SteelSeries Apex 5 – Hybrid Mechanical Gaming Keyboard – Per-Key RGB Illumination – Oled Smart display – English (QWERTY) Layout PC
APEX 5
Best of Both Worlds
The Apex 5 combines the smoothness of a membrane switch with the added durability, performance, and satisfying tactile click of a blue mechanical switch, for a premium gaming experience where you don’t have to choose one over the other.
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OLED Smart Display
Customize the OLED screen with your favorite gifs, view game info, Discord messages, and more.
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Aircraft Grade Aluminum Alloy
The Series 5000 metal frame is manufactured for a lifetime of unbreakable durability and sturdiness.
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Premium Magnetic Wrist Rest
A simple magnetic solution for easy and secure attachment, full palm support with soft touch finish.
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Dedicated Multimedia Controls
A clickable metal roller and media keys allow you to adjust volume and settings on the fly: rewind, skip, pause and more, all at the touch of a button.
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Three-Way Cable Routing
Prevent your cable from getting in the way. The frame has built-in channels that allow you to choose from one of three possible places for your cable to exit, keeping your desk tidy.
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Dynamic Per-Key RGB Illumination
Millions of color options and reactive typing effects make you the designer of your ultimate setup. Sync up with your other SteelSeries gear for the most gorgeous setup ever.
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SteelSeries Mice
Our award-winning gaming mice feature the best optical sensors, RGB illumination, and are compatible with PC and Mac.
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SteelSeries Headsets
The most awarded headset-line in gaming. Every Arctis headset comes with our flagship audio drivers, a Discord-certified ClearCast mic, and extraordinary comfort.
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SteelSeries QcK Mousepads
Designed for performance and durability, SteelSeries’ best-selling mousepads come in a wide variety of styles and sizes, so everyone can find a mousepad perfectly suited to their needs.
SteelSeries has fueled the gaming industry for over 15 years by creating innovative new products, designed specifically for esports and passionate gamers everywhere.
| Dimensions: | 44.47 x 13.93 x 4.04 cm; 927 Grams |
| Model: | 64540 |
| Origin: | China |
This keyboard may be on the pricier side but most definitely worth it. If you like nice sounding clicky keys abs cool rgb lights with many customisation options then it’s the keyboard for you.
This computer keyboard looks cool albeit a bit noisy and clicky
It’s not the smoothest keyboard that I’ve tried but it does the job
It has all the regular controls and it’s easy to set up
The price is a bit high, however, my son likes it, so as it works really well for him happy days.
Nice layout…. small footprint. can be loud key presses. very smart looking keyboard. Good lighting.
Stylish useful, ergonomic. It will make your daily typing easier and more comfortable
This keyboard is really really great, I am quite a heavy user of the keyboard using it pretty much every day for at minimum 5 hours. It has really held up well, well mostly.
The software that you need to use to install drivers / use any addons for the OLED screen and LEDs often crashes and I have had a few times where I have had to restart the program to get it to sync to my keyboard properly.
Recently I have noticed that the Right CTRL has pretty much broken, I thought just the key cap was falling off, which is fine, but it was the entire mechanical part under the keycap too.
The biggest issue about that is that it has happened to the key I probably press amongst the least out of every key on the keyboard (who uses R-CTRL over the L-CTRL?) Every other key works fine but this, which worries me that the future leaves me with more issues like this.
The magnetic wrist rest is brilliant though
I would still recommend this keyboard – it is quite loud and I like tha
It came in nice packaging and hasn’t given me any problems after about 5 months of use
I like the keyboard a lot it is sturdy, well made, sounds great, and very responsive. Unfortunately, it did ruin one of my USB ports.
Build quality feels great. The keys make a nice clicking sound when pressed. This is my first gaming keyboard so it took some getting used to the keys being higher than usual. I use it for coding as well and once I got used to it it feels great. I love the volume wheel on it. I don’t really use the display on it. The box says it can connect to Spotify but it doesn’t work. I downloaded the Steelseries Engine software but there is no app for Spotify there. There are a bunch of other apps for games though. The colours on the lights can be customised and you can turn the brightness up and down. It has a feature to record macros although I haven’t used that yet. You can also set up to 5 profiles with different colour settings. Overall, it’s a great keyboard and feels very durable.
The switches are the main attraction here, and what I like about the keyboard the most. They are still “mechanical”, but function differently to work with the sensing membrane this keyboard uses. That doesn’t mean they’re bad, in fact, I think they’re better than any Cherry MX Blue, Razer Green or whatever other MX-type clicky switch. Those switches use plastic click jackets that fire down and rattle around to generate a shrill, plasticky click. The “hybrid” switch employs a metal clickbar that produces a much more pleasant click. There is also no need to brush against metal contacts, which is what causes friction in normal switches. Instead, the switch slider has a “hammer” that presses against the membrane at the click, retracting inside the slider to allow for partway key actuation. This hammer does cause an increase of force which some describe as “spongy” or “clunky”, but the click glosses it over for me and I don’t mind this limitation. Besides, the bottom-out is just as crisp and firm as a normal switch.
The switches don’t have any electronic parts and are not soldered like most keyboard switches. They can be removed from the aluminium plate and opened like a normal switch for cleaning, or to lubricate them if you like. This also allows for the large key stabilisers to be tuned, which are unfortunately lackluster out of the box. I tuned them and they sound great now.
Technically, the switches won’t “fail” as there are no metal contacts to oxidise. The membrane assembly is the limiting factor here, but it can be easily accessed by unscrewing the top plate from the bottom plate – no need to remove any switches. From here, the membrane can be cleaned and maintained easily. While it isn’t as durable as a PCB, this system is infinitely more serviceable than a normal keyboard, where one switch may die or develop chatter and will have to be desoldered.
