Steelseries introduce yet another gaming oriented mechanical keyboard

A few days ago, Steelseries, a well-known European brand that focuses almost exclusively on the PC gaming peripherals announced a new mechanical keyboard targeting at the ever popular PC gaming demographic.  Again, this is probably another mechanical keyboard announcement, but when one start to string a few of them together, perhaps some patterns might emerge that’s worth taking a closer look.

The Apex M800 checks all the right boxes, just as many of their competitors have.  In my previous blog, I speculated that some vendors may start to change the layout or come up with a better key cap design.  Yeah, Steelseries enlarged the space bar and comes up with a cool tilt profile.  Yet interestingly, Steelseries went a little bit further still by making a new switch and deviated further away from the traditional Cherry MX design than say Metadot did.  They took many of the great Cherry design concepts and works with a big Cherry MX cloner, Kailh.  The result is a relatively new switch design named QS1.  From some reports, the keyboard switch functions and feels almost like the Cherry MX Red, yet the chiclet like key cap design, shorter profile, the smaller travel distance and a centered LED position makes it more like the Romer-G than a Cherry MX.  Moving away from the industry standard MX key cap is a gutsy move as there is a rather large aftermarket MX key cap demand.  Perhaps Steelseries saw that it didn’t really affected Logitech or any other keyboard makers much.  So, why not take this opportunity to fix lighting issues that plagued the MX design?  After all, Steelseries’ core clients are gamers and good LED lighting seems to be important enough.

There’s a larger pattern still I think that’s worth looking at, the trend away from Cherry MX hegemony.  Cherry MX has been the industry standard, but the new blood is thirsting for the throne.  Some keyboard manufacturers took baby steps away by changing some switch characteristics to cater a specific crowd.  However, rarely does one swims out of lane, dumps the cherished Cherry history and market a new switch design that is incompatible with Cherry MX.  Now, I can understand Logitech doing so with Romer-G because they can.  They are Godzilla in this space and Godzilla will do what it wants, whether Cherry like it or not.  On the other hand, we are beginning to see some closer collaboration with Cherry MX cloners such as Kailh from some long time clients such as Metadot.  I think that’s much more troublesome for Cherry.  Maybe those timed exclusive deals with Corsair are coming back to haunt Cherry.  Now, I don’t think Cherry is going to go out of business anytime soon.  In fact, I think it’s going to remain the dominant force for a good few years if not more.  On the other hand, I don’t think Cherry can keep the crown by sitting around and not innovating anymore because these external pressure points.  If Cherry doesn’t, companies like Kailh, Gateron or other will gladly step in.  I view this as good news because it foster improvement, new designs and creativity.  Indeed it’s going to be fun time observing in this market arena.  Let’s see where this trend takes us.