Steelseries Shift Replaceable Keyset Gaming Keyboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,415 words · ~7 min read
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today we're going to be doing an unboxing of the steel series shift
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gaming keyboard so this is the
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replacement product for the zboard or
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zedboard and no matter what way I say it somebody's going to complain so I don't
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care um so this is the shift the zboard
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is gone this is a steel series branded product the zboard was a kind of a
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legacy product left over from the ideason acquisition so it was originally
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the ideason any okay I'm not going to talk about the zboard anymore we're
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going to talk about the shift so just like the zboard the shift has
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replaceable key sets removable replaceable reenable key sets that means
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you can put in custom ones for a particular game that you like you can
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put in the stock one if you don't have a particular game that you like although
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there's a lot of gaming functions on the stock one let's just get this unboxed
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and talk about all of the different features and yeah all the different
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features more than anything else so this is the steel series sticker that is
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included very irrelevant uh next we have a professional gaming gear catalog where
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they actually show here's one of the custom key sets or two of them rather
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for the shift so there's a World of Warcraft one there's a Starcraft 2 one
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there are a variety of other games a lot of MMOs uh that steel series does have
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custom key sets for hey hey look at this no CD download the latest driver steel
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series says so too because they are serious about gaming and so am I and
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when you're a serious gamer you're never using drivers off the disc you are
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always downloading your own so that's in a variety of languages steel series is a
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worldwide company and they do sell into a number large number rather of
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different markets so here under a little
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flap at the top we're going to find a little wrist rest which uh hopefully I
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can remove the tape from and we'll show you that as well and then once I've got
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the product completely removed from the box I'm just going to close the box back
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up and we'll have a look at what steals Series has to say for themselves on the
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back of the product here now the thing that stood out to me about the shift
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more than anything else the first time I saw it which was quite a while ago
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actually um mind you that was a that was a prototype so the finished product may
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be slightly different was the fact that the build quality of it the overall fit
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and finish of the shift is just worlds
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ahead worlds ahead of the old zboard so
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here I'm actually going to stand over here don't don't shift your angle though
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we're going to look at the we're going to look at the shift here so we can
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install the wrist rest just like that quite easily all right you can see the
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bottom of it it's got like this weird like texture thing going on that's kind
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of neat then you've got uh oh look at that so you can either tilt it a little
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bit or a lot or not at all you got three
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different settings for the rubberized feet there that's a pretty neat little
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feature so uh we're going to not tilt it at all for the sake of this video okay
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and let's see what steel Series has to say okay so first of all one they have
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there are eight programmable hot keys so those are up here at the top there's
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your eight programmable hotkeys and then number two we have on thefly macro
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recording so that is located right about
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here so you can just press record macro and you can record a macro next we have
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multiple media controls so you can see the media control keys are right over
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here on the left look at the keyboard not the BLX actually here I'll I'll point out where they are sorry about
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that okay so we've got mute volume up volume down play forward as well as
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backwards next we have gold plated audio and audio headset Jacks so that is on
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the quite long cord actually that's included on the shift here's all of our
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plugs so one of these USBS is for the keyboard itself the other is for the
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integrated Hub and the other two are for audio so if you do have a steel series
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headset you can actually shorten the cable on most of them and then you can
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plug it directly into the back of your keyboard so this is where all of that
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comes out so there's your USB hub there's your microphone and there is
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your headphone Port so that's a pretty neat little feature because it really
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reduces the amount of random cable mess around your computer desk next we have
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yeah two USB 2.0 ports one powered ergonomic design with three yeah we
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already showed the uh the three leg levels and then the detachable wrist
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rest which we already showed now I'm not going to be able to obviously use it for
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an extended period of time here and tell you guys my Impressions but I can at
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least tell you how comfortable it feels right off the bat so if I was sitting at
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sort of a reasonable typing level actually that's that's fairly nice now
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one of the things that is going to be a little bit uh different for people is the split in
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the keyboard so you can see there's actually a hinge that goes right through
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the space bar all right and then there is another split right between the
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keyboard and where the number pad and the other key Keys including your arrow
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keys are so the reason for that is over on this side we have a little latch and
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we can lift the whole thing up just like that so
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that is how easy it is to remove the key set so here's the entire shift keyboard
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with just the key switches installed and nothing else and when you want to put on
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a new key set you go ahead and you can either buy the shift in a bundle
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sometimes with an appropriate key set or you can buy the key sets on their own so
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all you need to do is go okay well you know going to play some Starcraft 2
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throw my Starcraft 2 key set on there just like
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that and clip it on that simple pretty
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neat okay let's look at what else we have here in terms of features I'm going
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to cheat I'm going to look at the box and see if there's anything that I've
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missed and I don't believe that there is
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so there's a lot of uh there's a lot of key sets as I mentioned before for some
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MMO some RTS some FPS games mostly it's
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going to be your more popular games you know Age of Empires Warcraft those kinds
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of AAA sorts of titles but uh yeah the
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thing that really stands out to me most about the shift compared to the old
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zboard oh yeah here's another good one you can actually use your old zboard key
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sets with the new shift so like I said the overall build quality the feel of
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the keys themselves the switches that are underneath is much much better on
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the shift it's just got an overall more robust feel to it and if you just want a
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new shift and you want to use your old key set it's as simple as just buying a shift taking this off and throwing your
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old key set on it just like that so thank you for checking out my unboxing
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of the steel series shift don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech tips for more
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