Tech Olive

On paper, the Saitek Cyborg looks like an amazing gaming keyboard. With the selective back-lighting, the touch-panel and much more, how could you go wrong? Unfortunately, during my testing, the keyboard showed quite a few problems and weaknesses that mar the overall quality of this board quite badly. It all started with the install of the keyboard itself. USB: Plug n’ play, right? Wrong. It took me about 20 minutes and 5 different USB ports before my PC would even recognize it as an input device. And of course, Saitek’s driver installer will not let you install the drivers unless it can detect the keyboard as plugged in. Now it is entirely possible that this was a problem with my PC, rather then the keyboard, but it sets the tone for the things to come.

The Cyborg has many features built into it. For example, you can selectively light different parts of the keyboard, choosing different colors for different areas or even turn the light off in some areas. It’s all controlled by a nice touch-panel stretching the entire length of the keyboard across the top. The touch panel also controls media and volume and “Cyborg-mode” which disables the windows key and enables the lighting for the macro keys. The whole Cyborg-mode idea is a bit useless. Sure it enables some features, but wouldn’t you want the macro keys lit all the time? However, it’s easy enough to switch Cyborg-mode on or off, so it’s not a big deal either way.

Despite the fact that this keyboard is designed with technology that allows multiple key presses, I found on many occasions that pressing as little as three keys would cause the rest to become unresponsive until you first released the three keys. Which can mess up your game quite horribly, as I experienced. The keys used in this keyboard are standard keys, as opposed to laptop-style, although they seem a bit deeper then usual keys and as such are harder to type fast with. Also, it seems to make the space bar harder to hit when gaming, requiring you to hit it a few times.

Moving onto the feel and performance. The keys have a very nice feel, both to the touch and to the press, as does the rest of the keyboard. It is covered in a slightly rough texture, which helps for better control and reducing sweat build up. However, for some reason, Saitek chose to apply a metal plating to “key gaming areas” which consists of the space bar, arrow keys and the WASD keys. While Saitek claims this is a metal coating, it sure looks and feels like plastic. Whatever the material, the result of this coating is that the keys that are coated have a different feel to the rest of the keys, making them feel cheap and almost sticky.

As with many gaming keyboards, the Cyborg has USB and audio inputs built into the keyboard. The Cyborg may have some very impressive hardware built into it, but on the outside it is one of the ugliest keyboards I have ever seen. It does have some nice design ideas, but the execution of these ideas turned out quite bad. The problem is that they mixed too many different styles. If they had chosen just one, it could have been nice. I imagine this design choice is supposed to go along with the “Cyborg” theme and I’m sure that there are people that actually like it, but last time I checked blind people don’t need a keyboard.

All in all, its an alright keyboard, but not the best choice for gamers who want the best possible keyboard they can get. While it may be the smartest keyboard I have used, it is not the most responsive. The touchscreen can sometimes be a little unresponsive, causing you to make your input multiple times before it will register. On a few rare occasions I actually had a function key stick and continue it’s action until I pressed the key again. However, neither of those things are a big deal, but when I would continually get the keyboard to not accept input, even when I would only be holding three or four keys, I was shocked. The keyboard had been advertised as accepting multiple key presses, but I would continually get this problem. Now, it’s entirely possible that many of the problems I have mentioned could have been a unique case with my PC, or the keyboard I was given, but it seems there where too many issues to be able to blame them all on that fact alone. Then again, maybe I’m just a hard gamer to please.

Score: 6 Olives