I had to do the opposite while playing No Man's Sky: I threw the actuation force of the spacebar all the way up, because I kept accidentally hitting it, which initiated my jetpack. Shifty without a sweat, and even lowered the actuation force on the spacebar so I could spam the teleport when I needed to. When I put my skills to the test in Overwatch's Lucio Ball game mode, I sucked - but my movements nevertheless felt fluid because of how responsive the keys were. However, the OmniPoint Switches are a fierce competitor.
Gaming on the Apex Pro felt surprisingly good, especially since I was convinced that Cherry MX Blue switches were the most comfortable way to game. You get five on-board profiles (they contain key mappings, lighting and actuation force), and you can even assign those profiles to specific applications. SteelSeries Engine also lets you program macro keys and remap any key on the keyboard. MORE: $1000 Keyboard Features A Screen on Every Key | Tom's Guide I'm sure no one could guess what the GIF was just by looking at it, however. I could make out Geralt's head as well as his clapping motion. (I tested it with the face of my dear colleague, Michael Andronico.) You can also put GIFs in there, which I tested with a classic Geralt clapping GIF. The home screen of the OLED display presents a static image of SteelSeries logo, but you can replace this image in the SteelSeries Engine app. Down the line, you'll also be able to use Spotify with the display. There are a couple of apps that work with the OLED panel, including CS:GO (which tracks KDA and money) and Discord (which displays current speaker and messages). You can also adjust the settings for the OLED panel itself, including brightness and timeout. There are settings to adjust the keyboard's lighting, macros, actuation and profiles. The 128 x 40 OLED panel's purpose is to provide a quicker way to adjust your keyboard settings. The Apex Pro has two unique features: its per-key (mostly) actuation force, which I've already explained, and its OLED display. When I took the typing test, I scored 75 words per minute on both the SteelSeries Apex Pro and the HyperX Alloy Elite RGB keyboard that I use at home. However, I enjoyed how smooth they were, as opposed to the more resistant the Cherry MX Blue switches that I am used to. Typing on the Apex Pro's OmniPoint switches was weird at first, given how soft and quiet they were, even after I adjusted the actuation force.
MORE: The Best PC Games to Play Right Now Of course, we can't conventionally test the Apex Pro's life span, so I wouldn't preach it as gospel. SteelSeries also boasts that the OmniPoint switches can withstand 100 million keystrokes before they're no longer operational. The OmniPoint switches feature a 0.7 ms response time, which is significantly faster than Cherry MX Speed Switches (5.0 ms). However, the function keys, the arrow keys, the macro keys and the numpad keys don't have OmniPoint switches, which is a complete oversight.
The best part is that you can set 61 individual keys at different actuation forces. If you set your keys to 1, you can activate your switch with barely a press, while setting them to 10 requires you to depress the key fully. With the Apex Pro, you can adjust the actuation force of the OmniPoint switches to anywhere between 0.4 mm and 3.6 mm, which translates to a 1 to 10 scale in the SteelSeries Engine app. In most keyboards there isn't a simple way to change that fixed point without tearing the peripheral open. Keys have to travel to a certain point before they actuate.
Meet the OmniPoint Switch: A mechanical switch with adjustable actuation force. SteelSeries didn't put just any mechanical switches in the Apex Pro the company made its own. The Apex Pro also comes with a magnetic wrist rest that's incredibly soft to the touch, which is a nice change from pure plastic wrist rests. You'll also find to clips underneath that can elevate the Apex Pro. Meanwhile, the underside of the peripheral features three-way cable routing, which is especially useful to prevent the cable from awkwardly wrapping around the keyboard. To top it off, the Apex Pro has a USB pass-through port, which is located in the back of the keyboard, just between the Escape and F1 keys. You can activate these features via the SteelSeries Function key. Meanwhile, keys F9 to F12 function as the keys for profile switching, on-the-fly macro recording, brightness down and brightness up, respectively. There are six macro keys, which are secondary functions of the Insert, Home, Page Up, Delete, End and Page Down keys.