Steelseries Apex 5 Mechanical Keyboard Review

A Closer Look

In the box, you’ll find everything you need to get you started. The keyboard comes hard-wired with a durable USB cable, there’s a magnetically attaching wrist rest, and a small quick-start guide.

The cable is a good length and thickly coated so it should survive more than a few stern knocks and bumps.

Finally, the keyboard its self, and boy does it look stunning. It has the same design as their more expensive model, the Apex 7. With lashings of lightly textured aluminium alloy forming the body in a fairly matte finish grey. there’s no a lot of “black” here actually, and even the key caps are more on the heavy grey side. For contrast, the OLED display in the top right is about the only black thing here.

There’s a small glossy SteelSeries logo along the bottom edge, but otherwise, they’ve kept the branding to an absolute minimum, and I love that.

Other than that, I think the keyboard is a little bit stock, there’s no big decals, no outlandish macro keys or anything. It’s simple, clean and professional-looking, at least… at the moment.

There are some built-in shift functions, which you access with the SteelSeries key at the bottom.

Up here you can change profiles for lighting and macros, and even adjust the key lighting brightness.

Plus, there are some memory recall buttons here.

There’s that lovely OLED display up in the corner, with a nicely recessed infinite scroll volume wheel and a toggle button (mute by default). Of course, with the SteelSeries software, you’ll be able to extensively reprogram all of that and anything else on the keyboard.

As you can see from the side shot, the key caps are slightly raised on the switch housing.

The caps are designed to be incredibly stable on the switch too. They basically have the usual + for Cherry, but with an additional layer around to mount it more securely and prevent cap wobble.

Around the back, it’s actually pretty clean looking, not a lot going on here.

Too much cable traffic on your desk? Take an alternative route!

There’s a pair of kickstands too, they’re pretty chunky (that’s a good thing), and they’re heavily coated with a grippy rubber.