Steelseries APEX M500 Mechanical Keyboard Review

A Closer Look

The keyboard features a durable plastic chassis with a slim bezel, so it takes up no more space on your desktop than it absolutely needs to.

On the surface, the M500 doesn’t really have any standout features, it’s a fairly basic keyboard design, but that’s not a bad thing, I personally prefer a pretty straight forward design for my desktop keyboard anyway. The keycaps have a nice UV coating on them, giving them a pretty slick feel and there’s a huge laser etched font on each which should give us lots of light shining through from the LED lighting.

Along the top row, all the usual F-keys with some secondary Fn-Shift functions for multimedia controls, which are always handy for skipping through your music while gaming.

On the right, a full-size number pad, as well as the LED indicators, again, this is all pretty standard stuff.

A closer look at the keyboard, you can see a light blue glow between the key caps, this reflective finish should help better illuminate the keyboard when it is powered on.

The keyboard doesn’t really have any standout features, which I will say again, I quite like, especially given that a lot of gaming keyboards look a little gaudy, while this would look just as nice at a LAN event as it would in your office.

On the underside, there are three routes you can take the cable, ensuring that it’s nicely out of the way of anything else on your desktop.

The flip up feet are really chunky and durable, which is great as so many keyboards still use those awful flimsy ones, it’s refreshing to see stronger clips being used.

There are several thick and durable rubber grips on the base of the keyboard, which do a very good job of stopping it from sliding around your desktop.

Overall, the keyboard feels pretty robust and nicely weighted, despite its relatively slim chassis design. Now, let’s plug it in and see what it can do!