Following on from their glowing, colourful notebook mouse Saitek have decided to reinvent the wheel again – well, actually, they have reinvented the keyboard and added some of that Saitek programmable magic in for good measure.
The Gamers' Keyboard is the coolest keyboard I have ever handled. It boasts a hefty, solid plastic construction and a beautiful silver casing making it the centrepiece of any desk and the perfect accessory to a modded PC.
Setting up the Gamers' Keyboard was a simple affair, all I had to do was plug it in and start the driver installation from the supplied CD - a far cry from all the problems encountered with the US release.
The keys are extremely quiet and almost entirely free of the rattle associated with the chunky keys on some other keyboards, although plastic the surface texture gives an almost leather-like look to the black keys that are adorned with clear, bold type. As if the beautiful black and silver colour scheme was not enough Saitek have also backlit the keyboard in the classic "Saitek Blue" and provided a brightness button to adjust the back light from full, down to low and then off. Alongside the brightness button are mute, volume up and volume down buttons, which is as far as the Gamers Keyboard goes with on-board hot keys.
The Gamers' Keyboard has an ace up it's sleeve, however, in the form of a separate "Command Pad" boasting nine buttons and two Mode buttons for a total of 27 commands. The Command Pad is also backlit and boats a built in wrist-rest to match the one supplied with the keyboard. The pad connects to the keyboard via what appears to be a standard RJ-45 connector which is somewhat inconveniently chunkier than the PS/2 on the X-52. The command buttons are numbered 1 through 9, unsurprisingly, and there is not enough room between them to accommodate any sort of overlay - so you will have to remember all 27 commands if you intend to use them! The Mode buttons, A and B, are placed making B easily accessible to the thumb, and leaving A in a bit of an awkward position if you are right handed, and vice-versa if you use your mouse in the left hand. The mode buttons could easily have been placed together for easy accessibility, however it looks like Saitek like to accommodate the lefties even though a lot of us, me included, tend to use the mouse with our right hand.
The Command Pad could have used a USB connection, allowing it to be used with a laptop without needing to connect the keyboard first, however there are not a huge amount of laptop gamers out there aside from those Alienware-owners so this is a very minor oversight. What the Command Pad really needs is a thinner and longer cable.
The separation of the Command Pad from the main keyboard is both a blessing and a burden depending on what sort of game you are playing. Moving your hand from the WASD position in an FPS game to press a hot key command is simply not possible unless you have a moment of peace hiding behind a crate or, perhaps, have created macro-binds for the Counter-Strike buy menu and use the commands before the proverbial faeces hits the fan. The 2,4,5,6 keys on the Command Pad make a handy replacement for the classic WASD, however. The remaining five keys can be used for jump, duck, reload and weapon switching, albeit a little uncomfortably. The command pad is really more at home in less fast paced games where gamers might want to shove their keyboard to one side and use the command pad to collaborate in game key commands into one easy place.
However, when combined with a five-button mouse the Command Pad becomes useful in FPS games. Bind your buy macros to Mode A or B. Use 2456 as WASD. Bind some of the extra Command Pad keys to reload and voice-chat. Sit back and let your mouse do the jumping and weapon switching. A comfortable and minimalist solution to FPS gaming! If you have somewhere to stow your keyboard anyway.
Gaming aside, I found the Command Pad a very useful tool for my shortcut keys, copy, cut and paste can be bound to buttons for easy access, along with other navigational and editing functions putting them in my left hand and leaving my right to the mouse alone. There are a couple of serious limitations to the programming software, however. First is the fact you cannot bind keys such as CTRL+O or CTRL+S because these activate the Open and Save functions of the programming software - whoops! Second, it is not possible to bind any of the Command Pad keys to launch applications or mouse functions, both of which would have been extremely useful features. It seems the Gamers' Keyboard Command Pad is geared very strongly toward gamers rather than actually being generally useful.
A final, and crippling problem for some is the inability of the Saitek Gamers' Keyboard to recognise several simultaneous key commands, making complex manoeuvres in FPS games near impossible without well spaced keys, liberal use of the Command Pad and a 5 button mouse. It has to be added, though, that the Gamers' Keyboard is aimed primarily at RTS enthusiasts, and the very purpose of the command keys is to replace such simultaneous key combinations.
Those little shortcomings aside, the Gamers' Keyboard and Command Pad are an awesome duo made beautiful by Saitek's near-trademark blue glow that was missing from the P3000 Game pad to conserve battery power. The back lighting does not light up the letters on keys, however, making it purely eye candy and not really functional. Any serious gamer should consider them, if only for the "cool factor" and if Saitek add extended programmability features like mouse control and application launching then the Command Pad will become useful for general use, making the bundle a must have!
Philip Howard
