Saitek. A company with a pedigree of producing enthusiast keyboards. With past hits such as the Cyborg Joystick, one can wonder what they will come up with next. Saitek have produced many a keyboard with mixed results. For some the Eclipse Two was a fine keyboard and others may feel that it would be hard product to beat for its price range. Still more would have said the driver software was rather cumbersome and unwieldy.

Entrance the Saitek Cyborg keyboard

Specifications:

Box and Contents

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The box packaging was rather brightly coloured featuring the keyboard itself in action with all its lights in full glory. Saitek promises on the back of the box-blurb that the product would change your gaming experience. So with eager hands the box was ripped open, rather like a child at Christmas. Inside the outer box was the inner packaging, a rather dull brown affair containing the wrist wrest, the various manuals, software and the keyboard itself.

Keyboard Ergonomics

Upon inspecting the keyboard itself, it could be said that the device looked like a prop from an old 1980’s Science Fiction series and yet in a stark contrast it looked a little futuristic. The shape of the keyboard itself was rather pleasing to the eye in spite of a few rough edges. Such as the wrist rest which is rather squared off for some peoples tastes.

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Along the top edge of the keyboard are the ‘touch-sensitive controls. These change anything from volume control to the colour and brightness of the back-lit keys (more on this later) Starting from the left we have the control that switches the lights on or off.

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Next we have the volume control, this is adjusted by simply touching the plus or minus keys.

After this we have the multi media player functions. Finally in the middle we have the function by which this keyboard is named after. Pressing this control changes the keyboard to the ‘Cyborg’ mode which disables the windows keys. This function by itself is a god-send as this prevents anyone depressing the key whilst blasting away at their favourite game.

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Light Zones

The last section of the keyboard control panel is the ‘zoning’ section. This allows a user to assign a certain colour to a specific area of the keyboard for example: One may decide to set the WASD keys to green the numeric keypad to amber and the rest of the QWERTY keys to a lava-red. This is a novel idea which admittedly Saitek seems to have pulled off rather well.

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Metal Plated Keys

Saitek have decided to coat the most used keys on the keyboard with a layer of chrome in an attempt to make them more hard wearing. This would help to protect the keys whilst using the device for gaming into the wee hours of the morning. A bright idea however these keys have a ‘slippery’ feel to them and ideally they finish should have been rough rather than smooth in order to give the user a more solid feel.

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The Typing Experience

The typing experience was much better than the Micro Soft Reclusa and indeed this review was completed on the Cyborg keyboard itself. The average word speed increased slightly and the typing documents was pleasant but was marred by the lack of texture on the WASD and space bar keys.

Gaming

Overall gaming was pleasant on this keyboard with many a game played, ranging from adventure to first-person shooters. The back lit keys in conjunction with the zone functions proved to a boon and worked rather well. However the software that came with keyboard was badly written and planned to say the least, getting it to work on many games was a royal pain. However on the Saitek forums there are some beta drivers available that offer a much more of a pleasurable programming experience, which helps to detract somewhat from the annoying default software bundle!

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Special Function Keys

The special function keys lay on both sides of the keyboard that are also lit by the ‘zone’ function. However for those whom are on the wrong side of thirty would agree that they look like the old Atari 800XL keys and would give rise to suspicions of their longevity in regards to the repeated frantic hammering during an intensive gaming session.

USB and Sound Leads

The sound lead was not tested due to audio functions of the review computer being calibrated to use a digital output only. However the USB function was tested.

Saitek have thought to include a USB hub built inside of the keyboard. However rather than it being a hub it is more of an extension as the keyboard has only one USB port. A great many devices were tested on this port and the only device that had a major problem with was the Nikon D40X DSLR camera. The keyboard would detected the camera and then would suddenly drop the device from the USB hardware section.

A return to the Light Zones

What follows are a selection of various images depicting the Saitek Cyborg keyboard; baring all its glory in the dark.

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Cons:

A great first attempt by Saitek but the small issues should be addressed by the next product launch/revision. A work of beauty marred only by a few scars.

SCORE 85%

gilgamesh