Steelseries Apex 3 & Apex 5 Review – TechteamGB
Steelseries’ budget lineup of keyboards are pretty interesting – the Apex 3 is a full rubber dome keyboard that’s selling for £50, and the Apex 5 is an OLED wielding “Hybrid Mechanical Switch” board that costs £110. I can’t say these are exactly for me, but lets take a look and see what they’re like and maybe, just maybe, they will be for you.
So, starting with the similarities. Both are full 104 key keyboards, with the same lettering and keycap sizing, both are RGB backlit, although the 3 is a sort of whole board lighting versus the per key lighting on the 5. Both have this interesting macro button placement over the 6 home/delete buttons and a steelseries function button to the right of the second windows switch.
The differences are pretty big though – lets start with the switches. The 3 is a full rubber dome keyboard – the same basic keycap design, and mushy and unresponsive feel as you can expect. Actuation force is decent, but you do have to basically bottom out the key to get it to register. This isn’t the biggest problem for me, as I tend to type fairly heavily anyway, but while gaming it became a bit of a chore to actuate keys, and for stuff like reloading where I just want to tap the button then get back to movement, it made it a much slower action.
The 5 on the other hand is better – although nowhere near perfect. It’s got what looks like a pretty normal cherry clone switch, albeit with a support around the stem and uses standard cherry keycaps – but it isn’t actually a standard clone switch. Steelseries say it’s a “hybrid” design that, and I can’t believe I’m actually reading this, “combines the smoothness of a membrane switch with the added durability, performance and satisfying tactile click of a blue mechanical switch”. I’m just so confused. How can you have a “smooth” blue style switch? If they wanted smooth, they should have made a red clone, and why oh why would you mix membrane and mechanical?
My experiences with it weren’t as bad as I thought they’d be, but it’s still pretty bad. It’s painfully clicky, with quite a cheap twang to it – listen – and while the key travel is pretty good, the actuation point is painfully inaccurate to the tactile click, and really has the same problem as the apex 3’s rubber dome switches. Gaming on this was better, but not by all that much. Especially for this price point, I can’t say I’m in love.
One redeeming feature is it’s OLED display – that’s something they introduced with the Apex Pro and has integration with a few games like CS:GO and now with discord for showing incoming messages which is pretty nice. It also lets you change some of the keyboard’s settings on the fly, using the button and scroll wheel to it’s right. You can change lighting profiles, macros and more which can be handy.
Other than the screen, neither of these boards have all that many extra features. The 3 is strangely a good bit taller than the 5, possibly because the 5 uses a metal frame meaning it can get more strength from a smaller chassis. Speaking of build quality, especially when it comes to the 5, the keys wobble a lot. Like, enough to notice every time I typed. The 3 wasn’t as bad, considering it’s switch type anyway. They do both come with a magnetic wrist rest which is nice though.
For me, the £50 and £110 price tag’s respectively are way, way too much to ask for these. Considering you can buy a frankly amazing fully mechanical keyboard for £30 with a white LED backlight, for an RGB one for £50, charging £110 for a fake mechanical keyboard that honestly feels cheap to type on just isn’t right, and means I can’t really recommend them. I’d save yourself the money and get a real mechanical board instead.
Apex 3 on Amazon: https://techteamgb.co.uk/apex3
Apex 5 on Amazon: https://techteamgb.co.uk/apex5
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