SteelSeries Apex 7 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard – OLED Smart Display – USB Passthrough and Media Controls – Linear and Quiet – RGB Backlit (Red Switch)

Product Information

Admin: Responsible for reviewing complaints, promoting/suspending Grunts and Captains, posting announcements, and tweaking the Club settings. Games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and programs like Spotify can also use the OLED screen to display information, such as kill/death ratio or song title and artist. But, as I pointed out in the Apex Pro review, this information draws your eyes away from the computer screen, where that information is already readily available. The OLED screen could be situationally useful, but I feel like the Apex keyboards could have been stronger, cheaper products without one. Performance

A large new map means we have a lot of exploring to do. Thankfully, getting around should be a little easier thanks to the new Trident vehicles. These hover cars can carry an entire squad, and it's even possible to use some legends' abilities while in motion. That paragraph might read like a bunch of gobbledygook to people who don’t play Overwatch, but the gist is that I’m doing a bunch of things at once to make sure my mech-piloting hamster doesn’t turn into so much roadkill. Yet I would regularly find that my bombs didn’t drop (so the Q didn’t register) or shields didn’t activate (which means the E didn’t) while using the Apex 7. I didn’t have any problems performing similar maneuvers on the Logitech G Pro after multiple attempts.The Season 7 gameplay trailer shows both Caustic and Gibraltar placing their tacticals on the Trident, so we'll be able to travel around with a Nox Gas Trap to stop others getting too close, or a Dome of Protection to temporarily shield ourselves from incoming fire. There's also a clip of Rampart using her Minigun while in hot pursuit of another hover car, so I think we can look forward to some exciting upcoming chases between squads as they race away from the circle.

Some errors are to be expected when playing an online game. But with everything else about my setup being stable--the Apex 7 is literally the only thing I changed--the problem is most likely the keyboard’s fault. If the OLED Smart Display’s relative uselessness makes it hard to justify the Apex 7’s price, missing inputs makes it hard to justify using the keyboard while playing competitive games, period. That makes it hard to recommend to most gamers these days. Typing Experience However, something about the keys feels off. Like the Apex Pro, the Apex 7's keys feel spongy and almost non-resistant. Naturally, you don't want to have to slam down a key every time you type a letter, but a little bit of resistance helps keep your fingers from flying across the keyboard too fast and accidentally pressing adjacent buttons. I tested the Apex 7 with Red switches, and felt like I had to slow down and really consider what I was typing, or else risk clumsy keystroke errors. What sets the TKL apart from most other keyboards, though, is its on-chassis micro-screen. Beside the scroll wheel and button is a little monochrome OLED display with a resolution of 128x40. Though it may just look like dressing at first, this unusual feature makes the keyboard more customizable. By default, the OLED display shows just the SteelSeries logo and brand name, but you can upload other images (including GIF and JPG files) for the keyboard to display. (Animated images display at a rate of 10 frames per second.)The results confirmed what I'd already suspected about the Apex 7, which was that I was typing faster but also making more mistakes. TypingTest scored me at 101 words per minute (wpm) after taking 10 typing errors into account. I usually score around 103 wpm on the Logitech G Pro and Microsoft Sculpt Keyboard, with fewer errors on each, so I'm clearly hitting keys faster on the Apex 7. I just also happen to be hitting more keys by accident in the process.

The OLED screen can do most of the same things, except it's a lot smaller and harder to navigate. As such, I'm not exactly sure what distinct benefits the screen confers. You can program macros on the fly, which is admittedly useful if you don't have a two-monitor setup — but there are also keyboard shortcuts that let you do the same thing. There's no pressure to create a club though, and you can simply join someone else's. Clubs will appear as a new tab at the top of the main menu screen when Season 7 launches. We'll be able to request to join others, and invite them to games using the Club menu. All Club happenings will be posted on the timeline, and Club Admins and Owners can even push notifications that'll appear for members when they launch the game. Dedicated members can work on earning badges, and there are different ranks through which to rise:

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In short, the Apex 7 is a middle-of-the-line keyboard with a relatively high price that only seems low because its higher-end sibling costs even more. Most people would be better served by competing products that either have more substantive features, or ditch them in pursuit of a lower price. For as long as I can remember, I've had love of all things tech, spurred on, in part, by a love of gaming. I began working on computers owned by immediate family members and relatives when I was around 10 years old. I've always sought to learn as much as possible about anything PC, leading to a well-rounded grasp on all things tech today. In my role at PCMag, I greatly enjoy the opportunity to share what I know. Despite the noise, I found that typing on the keyboard was pleasant and in line with expectations for Blue-class keys. The keys felt like they actuated easily, without the need to apply excessive force, and I didn't feel any finger fatigue while typing this article using the keyboard.

My relative disinterest in advanced RGB lighting controls somewhat ironically helps me justify the OLED Smart Display. The built-in display can be used to cycle through five built-in lighting schemes (Vapors, Coast, Haze, Prism and Orange) or navigate a Custom setting. Is this as convenient as using SteelSeries Engine 3? No. The options are limited and the menus aren’t easy to navigate. For anyone who only has a passing interest in RGB lighting, though, not having to install additional software could be the best justification for the OLED Smart Display. Gamers who frequently move their keyboards between multiple PC will also appreciate this. Bottom LineThat said, these problems didn’t affect the Apex 7 during everyday use. I wrote most of this review on the Apex 7 and didn’t have any more typos than I usually do. That might have resulted from me being particularly cautious, though, or actively gauging how the keys felt while I was writing just to make sure my initial impressions weren’t clouding my final judgment. Sometimes it takes a little while to get used to a keyboard. So I turned to the Aesop’s Fable test at TypingTest.com. Qualitative feel aside, it wasn't too bad for typing. With my standard Logitech G613, I scored 117 words per minute with seven errors, while with the Apex 7, I reached 115 wpm with 5 errors, not a substantial difference. Features We welcome a new character to Apex Legends every season, but it's not often that we have a fresh map. Ascension introduces Olympus, a utopian city that floats around in the clouds. Of course, utopias never quite live up to their lofty aspirations, and after an explosive accident occurred in the city's experimental research facility, a huge Phase Rift appeared in Olympus. It served as a tourist attraction until recently, when Hammond Robotics fashioned it into a new spot for the Apex Games. Most of the noise produced by the keyboard sounds like it is produced by the keys bottoming out rather than from the actuation of the Blue switch mechanisms themselves. I've used plenty of keyboards with Cherry MX Blue switches, as well as Razer models with Razer's similar Green switches, and while those keyboards were also a bit noisy, the Apex 7 TKL tops them on key clatter. The Brown-switch alternative might be better if you like the tactile bump of a mechanical but have noise concerns. All three switches for the Apex 7 TKL are rated by SteelSeries for a 2mm actuation point, so the perceived keypress depth ought not vary among the three switch types.