Beirut gives this keyboard four paws up!



It's heavy, solid, the keys feel good, it has a very cool ice blue backlight for night gaming, volume controls, and a command pad that can store 27 key maps, and the whole thing looks very, very cool. For flight simming this is the cat's ass. The command pad can handle all the keyboard work and lets you move the keyboard away leaving more room for your gargantuan MSFFB2 flightstick. Also, all the type keys are at the same level, not the theater seating key style most keyboards have. I find this very comfortable. This is the nicest keyboard I ever saw.

The installation was very simple. It had one or two small glitches where it wanted me to install my new Saitek mouse, which I don't have, and one other un-owned option, but all that was pretty easilly cast aside. Programming was point and click easy. Shouldn't take more than a minute or two to do each storable game profile. there are supposed to be profiles avaible at the Saitek site, but I couldn'ty find the list for the keyboards, only the gamepads and flightsticks.

For shooters or the TW series, you could probably still do everything from the command pad and mouse. All my other keyboards were disposable $10 junkers, this thing was $80 but worth every penny. (Best of all, I didn't have to pay for it. It was a gift. ) It got great reviews and I'll back that up.

And now... time to play!

Pros - Solid. Cool backlighting. Excellent command pad.

Cons - Expensive. Can't kick it around like you would a cheapy. Very minor installation glitches.