SteelSeries Apex 7 TKL Compact Mechanical Gaming Keyboard – OLED Smart Display – USB Passthrough and Media Controls – Linear and Quiet – RGB Backlit (Red Switch)

good feeling switches, numpadless so it takes up less space, cool effects and software, neat screen although rarely used, excellent build quality, wrist rest is a little too narrow and my hand sits on my desk half of the time and i only have medium sized hands, one cable comes from the keyboard but splits in two for the usb passthrough and the keyboard which is annoying and I dont see why it couldnt have been one plug. overall very good keyboard cant live without it.

i like the keyborad, good keyborad

I bought this after my cat ruined my $150 Corsair keyboard and this had just come out so I figured Id give it a shot. Totally glad I did. I personally prefer smaller keyboards as my older Corsair was taking up a lot of space on my already huge desk. The wrist rest is absolutely amazing too. Its a nice, thick matte black finish. Much better than just a piece of hard plastic you rest another padded rest on. It also have the option to put a picture on your screen in the top right hand corner which is kinda cool but not totally necessary. Just a cool add on.

very nice keyboard i love the screen and having it show my temps, I just wish that the software explained better how to create apps for your own games to create one for valorant and other games.

Really like this keyboard. With brown switches its a very light touch for standard typing but is also good for gaming. Perfect feel for me. It is more clicky than my old MS keyboard for sure but its not obnoxious. I really like that you can set different colors for each and every key. I use this so I can more quickly find where the line of numbers are vs Fkeys and also put different colors on the movement keys (like backspace, delete, return, alt ctrl etc.) and disable keys like shift-lock and INS which I never use but keep the option to put them back in use with the simple switch of the profiles. Which brings me to my one and only issue. The software for managing the keyboard has a few MAJOR BUGS that caused me to lose a lot of work setting up profiles. After setting up a few profiles, I wanted to look at some of the built in profiles which you can do using the illumination menu on the small OLED screen. The problem is, once I did that, it overwrote my profile. This happened multiple times after using the mini screen to load profiles as well. And I made SURE I was doing a LOAD PROFILE and not a SAVE PROFILE. But very odd things happened going back and forth between the OLED screens settings/profile/etc. menues and loading up the SteelSeries Engine software. I would find my old profile names replaced, names copied from one profile to another and just completely wiped out. To avoid this issue I keep a number of backups of my profiles so that if it gets wiped out again, I can seem to use the SteelSeries Engine to load one of my backups and then use the mini OLED screen to Save Profile etc. But its a big pain. I have found that if you just avoid using the OLED screen menus to load up illuminations/presets or use it to change profiles you will probably be ok. But I know there are some pointer issues or memory leaks or bad de-references in the software because sometimes my profile name will get overwritten with a name I never even typed that looks like a join of other names. Also, the name of the extra configs that you create.... those names will be overwritten with the names of the names of the build in profiles etc. So, some major bugs in the software really take away from an otherwise great experience. TIP to SteelSeries: Run your software through a good static analysis tool (i.e. SonarQube) and fix the bugs. UPDATE: Works great for one computer for the second computer in tin used to reset and I have found no solution even though I have exhaustively looked on the Internet for a solution. The only workaround for the reset is to unplug it and plug it back in which is totally annoying. Therefore I drop the rating. It’s unfortunate but it works so well on one computer it’s so poorly on another. FINAL UPDATE: I found that using USB 2.0 connections worked better than USB 3.0 connections. Also using a USB-C switch/KVM will likely cause problems. So if you’re using with a single computer and find the USB connection that works, It’s gonna be a great keyboard. However, you may find the notorious repeating reset bug which makes the keyboard unusable. I had to buy a separate USB 2.0 switch and connect to USB 2.0 connections in order to use this with two computers. Kind of a big pain but I figured it was better than returning a keyboard that I really liked.

Update: Ive given up on this product, and Ive written of SteelSeries. I plug in my older Corsair and have 0 issues. No matter how fast the USB hub connection is, it will NOT work. Plain and simple. I have all USB 3.0 hardware, but I even tried a USB 3.0 type B to make sure I had enough speed to suffice this, and nope, it just crashes. Constantly. Once it crashes, there is NOTHING you can do except unplug it. What an utterly useless product. I literally re-wired my whole set up to try to get it to work. This product will only work if you go directly into your PC, but honestly, I wouldnt even recommend it with that level of shoddy workmanship. Go with a different brand. Original Review - 2 Stars: Ive never seen a keyboard crash before. Ive been using keyboards through this USB switch for years. The moment this guy gets plugged into my switch, which is used to toggle between my work and home PC, it starts to randomly crash. I dont know if its the screen that makes this different or what, but Ive seen other people with this same issue on forums and Reddit. The keyboard becomes unresponsive and wont get better until you unplug and plug it back in again. Its a shame, I really like this keyboard otherwise... I have to find a replacement now, and it wont be SteelSeries anymore. Im going back to my Corsair keyboards.

Been using it for an year now. Bought the brown switches variant Pros: 1) Build quality is good, feels good, keycaps and keys are sturdy 2) Lighting is bright! The ease to configure them is amazing 3) The media controls is a good feature. I especially love the metal roller for adjusting volume. 4) USB passthrough is very useful. Cons: 1) Brown keys are not as tactile as I want them to be. They are less tactile compared to cherry MX browns. Actuation force is small enough for me to inadvertently use wrong keystrokes. 2) One of keys sometimes presses twice. I did not expect it to start failing so soon. Its not often but seems like it will last just a few more months. 3) Keyboard is loud if you are a heavy handed ttyper. Consider getting a switch dampener, otherwise the noise made is loud. 4) The wrist rest is not really comfortable. There are better ones out there.

I bought the Steelseries Aex 7 tkl with high expectations, I was going to use for multiple fps games, and I had watched alot of youtube videos, praising the keyboard, for ergonomics, typing, and gaming. Needless to say, my high expectations were fullfilled. I bought the apex 7 tkl with Cherry MX Red switches, linear and quiet, the sound was alright, it was certainly quiter than Cherry MX Blues, but it was still a bit loud, the reaction speed is amazing, and it almost feels like the switches are touch sensitive. Rgb and the little Oled screen were cool, not outsanding, but they were still cool. The Steelseries engine 3 offered alot of rgb option like Colorshift, Static Color, etc.... The media controls in the upper right corner were also a nice and at sometimes pretty useful detail. Anyways summing up my thoughts I would give it 9/10 and would definitely recommend.

This keyboard is hands down my favorite Ive used so far. Started from a Corsair Strafe to an Apex M750 and now to the Apex 7 TKL w/ cherry switches. I am glad I did. The extra space for the mouse on the mousepad (I use an XXL reflex lab mousepad) is fantastic. The OLED screen, while some find it to be gimmicky, I find is pretty cool. On the fly settings access without going into the engine software is a really nice feature. For the price, I dont think you can find a better TKL keyboard. Highly recommend.

When the description states: Tactile and Clicky keys, blue switch I kind of expect that. The keys were very smooth however; they were very quite as well. If you depressed the keys enough the keycap would contact the top of the keyboard case and make a Click like sound. It was not coming from the key switches but the physical contact of keycap to face plate. The OCD screen is neat, even it not used much. The RGB was very good and easy to set up. I expected a little more from Steel Series high end. Did not get it, so the keyboard was returned. I end up getting a ROOCAT VALCUN 121 that is truly amazing.