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The SteelSeries Apex 9 TKL is a tenkeyless mechanical keyboard that aims to target the esports audience. It’s on the slightly more premium side in terms of its pricing, but how well does its performance and feel hold up?
With hot-swappable switches and a pretty nifty dual-pressure actuation, the SteelSeries Apex 9 TKL keyboard packs a lot of features into a pretty unassuming shell. I’ll mainly be focusing on the gaming performance here in the review to find out whether it can be considered one of the best gaming keyboards, so let’s get straight into it.
Price and Availability
To get the nitty gritty out of the way, the SteelSeries Apex 9 TKL is listed with a $139.99 MSRP. A year on from release, you’re going to be able to find it discounted through retailers such as Amazon pretty frequently. It’s also available directly from the SteelSeries website, which is probably where you’d want to pick it up if you’re from France, Germany, Japan or Scandinavia, as it’s also available in those regional layouts too.
SteelSeries New Apex 9 TKL
Switches
Linear OptiPoint Yellows
Keycaps
Durable PBT
Layout
QWERTY
Form
TKL
Polling Rate / Response Time
N/A / 0.2ms
Design
The SteelSeries Apex 9 TKL is a dense little keyboard. The design is straightforward: a sleek black chassis, standard high-profile keycaps, and sometimes garish RGB lighting. Compared to competitor keyboards, the Apex 9’s appearance drags behind a little. There’s not much going on which, while not necessarily a bad thing, means that it won’t really stand out against its peers.
Where it does falter, though, is in the feel of the keycaps. The Double Shot PBT keycaps are textured slightly. This does make it ever so slightly easier to stay on your target key, though the friction between your fingers can be quite irksome at times. If you have long nails, good luck.
SteelSeries doesn’t offer any alternative keycaps with this board, so you’re stuck with the standard set unless you choose to upgrade your caps. This is fairly straightforward, especially since they rely on the standard keycap mount that most Cherry MX switches use too. It will drive the total cost up, though, so keep this in mind before making any purchase decisions.
Features and gaming performance
When it comes to features, the SteelSeries Apex 9 TKL boasts uniqueness. It ships with OptiPoint Optical Switches that are modulated by SteelSeries software to switch between actuation points. The ‘Typing Mode’ has a firmer actuation of 1.5mm, while the ‘Gaming Mode’ has a 1.0mm press. If you have the software installed, you can easily interchange between modes by pressing the Insert key alongside “I” for typing, or “O” for gaming.
As expected, the difference is noticeable. Do be warned, though, the 1.0mm actuation for gaming is extremely light. If you play mostly FPS games, this is going to play to your advantage well. On the other hand, games that find movement and accuracy less integral to mechanics won’t really be improved by the gaming mode, but hampered by it. Luckily, it’s not really a deal breaker as you have the typing mode to rely on.
It made sense that shooters would benefit from a softer press, and RTS games would suit the typing mode, but I was curious as to which mode a fighting game would benefit most from. In Brawlhalla, I found it much easier to accurately pull off combos with the typing mode, though it was definitely the case that firing attacks in the gaming mode was a lot faster. This versatility stakes the keyboard a place as one of the best gaming keyboards, despite its flaws in other areas.
The SteelSeries Apex 9 TKL is only available with a wired connection, which has never been a problem for me. Most people playing esports games would probably agree, favoring the slightly more responsive connectivity over a wireless one.
While writing this review, I briefly tested out the SteelSeries Pro Mini Wireless alongside it, which is a nearly identical keyboard in everything but connectivity and form. It’s much smaller, as a 60% board, though this particular model shipped with slightly different switches. Compared to the two points of variance in the Apex 9, the Pro Mini features completely modular OmniPoint 2.0 Adjustable HyperMagnetic switches between 0.1mm and 4mm. Typing on the 0.1mm actuation felt like an extreme sport, though the versatility instantly made me less impressed with the SteelSeries Apex 9 TKL’s actuation change. That said, the Pro Mini probably has no place at a gamer’s desk thanks to the radical form factor.
Should you buy the SteelSeries Apex 9 TKL
The Apex 9 TKL has a great set of features that really complement consumers in need of an esports deck. The dual actuation switches give you plenty of options when it comes to calibrating the board for different uses, and as someone who’s been almost exclusively writing on it for a year – it definitely fulfils promises on that behalf.
Yet, it doesn’t do enough to counteract the fact that the SteelSeries Apex 9 TKL has cheap feeling PBT keycaps. They contribute to a slightly clacky sound, also in-part thanks to the easily activated switches, though all the bells and whistles included with a few other Steelseries boards are perhaps the cardinal sin here.
The SteelSeries Apex 9 TKL brings a few interesting features to an otherwise below ordinary board. It flickers between an enjoyable and grating typing experience with the mere scratch of a fingernail, and the fact that the gaming features only really apply to those playing FPS games makes the price tag a little undesirable. The SteelSeries Apex 9 TKL had the potential to be a fantastic keyboard but it feels like sacrifices were made during production and, frankly, they are quite apparent.
