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This video is brought to you by our trusted graphics partner, NVIDIA.

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Welcome to my unboxing and first look at the Steeler Apex RAW gaming keyboard.

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This is also the first unboxing that we're doing in our all-new Steeler

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themed gaming den set that we're going to be using for Steeler unboxings as

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well as Steeler product videos showing you everything that there is to know

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about their products which are somehow different from unboxings

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in a certain way that is different. All right, so let's start with what they have to say for themselves about this.

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designed for quick reflexes. This is a lowprofile keyboard, meaning that the

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keys don't need to be pressed down as far in order to actuate them. It does

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use membrane key switches rather than mechanical key switches, but given the

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price, this should pretty much be expected. It has raised macro keys, and

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we're going to show you how this is used for fast key combinations, as well as a

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brilliant white backlight with eight different levels of brightness. Other

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than that, I pretty much know everything else there is to know about this

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keyboard, having already looked at all this stuff. So, let's go ahead and get

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it open. So, Steel Series has a plain black box with a black mat inside. And

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then once you open it up, you find pretty much the keyboard itself in a

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plastic sleeve, which I'm having a great amount of difficulty removing.

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There we go. That was my big effort. That's like uh you know, some kind of

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combo that I unlocked. It's like the

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plastic removal and put the product down combo. There we go. Okay. We've also got

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a quick start guide, which should be pretty much plug the thing into the thing. Although, they might give you a

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few little instructions about how to use the software that's included cuz there's

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some neat functionality in there. And last but not least, you've got a couple

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of rubber feet that can be used to adjust the angle of the keyboard. So,

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those just come in a little ziploc bag here. So, we're going to go ahead and

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put that behind it and show you guys first the bottom of the keyboard.

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And there was a cat incident. So, yes.

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All right. So, on the bottom, you've got these two uh rubber feet that do not

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move. And then you've got these two here, which can be removed just by popping them off. And then you can plug

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a new one into it to give the keyboard more of an angle compared to if you

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don't plug it in. So, there you go. You can see that raises it about a centimeter or so, maybe a little bit

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more than a centimeter. And that's pretty much it for the bottom of the

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keyboard. Other than that, it's uh well, a keyboard. So, let's move on to the

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top. Layout wise, I'm so happy to see

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Steeler has not committed any cardinal sins, as I like to call them, in terms

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of the layout. Long shift key, long enter, long backspace. And I love to see

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that macro keys are also sort of uniquely positioned on this particular

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keyboard in that they are here on the left where we've seen them many, many

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times. And they are also da da da above

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all of the F keys. This is for a number of reasons. So the ones here are because

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when you're on the WD keys, which are, you know, the pretty much the most

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common gaming keys, you can reach this, you can reach this, you can kind of

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reach this. You definitely can't reach another row over. And we've seen

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keyboards with as many as two or three banks of keys there. Past two, it gets a

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little bit on the impractical side. These ones up here are meant for people

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who often use their F keys for binding abilities or whatever else. So, what you

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can do is you can either hit a macro key and you can actually see I'll give you

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guys a better angle here. You can see that the macro key is raised

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significantly above the F key. This allows you to feel where the macro key

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is without actually actuating either of the buttons. Or you can actually program

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the keys to do a particular thing and then a particular thing. So, you can

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actually hit a couple of them, one, two,

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or even three buttons as a as a combination move. So, this could be

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like, you know, fire one bank of missiles, fire two, fire all of them

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because we're stuff's getting real, so go for it. Uh, so that's really neat.

