Microsoft Sidewinder X6 Gaming Keyboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2010-05-08
·
1,142 words · ~5 min read
0:00
so today we'll be doing a quick unboxing of the Microsoft Sidewinder X6 keyboard
0:05
This is a powerful programmable gaming keyboard so the first question we should
0:09
be asking is what makes this a gaming keyboard and the answer as far as I can
0:15
tell is the art on the front of the box you can see we have a caveman with a
0:19
spear if that's not gaming I don't know what is and then we have an arrow being
0:24
shot by a guy and then we have a rhinoceros wielding an enormous sword is
0:30
what I can as far as I can tell that's what this is and I wish I had a game
0:34
with a rhinoceros and a sword because that would be the coolest game ever okay
0:39
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
0:43
the cameraman to come look at these every time I talk about them switchable
0:46
keypad means that you can move the number pad from either side of the
0:50
keyboard depending on whether you want to use this with your left or your right
0:54
hand it just Clips in okay then you have mode switching you can manually change
0:58
the mode of the keyboard and I believe that's somewhere around here yep from
1:02
either typing mode to one of two gaming modes okay then you've got macro Keys
1:07
which are located over here you can program up to 90 macros to these Keys
1:12
then the next thing you've got is cruise control and this is kind of a cool feature you can use cruise control to
1:16
continue an action without having to hold down the key or Keys assigned to the action so that means if you have a
1:21
game that doesn't allow you to toggle Crouch for example you could use cruise
1:25
control in theory to keep crouching even when you're not
1:30
pressing that key so it would be like a toggle switch okay then you have in-game
1:33
macro record which is neat if you have to record macros ingame then you have WD
1:38
gaming Keys which is great because without those keys I couldn't type a
1:42
wasted on this keyboard just kidding okay what you actually have is little
1:46
lights on your WD Keys which will allow you to find them in the dark then you
1:50
have a quick launch key okay for the Microsoft games Explorer yeah cuz
1:54
everyone uses that and then you have a two-color adjustable backlight dial
1:58
which is here so you can change the dial to more brightness or less more
2:02
brightness and then you have media Keys which are here and then you have a
2:06
volume control dial okay so let's ah I dropped it okay let's get this keyboard
2:10
open and we break the seal right here so
2:14
we actually recently unboxed the X8 gaming mouse which I guess would be the
2:19
the mouse to go with the X6 gaming keyboard the cameraman liked it he said
2:23
the uh the tracking was excellent but the overall feel of it wasn't uh wasn't
2:28
as much wasn't as good as he would liked and he went back to his G5 so take that
2:33
for what you will I didn't actually try the X8 so I can't really speak about it
2:37
one way or the other okay inside here we will find The Sidewinder X6 keyboard
2:41
manual so this tells you how to use everything how to plug a USB port in
2:45
make sure you study this picture carefully before you buy this keyboard USB goes in excellent then you have a
2:51
driver CD never use a driver CD always download the latest drivers off the
2:54
manufacturer website and a Microsoft product guide so they tell you about all
2:58
the other stuff you could buy from Microsoft I guess actually this doesn't
3:02
seem to have anything useful in it okay then you have the number pad so this is
3:08
a little Standalone number pad that you can't actually use unless you have an X6
3:12
keyboard so there's your interface here and there's your interface on the other
3:15
side so we'll show you how that works in a minute but now the keys feel all right
3:19
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
3:24
a calculator quick launch that is exactly where it should be on every
3:27
keyboard in the world because if you're actually using calculator with the mouse
3:31
then you either don't do many calculations or you really don't care if
3:34
they take forever all right so let's get the plastic off this keyboard so I can
3:39
actually get it out of a bag here all right so let's put okay here we go
3:44
actually I should show you how this works so you just plug the little interface in right there oh that's
3:49
actually really easy and then to take it off you just do that and then you can
3:52
plug it into the other oh it's magnetic oh that's cool check this out you can
3:57
like slide it in wow that's really neat okay anyway I'm I'm done playing with
4:01
that now so the general layout of the keyboard is fairly standard which is
4:06
always good for a gaming keyboard you never want to see something like a
4:09
shortened shift key or you know an extra key down here or a shortened backspace
4:14
key I personally like to see a very standard layout the keys don't have much
4:18
travel which can also be quite useful for gaming because that means you're not
4:22
pressing down a quarter of an inch just to get a key reg to register okay you
4:26
find all of the macro Keys the uh um
4:30
what is this one the continuous action key this is to record a new macro this
4:34
is to switch the mode here are all your media keys this adjusts your keyboard
4:37
brightness here is your volume control knob here is your glossy finish to the
4:41
keyboard so I'll do like the obligatory shiny look how shiny it is shot so there
4:46
you can see my finger and that pretty much covers everything I wanted to talk
4:50
about in terms of the Microsoft Sidewinder X6 so thank you for check oh
4:55
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
5:00
out my unboxing of the Microsoft X6 gaming keyboard