A few weeks ago, I stumbled across a Saitek advertisement in PC Gamer (Yes, advertising apparently DOES pay off) featuring their new "gamers" keyboard and immediately had to order one from their website, as no one locally seemed to have one in stock. After a reasonable delay of about a week my box arrived. I was rather annoyed to see that I got charged $45 in border fees from UPS, but that's the price a Canadian pays for shipping things in from the US of A. Upon opening the box, I was greeted with the site of one HELL of a sexy keyboard.

The unit is silver and black in an attractive X shape, with most of the extraneous border material removed for an extremely sleek and high tech look. The command pad plugs into the rear of the keyboard, and is not required for operation. The LEDS and back light are a nice shade of blue and should match pretty much everyone's case lighting, and will look most impressive at your next LAN party. The removable wrist rest extends out approximately an inch in two steps for those of us with large hands, and really helps with typing comfort.

Unlike the last few Logitech keyboards I've used which have been loaded down with dozens of extra buttons that never get used, other than the standard 104 keys found on most standard keyboards, there's only four extra buttons on the Saitek. Volume up, down, mute and a brightness setting for the backlighting on the keyboard and command pad. There are three brightness settings for the lights: high, low and off. The lights will reset to high when the computer is shut down or reset, which was sort of annoying... But then... Why buy a backlit keyboard if you're going to be shutting the lights off? :) It's a nice option for them to add, but I can't see ever using it.

Tasty tasty keyboard.

The command pad takes up way too much space on my desk, so I can't see ever actually using it either at home or at work. It's a 9 key pad with two "shift" keys that allow up to 27 commands to be programmed into it. I'm not sure how useful it would be, as you need to move you hand off either your mouse or keyboard to us it, which in most games would get you killed. I'm thinking that in MMPORGs or perhaps flight sims it would come in handy, and you can program a series of keystrokes into each button on it. For me, it's just something that got left in the box.

Good looks aside, this is one of the most comfortable keyboards I've ever used. The keys have a very soft touch to them, and are virtually silent. With the wrist rest extended one notch my hands are at the perfect angle and height for lots of comfy typing and gaming. With this keyboard I don't find that my wrists and hands are as fatigued as with my cheaper keyboards.

And even tastier with the lights off!

Regrettably, near the end of the testing period, the G,H and ' keys on the Saitek died during the writing of this article. I'm convinced that this occurred because I plugged the command pad in while they keyboard was on. (Would be nice if they mentioned that this is a bad idea in the "manual".) I emailed Saitek, and they got back to me the same day with shipping instructions and an apology. I've talked with a few other people who own these keyboards and no one has experienced any difficulties.

Overall, 5 out of 5. It's an excellent product, and very pretty. As mentioned previously it's one of the most comfortable keyboards I've ever used, and I recommend it highly.