During the past 3 years or so most gaming keyboards we've seen roll-out from the majority of the gaming peripheral manufacturers out there have been mechanical ones since they offer superior durability (build quality), much longer lifespan (key presses) and tactile feedback compared to regular membranes ones (or at least that's what the general opinion is). Of course one of the things i love about this industry is that there's always at least one manufacturer out there who likes to stand out from the others and do things quite differently and Mad Catz did exactly that with their S.T.R.I.K.E. line of gaming keyboards a while back since they went with a special membrane design instead. Well although i can't really say if that was the right choice or not (time will tell just how good these keyboards were) SteelSeries has also decided to launch two new membrane (rubber dome) based gaming keyboards the feature-rich APEX and the more "mainstream" APEX[RAW] and so today we will start with the APEX.