No Nonsense Review – Steelseries APEX PRO MINI WIRELESS

Steelseries has one key unique selling point when it comes to their keyboards – these Omni-point switches. I first reviewed these almost exactly three years ago and liked them a lot, and I’m happy to say they’ve gotten even better since then. Unlike the Wooting keyboards that used Flaretech optical switches with mirror elements, these Omni-point switches use magnets and hall effect sensors to know how far you’ve pressed any of the keys. That lets them do some pretty cool and unique features that very few other boards can offer.

The most universally useful option this gives you is the actuation point control. For typing you might prefer to smash your keys like I do, so setting the actuation point relatively deep means you won’t have any accidental keypresses as you have to push each key most of the way down to get them to trigger. But, for gaming, you might prefer a higher actuation point – to make it feel like a hair trigger. To make your moves snappier and more responsive. Well, with the APEX PRO line that’s something you can control – hell you can even control it with hotkeys on the keyboard let alone in their software! You can change between 0.2mm and 3.8mm actuation distance.

The other main feature is the ability to map multiple actions to the same key – but at different points of the travel. The best example I can give is with the “W” key to go forward in games. Normally to sprint you’d have to hold both “Shift” and “W”, but with this you can map “SHIFT + W” to the bottom of the “W” key so when you just lightly press it you walk normally, but if you bottom it out you’ll start sprinting. On this APEX PRO MINI you can map up to eight dual action keys.

The other more subtle benefit is since there isn’t a physical mechanism to wear out or need to debounce, these switches should last considerably longer than standard mechanical switches, and should even have a faster response time too.

As for the APEX PRO MINI WIRELESS itself, it’s a 60% board which means it’s pretty much just the core alpha-numeric keys. No function keys – not even arrow keys are left! You do still technically have that functionality, but it’s hidden behind the Steelseries branded FN button and WASD. There are a whole load of secondary actions on the board by default, the function keys, home, end, page up, page down, even media keys like play pause and volume. But, something I don’t think I’ve seen before is the ability to remap or even add more of these FN functions. In the Steelseries engine you can do just that, which is a great bit of customisation.

Of course being a wireless keyboard it does come with a dongle – the same kind of USB C dongle as their AEROX 9 I reviewed recently, with the same USB C to C terminal block with a large rubber pad on the bottom to keep it gripped to your desk. You also get a USB C cable, a nice braided and branded one too, and even a keycap puller in the box. The switches do use a standard Cherry MX stem so you could replace the keycaps if you want – but the included ones honestly feel great. They have a nice slightly rough texture to them for a good grip, while still of course being shine through for the RGB LED backlighting, and feel genuinely premium. They also come with the ninja printing of the secondary functions.

If you are worried about battery life, Steelseries quotes 30 hours of usage when connected to their dongle, or 40 hours using Bluetooth with default lighting. They are pretty aggressive with the keyboard’s sleep mode too, with the LEDs coming by default at around half brightness, and if you choose to bump that up after a few minutes of inactivity it’ll dim them back down again, then a few minutes later the board will drop to sleep. Annoyingly, when in sleep you not only have to obviously press a key to wake it again, but it takes a couple seconds to wake back up and reconnect. That means if it does go to sleep, you can’t just go straight back to using it. You have to press a key, wait, then start typing. I’m sure that timing is something you can adjust in the software, but doing so is only going to drain the battery faster.

You can of course use this as a wired keyboard with the USB C port, but if you don’t need the wireless feature you can save a whopping £45 and get the same keyboard just without wireless connectivity. I’ll leave it up to you if being wire-free is worth that much. I am happy to report build quality is great. There is an “aircraft grade aluminium top plate” which means there is little to no deck flex, and importantly a pretty great sound – have a listen.

The typing feel is pretty good. I’m not a big fan of linear switches generally, but I’m happy to say that even I’m enjoying these. Not enough to switch – I use a full size keyboard and I’m not about to give that up at all – but I’ve written this whole script on it without much issue. As for gaming, well that’s a great time too. The ability to make this a hair-trigger – ok 0.2mm actuation point is utterly ridiculous but still – is a really nice option. The linear nature also lends itself well here, with a smooth glide on each key press. Sadly a good keyboard doesn’t make your aim any good – a shame I know. Still, the wireless connection was rock solid even with the board not even in line of sight to the dongle.

On the back you’ll find two sets of adjustable feet – one that barely lifts the board higher than standard, and one that’s a little more effective. Neither have rubber on their tips though which means it’s a lot easier to push around when up on its feet compared to the relatively small rubber feet instead. Still it stayed planted enough while both typing and gaming so I’m not too mad.

The biggest problem with this board is the price tag. This wireless model costs a jaw dropping £220 – whereas the wired version of the same board is £175. For context, you can buy their older Omnipoint 1 switch based APEX PRO TKL for more like £150 I guess while stocks last, or you could pre-order Wooting’s 60HE ARM board for 190 Euros. That also uses hall effect sensor switches, of Wooting’s own design. While that might not be too insane for the sorts of people who own 13 keyboards and counting – like some on our Discord, you know who you are – to anyone just looking for their one and only board, that’s a steep price to pay for sure – all for a board that’s missing 40% of its keys too!

Personally, I do quite like this. The switches feel great, the features are a nice bonus and the software is pretty good. I did have an issue doing the dual action mapping where SHIFT + W didn’t work, but other actions did so I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong there. Either way it isn’t bad. I’d get the wired version if anything, because £45 for a keyboard you’ll have to plug in at least once a week to charge anyway may as well stay plugged in 24/7 and means I don’t need to worry about a ballooning Lithium cell you can’t replace in a few years.