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So, there's five here, 12 here for a total of 17 macro buttons, and you can

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use the L1 or the L2 buttons to switch the functionality. So, you can have an

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unlimited number of profiles within the Steel Series Engine software, and then

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you can have two layers of macro functionality per profile. Another

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really cool thing, I mean this is one of the things they actually don't talk about that much in the marketing, but I

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think is really cool is you can completely reprogram any key on the

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keyboard to do pretty much whatever you want. You don't have to leave it the way

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it is stock. So you can see Steel Series has relocated the Windows key from the

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right to the left and the Steel Series key from the left to the right. You can

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see my older 7G here has a Steel Series

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key on the left and a Windows key on the right. So, according to the feedback

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they've gotten, people want the steel or they want the Windows key back on the

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left. So, they've gone ahead and done that. Now, this is an ergonomic thing

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that Slick Diesel and I all agreed on when we saw this keyboard in the Steel

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Series suite, and that is this longer space bar. So, I'm going to try and give

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you guys a good look at this. I have two different feet on it right now, so don't

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worry. It doesn't normally do that, but there you go. Uh, so what this does is

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when you're typing, a short space bar is fine. it doesn't make any difference

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because you rest just the the side of your thumb on the key. However, when

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you're gaming, you're much more likely to end up in a situation where you have

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your thumb resting down like this because you're not sitting on the home

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row. You're actually a little bit further up than that. So, what this does is it's it's just meant to be a more

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natural way to press the space bar without actually interfering with normal

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typing. So, I think that's a pretty cool little thing as well. And moving right

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along. Oh, yeah. I should probably show you guys just the overall design of the keyboard. I mean, I talked about how

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it's low profile, but it has sort of a cool lowp profofile shape to it as well.

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So, I'll do my traditional iPhone size comparison, although with the HT1 HTC1

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coming soon. I might be doing away with that pretty soon. So, at its thinnest point, it's actually a little thinner

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than an iPhone 4. And then at the thickest point up on the top, it is

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significantly thicker than an iPhone 4. So, it has kind of a a curvy sort of

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angular angular shape to it overall. You can actually see, I'll show you guys

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right here up close if you want to see how much the buttons actually need to be

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depressed. That is not to say sad, but uh pressed down in order to actuate

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them. One thing I missed about the layout is they've added little bumps on the W key. So, this allows you to more

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easily find your way back to them. I personally don't find something like

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that that helpful because my landmarks are usually more to do with the

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positioning of my spacebar and my shift and then I can find my way back to WD.

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But if you have trouble finding it in the dark, then that's something that you

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can uh definitely benefit from. Now, I'm

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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.

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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

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detail. So, the Steel Series key is used to control backlight brightness, as well

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as your media keys, volume up, volume down, all that good stuff. And they have

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readded the diagonal keys over here. So, they had taken them away on some

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keyboard and then a bunch of people were upset. So, they have now brought them back. If you wanted the diagonal keys

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back, then now you have them. It does

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support up to 20 simultaneous button presses, uh, which is sort of an anti-

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ghosting type feature that prevents you from accidentally triggering random

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extra events, which is what ghosting actually refers to. Most gaming

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keyboards do have this feature, but 20 is pretty aggressive, especially for a

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USB model. And one thing that's kind of cool about it as well is they have

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reduced the width of the keyboard a little bit by narrowing the gaps that

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you usually find between the three different groupings of keys on the

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keyboard itself. So it makes it still have a very large layout. So you've

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still got extra keys at the top and on the side, but without being sort of

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extraordinarily wide like something like a G15 Gen 1, which is sort of like that

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that first weird sort of lots of macros gaming keyboard. that had like that

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screen on the top and all that. Uh the wrist rest is a little bit longer than

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usual. So, when you're resting on the home row, you're going to find yourself

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right around here. So, there you go. I

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personally find that more comfortable. It's one of the things I like about the 7G and dislike about a lot of the other

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keyboards that are out there is very, very short wrist rests. And I think that

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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

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different uh levels of backlighting that are available on it. There's still a

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window open, so there's still some light in here, but we're going to go ahead and

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step it down one by one.

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Oh, it's still Nope, it's off now. There we go.

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And I think that's pretty much it. Thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look at the Steel Series Apex RAW.

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