so today we'll be doing a quick unboxing of the Microsoft Sidewinder X6 keyboard
This is a powerful programmable gaming keyboard so the first question we should
be asking is what makes this a gaming keyboard and the answer as far as I can
tell is the art on the front of the box you can see we have a caveman with a
spear if that's not gaming I don't know what is and then we have an arrow being
shot by a guy and then we have a rhinoceros wielding an enormous sword is
what I can as far as I can tell that's what this is and I wish I had a game
with a rhinoceros and a sword because that would be the coolest game ever okay
so why don't we get into the actual features here first of all you got a switchable keypad and I'm going to get
the cameraman to come look at these every time I talk about them switchable
keypad means that you can move the number pad from either side of the
keyboard depending on whether you want to use this with your left or your right
hand it just Clips in okay then you have mode switching you can manually change
the mode of the keyboard and I believe that's somewhere around here yep from
either typing mode to one of two gaming modes okay then you've got macro Keys
which are located over here you can program up to 90 macros to these Keys
then the next thing you've got is cruise control and this is kind of a cool feature you can use cruise control to
continue an action without having to hold down the key or Keys assigned to the action so that means if you have a
game that doesn't allow you to toggle Crouch for example you could use cruise
control in theory to keep crouching even when you're not
pressing that key so it would be like a toggle switch okay then you have in-game
macro record which is neat if you have to record macros ingame then you have WD
gaming Keys which is great because without those keys I couldn't type a
wasted on this keyboard just kidding okay what you actually have is little
lights on your WD Keys which will allow you to find them in the dark then you
have a quick launch key okay for the Microsoft games Explorer yeah cuz
everyone uses that and then you have a two-color adjustable backlight dial
which is here so you can change the dial to more brightness or less more
brightness and then you have media Keys which are here and then you have a
volume control dial okay so let's ah I dropped it okay let's get this keyboard
open and we break the seal right here so
we actually recently unboxed the X8 gaming mouse which I guess would be the
the mouse to go with the X6 gaming keyboard the cameraman liked it he said
the uh the tracking was excellent but the overall feel of it wasn't uh wasn't
as much wasn't as good as he would liked and he went back to his G5 so take that
for what you will I didn't actually try the X8 so I can't really speak about it
one way or the other okay inside here we will find The Sidewinder X6 keyboard
manual so this tells you how to use everything how to plug a USB port in
make sure you study this picture carefully before you buy this keyboard USB goes in excellent then you have a
driver CD never use a driver CD always download the latest drivers off the
manufacturer website and a Microsoft product guide so they tell you about all
the other stuff you could buy from Microsoft I guess actually this doesn't
seem to have anything useful in it okay then you have the number pad so this is
a little Standalone number pad that you can't actually use unless you have an X6
keyboard so there's your interface here and there's your interface on the other
side so we'll show you how that works in a minute but now the keys feel all right
they're not the best but they're not the worst oh they have a calculator but that is the smartest place I've ever seen for
a calculator quick launch that is exactly where it should be on every
keyboard in the world because if you're actually using calculator with the mouse
then you either don't do many calculations or you really don't care if
they take forever all right so let's get the plastic off this keyboard so I can
actually get it out of a bag here all right so let's put okay here we go
actually I should show you how this works so you just plug the little interface in right there oh that's
actually really easy and then to take it off you just do that and then you can
plug it into the other oh it's magnetic oh that's cool check this out you can
like slide it in wow that's really neat okay anyway I'm I'm done playing with
that now so the general layout of the keyboard is fairly standard which is
always good for a gaming keyboard you never want to see something like a
shortened shift key or you know an extra key down here or a shortened backspace
key I personally like to see a very standard layout the keys don't have much
travel which can also be quite useful for gaming because that means you're not
pressing down a quarter of an inch just to get a key reg to register okay you
find all of the macro Keys the uh um
what is this one the continuous action key this is to record a new macro this
is to switch the mode here are all your media keys this adjusts your keyboard
brightness here is your volume control knob here is your glossy finish to the
keyboard so I'll do like the obligatory shiny look how shiny it is shot so there
you can see my finger and that pretty much covers everything I wanted to talk
about in terms of the Microsoft Sidewinder X6 so thank you for check oh
I don't know what this does cameraman wants me to say what that does but I don't remember so thank you for checking
out my unboxing of the Microsoft X6 gaming keyboard