Gadgetory

so today we'll be doing a quick unboxing of the Microsoft Sidewinder x6 keyboard this is a powerful programmable gaming keyboard so the first question we should be asking is what makes this a gaming keyboard and the answer as far as I can tell is the art on the front of the box you can see we have a caveman with a spear if that's not gaming I don't know what is and then we have an arrow being shot by a guy and then we have a rhinoceros wielding an enormous sword is what I can as far as I can tell that's what this is and I wish I had a game with a rhinoceros and a sword because that would be the coolest game ever okay so why don't we get into the actual features here first of all you got a switchable keypad and I'm gonna get the cameraman to come look at these every time I talk about them switchable keypad means that you can move the number pad from either side of the keyboard depending on whether you want to use this with your left or your right hand it just clips in okay then you have mode switching you can manually change the mode of the keyboard and I believe that somewhere around here yep from either typing mode to one of two gaming modes okay then you've got macro keys which are located over here you can program up to 90 macros to these keys then the next thing you've got is cruise control and this is kind of a cool feature you can use cruise control to continue in action without having to hold down the key or keys assigned to the action so that means if you have a game that doesn't allow you to toggle crouch for example you could use cruise control in theory to keep crouching even when you're not pressing that key so it would be like a toggle switch okay then you have in game macro record which is neat if you have to record macros in game then you have WASD gaming cheese which is great because without those keys I couldn't type a wasted on this keyboard just kidding okay what you actually have is little lights on your WASD keys which will allow you to find them in the dark then you have a quick launch key okay for the Microsoft Games Explorer yeah cuz everyone uses that and then you have a two color adjustable backlight dial which is here so you can change the dial to more brightness or less more brightness and then you have media keys which are here and then you have a volume control dial okay okay let's go this keyboard open and break the seal right here so we actually recently unboxed the x8 gaming mouse which I guess would be the mouse to go with the x6 gaming keyboard the cameraman liked it he said the the tracking was excellent but the overall feel of it wasn't wasn't as look wasn't as good as he would have liked and he went back to his g5 so take that for what you will I didn't actually try the x8 so I can't really speak about it one way or the other okay inside here we will find the Sidewinder x6 keyboard manual so this tells you how to use everything how to plug a USB port and make sure you study this picture carefully before you buy this keyboard USB goes in excellent then you have a driver CD never use a driver CD always download the latest drivers off the manufacturer website and the Microsoft product guides they tell you about all the other stuff you could buy from Microsoft I guess actually this doesn't seem to have anything useful in it okay then you have the number pad so this is a little standalone number pad but you can't actually use unless you have an X 6 keyboard so there's your interface here and there's your interface on the other side so we'll show you how that works in a minute but if you feel alright we're not the best but they're not the worst oh they have a calculator but that is the smartest place I've ever seen for a calculator quick launch that is exactly where it should be on every keyboard in the world because if you're actually using calculator with the mouse then you either don't do many calculations or you really don't care if they take so let's put okay here we go actually I should show you how this works so you just plug the little interface in right there now that's actually really easy and then to pick it off you just do that and then you can plug it in to the other oh it's magnetic oh that's cool check this out I can like slide it in wow that's really neat okay anyway I'm done playing with that now so the general layout of the keyboard is fairly standard which is always good for a gaming keyboard you never want to see something like a shortened shift key or you know an extra key down here or a shortened backspace key I personally like to see a very standard layout the keys don't have much travel which can also be quite useful for gaming because that means you're not pressing down a quarter of an inch just to get key register to register okay you find all of the macro keys the one is this one the continuous action key this is to record a new macro this is to switch the mode here are all your media keys this adjusts your keyboard brightness here is your volume control knob here is your glossy finish to the keyboard soon will be like the obligatory shiny look how shiny it is shot so there you can see my finger and that pretty much covers everything I wanted to talk about in terms of the Microsoft Sidewinder x6 so thank you for check oh I don't know what this does cameraman wants me to say what that does but I don't remember so thank you for checking out my unboxing of the Microsoft xx gaming keyboard