Creative Sound BlasterX Siege M04 and Vanguard K08 Exclusive Preview!

Creative, best known for their huge success in the desktop audio market, as well as their ongoing progress in making award-winning mobile products, are moving into new territory. Their newly revealed Sound BlasterX Siege M04 Gaming Mouse, and their Sound BlasterX Vanguard K08 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard are their first true gaming peripherals, which should help them secure a new part of the market, as well as give their sponsored gaming teams a complete set of BlasterX gaming hardware to play with.

We’ve got these exclusive first look pictures for you, as we’re fortunate enough to be able to get our hands on a prototype set of the new hardware, and while we can’t speak about the details too much right now, we can show off just how damn sexy the new gear is.

The keyboard has full RGB per-key lighting, with a range of built-in effects that deliver majestic rainbows of colour with incredible brightness even in a well-lit room.

Aside from the 16.8 million colour Aurora lighting, the keys also offer up 26-key rollover with anti-ghosting, so you’re unlikely miss a key stroke any time soon.

There’s a panel towards the top right, offering up multimedia controls, as well as an SBX button; there’s also a high-speed USB port on the side of it, perfect for hooking up a mouse, headset, flash pen, etc.

The real star of the show, however, is the switches. The K08 uses custom mechanical “PRES” Perceive-React-Execute Switch, which were co-designed and produced by OMRON, and they deliver lightning fast performance, with a 1.5mm travel distance for snappy response times. They promise to offer a staggering 70 million actuations lifespan, and have a 45g actuation force. I can’t say too much, but they’re awesome to use and remarkably quiet too for a mechanical keyboard; they feel like an MX Red, Brown, and Blue huddled together in one switch, very interesting stuff.

The mouse looks stunning, with a hard-wearing soft-touch rubber finish that gives it added grip. What’s really cool is that it has full 360-degree RGB lighting section around the base, which makes the mouse look like it’s floating in a darkened room, very nice.

Fairly standard layout up top, everything is where you would expect it. There are the usual two buttons on the left, but also a third one in front of where your thumb rests, which is perfect for deploying macros or using a Sniper Mode function.

The mouse is tuned for right hand ergonomics and the weight and shape of it lend well to palm rest, as well as fingertip grip types.

Finally, huge slip mats on the base, which allow excellent glide on any surface. The sensor is a PixArt PMW3360 IR LED, which can deliver 200 to 120000 DPI, ultra-low lift-off, no acceleration, no prediction, just pure pixel perfect accuracy.

We can’t wait to share more details with you on these peripherals, but we would love to know what you think of the design?

Full specifications to follow later today.