It’s complete with the same OLED screen, wrist wrest, media controls, stunning RGB and premium design of the flagship Apex Pro – but with cost-saving switches and sensing assembly. But you shouldn’t let that put you off. Ignore the “hybrid” marketing and the misconceptions about what is “mechanical”. This is as great keyboard that gives you the option to tune it to your liking, which is important for an enthusiast like me.
Set up and all ready, this sync with the steel series app, to go with music or with the sounds of the game you are playing, and the oled display can set up with discord, your own gif, the arm rest is detachable, and the only thing I found out was the magnetic lugs do stay on the metal surface, instead inside the rest recess, much better than the previous keyboard, new one a small footprint on the pc table
They keys feel beautiful, and steel series software control for the lighting is always great.
really cannot complain about this product at all!
if you want a decent RGB keyboard but dot want to spend 120+ this will make you perfectly happy
Makes a really beautiful tune. I ordered this mechanical keyboard for a bit of pre-bed-time ASMR. I have to say, the sound of lying in bed and tapping away at this thing really puts me straight to sleep. The colours are an added bonus, creating a colourful and ethereal dream-like atmosphere to drift off within. Highly recommend, of course I can’t speak to its functionality as a computer keyboard but hope this helps.
Without diving fully into the world of mechanical keyboards, this one will do just fine. The typing is absolutely a joy compared to 99% of the other common membrane keyboards. Once you try this keyboard, you will not be able to go back to peasant keyboards.
After my Corsair K series failed I decided to buy the Steel series after seeing the reviews. The price was a bonus aswell as it was priced less than it’s nearest competitor.
The keyboard feels really well built and the OLED screen finishes it off nicely. The keyboard is used with steel series software on the pc to control updates, setups and apps. Everything works effortlessly and smoothly and it looks great in my office. I would definitely recommend this keyboard to anyone.
I had to return the Apex 5 because although the keys do feel exactly the same as a ‘proper’ mechanical keyboard the keys were so loud. Even when gaming the loud click of the keys was distracting and typing was unbearable.
Off course some people like a loud clicky keyboard so they would probably be happy with the Apex 5. The OLED screen works very well, the wrist rest is comfortable and the RGB lighting is vibrant.
Unfortunately there is no USB passthrough, something that isn’t made clear on the Steelseries website.
In terms of value for money you can currently get the Apex 7 with red switches for only a little extra money and it’s alot quieter!
My verdict is this keyboard is fine if you like a blue switch keyboard for a reasonable price.
Bought mainly for gaming on many different games (COD, Fortnite, Zombs Royale, Minecraft, ETC) overall the keyboard is great for gaming with a lovely texture and click sound for gaming. The click sounds amazing but might be annoying for some people. You can customise the keyboard with millions of different colours and modes. When you first plug in your keyboard it will be galaxy coloured which is really nice. I would definetly reccomend.
Wow what an amazing bit of kit !
Sleek , stylish , impressive !
I did have a problem the first one was sent damaged so I sent it back and a replacement was sent they next day .
I love the steelseries engine 3 program so I can change the look of my board and I have already worked out how to change the gifts.
I love the volume button and the feel of the whole keyboard !!
The design is really nice and a great looking unit and a good weight, pleanty of rubber feet so no sliping on desks. the OLED is customisable and a good feature (EG, shows TIDAL track info ..etc)
The RGB looks and works well with the SS software.
Cable is good and secure. Magnetic Palm rest is good for desk use (not so good for keyboard on lap use).
Easy to remove the caps and looks fairly easy to clean with minimal openings to the internals of the board
The downsides are the Key Caps are cheap and feel “standard”, nothing special. Wish they were better.
one of my keys has developed a slight squeek mid travel (plastic on plastic rubbing squaking sound) – its not noticable when typing quickly or really gaming but i can hear it sometimes and its a little annoying.
The other issue is that soft-pressing the key can sometimes trigger it before the “click” has happened, this sometimes can result in multiple inputs being registered. so you have to properly press the key, maybe thats just me needing to get used to it.
Overall its good, but could be improved with better keys and tweaking the hybrid switches activation.
This was for my 11 year old son and he is well happy with it the changing colours is good and if you like clicky button’s you will love this keyboard. Very fast delivery
The one thing that messes with my mind is that certain keys are ‘upside down’. The hash / tilde key for example has the hash symbol at the TOP of the key, which kind of implies that one hash to use shift to employ it. You don’t! Most UK keyboards have the hash at the bottom. Ditto the colon / semi colon. I suspect this was done to make those symbols light up.
Absolutely brilliant, no delay, brilliant RGB and awesome oled display effects on steelseries website, love it best keyboard I’ve had ye
The keyboard is really nice however there’s 2 additional keys not shown in the image, I think this is a manufacturer fault if anything and this does not let you change the colour of them with the steelseries engine overall amazing
Mechanical switches are stellar, much better than the membrane switches I had before. Lots of customisation with the RGB and OLED scree
I brought this mainly for the lighting.. I’m not an avid gamer. but wanted a LED keyboard. the lighting options are amazing good bright colours and well back lit. The software could be better but does the job and you can do per key lighting control. The keyboard is a little clicky (what do you expect its a gaming hybrid mechanical keyboard). If you want a quite keyboard don’t go for this one or any mechanical keyboard. the keyboard is very rigid with no flexing. wrist rest is magnetic with a smooth feel. overall good product.. and you need to be aware mechanical keyboards click.