SteelSeries' Apex series goes back quite a few years, and I remember with horror the day I realised the chassis was metal-reinforced after bashing it into my monitor and suddenly finding myself without a monitor, all while bathed in the sweat of anxiety. That was many years ago, probably a decade, and a lot has changed since then, but fortunately no more monitors have been euthanised.
Not only has time passed for Apex, but there has been an unrivalled evolution. In its latest version, the company has finally decided to equip the keyboard switches with stabilisers. This is necessary, not only because the keys rattle without them, but when I get angry, the keys need to be able to take a beating. Speaking of rattling, Apex could have used some refinement on the sound side, and the interior now has three layers of damping foam, just as you know it from custom keyboards. With the latter dropping in price in recent years, we've seen a merging of the two types in terms of price. This makes it even more important for manufacturers of ready-made solutions like SteelSeries to deliver the same features, the same quality and the same price. The triple damping foam in this case makes a world of difference to me, and the stabilisers significantly increase the quality feel and, not surprisingly, the stability of a keystroke, which is to be expected in this price range. The switches are now factory-lubricated as standard, and it's great that SteelSeries has made a serious commitment to making something that is not only fast, but also feels and sounds especially great. You should expect as much for £220.
Today, the Apex series is a pretty solid pillar in SteelSeries' product range, and after a long wait, the series has been updated with many modern features, although I would argue that the old Apex series are still pretty solid products. SteelSeries is to be commended for including a wrist rest. It's not necessarily the case for all keyboards in the price range, but this is countered by the fact that I find it hard to understand why you can't get a wireless connection on your Apex keyboard unless you choose the TKL edition. What kind of weird market research says that people who want wireless and those who like a numeric keypad are never the same? Especially considering there are quite a few competitors offering it.
The Gen 3 series is consistently quite focused on being faster and, well, smarter than all the others. It's still based on lessons learnt from professional esports, and that shouldn't scare people away, because there's a lot of experience there that has translated into a solid product.
The Omnipoint 3.0 switches are the big selling point. Their full name is "OmniPoint 3.0 Adjustable HyperMagnetic Switches with Analogue Hall Effect Magnetic Sensor". That's it. So, it's with magnetic sensors, the so-called Hall Effect type, and they activate 20x faster and have 11x faster response time than... er... well, it doesn't say what the base level is, but if you read at the bottom, it says that the basis for comparison is a "traditional mechanical switch", which we can assume means the original red and brown switches from Cherry that kickstarted the whole wave of mechanical switches many years ago. Personally, I find it a bit problematic that there is no reference point for the claim of how much better it is, even if it is true. On the other hand, SteelSeries should be praised for the keyboard's overall response time of 0.7 ms.
For many, it will come as no surprise that the actuation point of each key can be individually adjusted in 0.1 mm increments. With 4 mm travel, this gives you 40 options, but in practice you will often choose to have differentiated activation of different functions. I personally prefer to have an extremely light activation of 0.1 mm on the R key to load a weapon and full travel of 4 mm on the G key, which is often used for grenades. However, I look forward to the day when I can have functional resistance in a key, meaning that the grenade throwing key will try to push back with more and more force the longer you hold it down to emulate that it will eventually go wrong. But don't worry, there's no need to fiddle with the settings like that. Predefined settings are a pretty integral part of SteelSeries' products, and this is no different. Their GG software is filled to the brim with predefined settings, aptly named GG QuickSet.
Rapid Trigger and Rapid Tab are the new black, and SteelSeries is on board here too. It's simply where you bind a set of keys together and no matter what, the last key pressed will be the one that "applies". This has the advantage that you don't have to move your fingers away from the keys and can activate a key even if you haven't yet let go of the first one you pressed. Rapid Tab may be primarily for FPS gamers, but there are a lot of them. Rapid Trigger is similar. Here you can give a counter-command to a key by releasing it or pressing it again. Combined with dual functionality, a key can be activated to do one thing when pressed to point X and then do something else when pressed further down to point Y, which eliminates the need for two keys. I can now use the same key to crouch and fully lie down. This is great in any game with firearms, and even for someone who doesn't play a lot of competitive shooters, the new Rapid features make sense.
Protection Mode is one of the things SteelSeries should be praised for. Put simply, it reduces the sensitivity of surrounding keys when a specific key is activated, or more practically, you can accidentally press down a side key without it being activated. This is perhaps one of the most overlooked but useful things in my opinion, and if you play Riftbreaker, for example, where many keys are next to each other, it's quite useful in practice too.
As with their previous top models, there's a small OLED display that can either be used to view and set up the more basic stuff or see the status of your hardware. I love it, especially the way they depict the activation of the keys. However, I have to admit that I mainly use it to check volume and CPU temperature. As expected, the keys are double moulded and there's a nice USB cable.
The build quality is quite good, but with the market for metal-encased keyboards growing rapidly, reviewers have become accustomed to the fact that a good keyboard weighs a lot more than the 1,400g that Apex Pro Gen 3 weighs. SteelSeries could have upped the beauty factor a little more and made it all in metal of one kind or another.
There are many definitions of a great gaming keyboard: this is for the more ambitious who need the extra functionality and the many options to customise everything.