Microsoft is back in the world of gaming peripherals, completing their recent selection of mice with this gaming keyboard.

It has a number of strengths:

• The numeric keypad is only attached by magnets and is detachable -- you can have it on the right, or the left, or not bother with it at all.

• You can use two dials at the top right to control the brightness of the backlighting and the volume.  They're not particularly attractive, but they're intuitive and useful.

• You can record up to 30 macros on three programs each (90 in total), but to gain access to some of them, the numeric keyboard needs to be on the left hand side.  Not many people will need--or want--to record this many macros, though, but it's a useful addition.  Macros can either be pre-recorded or registed on the fly using the Record button above F3.

• Microsoft know their market well: a specific key is featured that will open the default folder for games on computers running Vista.

• A neighbouring 'Cruise Control' key allows you to keep an action triggered by a key going without having to keep that key pressed down.  So, you'll keep moving forward, or firing, or scrolling through a document, whilst also doing something else.  As soon as you're ready to take control again, you just need to press the button again to return to manual mode.  It's a great feature for games and means you can easily combine several actions.  This special mode works with up to four keys at once.

Noise Levels

The keys themselves are pretty tough, which leads us immediately to another question: do Microsoft really think gamers want keyboards that are as loud as this?

Seriously, the Sidewinder X6 makes an infernal din, with the Space bar being the main offender.

The noise it makes bouncing back up after you release it is horrible.

Perhaps Microsoft figured that gamers get so caught up in the action that they don't notice things like this (which we don't think is true, actually), but as soon as you start to type a simple e-mail you make so much noise that nobody else in the same room can hear themselves think.


Flipping the keyboard over produces another unpleasant surprise: it's impossible to adjust the height at either or the front or the back, meaning you can't change the slope.  

Fortunately, it suited us from the off, but there's no guarantee everybody will like it.  

One final detail is that the row of macro keys down the left hand side of the keyboard (numbered S1 to S6) make it all to easy to miss the Ctrl key when you're using office applications, a sourece of irritation.