now you have them. It does support up to 20 simultaneous button presses, which is sort of an anti-ghosting type feature that prevents you from accidentally triggering random extra events, which is what ghosting actually refers to. Most gaming keyboards do have this feature, but 20 is pretty aggressive, especially for a USB model. And one thing that's kind of cool about it as well is they have reduced the width of the keyboard a little bit by narrowing the gaps that you usually find between the three different groupings of keys on the keyboard itself. So it makes it still have a very large layout, so you've still got extra keys at the top and on the side, but without being sort of extraordinarily wide, like something like a G15 Gen 1, which is sort of like that first weird sort of lots of macros gaming keyboard, all that had that screen on the top and all that. The wrist rest is a little bit longer than usual, so when you're resting on the home row, you're going to find yourself right around here. So there you go. I personally find that more comfortable. It's one of the things I like about the 7G and dislike about a lot of the other keyboards that are out there is very, very short wrist rests. And I think that pretty much wraps it up. So I'm going to run around and turn off some lights and we'll show you guys the eight different levels of backlighting that are available on it. There's still a window open, so there's still some light in here, but we're going to go ahead and step it down one by one. Oh, it's still. No, it's off now. There we go. And I think that's pretty much it. Thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look at the SteelSeries Apex RAW. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews and other computer videos.