SteelSeries Zboard Gaming Keyboard
by SteelSeries
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List Price: Our Price: $44.99 You Save: $5.00 (10%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $40.00 (click here) Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of SteelSeries Zboard Gaming Keyboard
Customer Review: The Perfect Compromise
Summary: 4 Stars
Pros-
Standard keyboard is great; relatively quiet, responsive keys, excellent, easily customizable shortcuts.
Gaming keyset is great; excellent key positioning, built in mods for multiple games.
Multiple hotkeys independent of keyset (media controls, volume, search, settings, ect.)
On board USB ports (works perfectly for a mouse that has a wireless USB dongle)
Cons-
Keysets can be a little tricky/slow to switch.
Keys can get stuck sometimes (simple fix, but you have to take off the board and re-do a few times)
You'll probably still need to manually adjust in-game key-mapping with several games even with the gaming board before it feels right to you.
Overall-
A superb choice for the average-to-serious gamer, especially since the standard keyset (with the options of turning on/off a multitude of hotkeys and shortcuts) is better than most regular keyboards, and the option to buy specialized keysets for only 20 bucks. Hardcore gamers might require more functionality.
Customer Review: Gamer's Keyboard
Summary: 4 Stars
I purchased the Zboard after seeing it for sale in the store. I have long wanted a keyboard that made gaming easier and this seemed to fit the bill. The keyboard is easy to use with its interchanging lay overs for normal qwerty style typing or its many custom game styles. Although it took a little getting used to a first, I have found that gaming goes smoother and easier now. Equally important, no more mistaken keyboard keys being hit while in active, bullets flying, bombs bursting, combat. I have used the Battlefield 2 set and qwerty set. The only downside to the keyboard is that if you intend to type a message while gaming, you will get really screwed up trying to figure out where the keys are now located on the keyboard. I try to use the in-game speech channels instead of typing. Was it worth the money? Yes certainly after I bought it on Amazon.com where the cost was lower, so after shipping I saved a couple of bucks under the suggested retail price on the company web site (and no shipping expense on top of that).Customer Review: why amazon slower than 3rd party delivery?
Summary: 5 Stars
I ordered the keyboard and BF2 keypad combo for $53.
The BF2 keyset comes from Tigerdirect and shipped immediatly.
The Zboard shipped from Amazon took a week to ship and 11 days to arrive??!!
ummm.. someone explain this one to me? amazon?
The product is great tho-it has all the necessary keys. believe me, Ive tried the merc, nostromo2, and the zboard Fang, all of those didnt have critical keys. like change vehicle position or camera, or map.
But for some reason on all their zboard units they swap enter/exit with cycle weapons. E with F. WHY?? I liked enter/exit where it was and was used to it. I never used cycle weps, i would just hit the number key for that wep or scroll the mouse (both faster), *sigh* I wish these guys would just quit thinking they know better how to lay out my controls.
They could just give us a pad of some sort with all map-able keys and let us set it up to suit us, but they have to muck it up. At least just leave the keys postions alone guys.
Customer Review: Absolute Garbage
Summary: 1 Stars
There are many things wrong with this keyboard, in the first that it's a novel concept, and was directed to be a 'keyboard' marketed towards gamers. I fell for the advertising and spent the first few hours messing with the various configurations and being in awe of the keymapping, but in the end you are still left with a very sub-par product - a rubber dome based keyboard, with folding gimmick top half.
It would constantly disconnect from the computer, the drivers had to be reinstalled for it to respond again, it didn't exactly 'work' during bootup other, which forced me to fetch an older keyboard and use that to install Windows..
Overall a very shoddy product. If you want a solid gaming keyboard for your money that won't die on you every 15 minutes after two days of ownership, strongly consider a Das Keyboard. It's what I'm writing this review on right now, and I've owned it for more than a year, a long time after I've thrown away the worthless Zboard as well.
Customer Review: ZBoard Interchangeable Keyboard
Summary: 5 Stars
The biggest fear i had going into this purchase was how it would affect my performance from the start. I had been warned to give myself 2 or 3 weeks to get used to the new style. It took less then an 20 min to adapt. The only hard part is memorizing the keys for a new game, but i have a bad memory and it only took me 4 or 5 min to figure it out. I picked up Call Of Duty 2 and played it from the start, the zboard makes it easy to not have to jump around the old style keyboard fumbleing for keys.
And for those of you wondering, it does include a fully functional keyboard (which im typeing on now!)
the only "problem" persay is if you try to switch out the zboard while in game. this happened to me and i luckly had my comp set to where i hit the power button and it takes me to the desktop. Otherwise i would have had to pull the plug as everything locked up.
I gave it a 5 because it enhanced my performance ten fold.