The Merc Stealth Keyboard by SteelSeries

If anyone have not noticed it yet, professional gaming brand SteelSeries has added a new range of keyboards in their products page, which includes the Zboard, Fang, Merc, and the Merc Stealth – check it out at http://www.steelseries.com/int/products/keyboards

Thanks to Inter-Asia Technology Sdn Bhd, I’ve gotten my hands on the Steelseries Merc Stealth keyboard. As far as I know this product isn’t for sale on the Malaysian market yet. Heck, even on the SteelSeries website the price listed there is “Coming Soon”. So I guess that a first hand review on this keyboard would help a lot of gamers out there to have a taste of the Merc Stealth.

Quoted from the SteelSeries website:
SteelSeries Merc Stealth Highlights:
- SteelSeries Z Engine enables programmability of all keys
- Pre-defined profiles for more than 150 games
- 3 color illumination options: blue, purple and red
- Internal hub with 2 USB ports
- Anti-ghosting capability: Up to 7 simultaneous keystrokes
- Special gaming key area
- Rubberized movement keys for enhanced tactile feedback

As soon as I got my hands on the keyboard itself, I can’t help but to realize the weight of the keyboard itself. IT IS HEAVY. I love heavy keyboards just because they plant themselves onto my computer desk firmly and with the help of the rubberized grip, the keyboard won’t slip or move even during intense gaming sessions (competitive Counterstrike games, you know).

Gold plated USB jacks are a norm in gaming hardware these days, so it goes without saying that Merc Stealth uses the same.

After plugging in the USB, the backlights of the keyboard came into life. As dim as they look in broad daylight (or rather, the florescent light in my room), they look REALLY AWESOME with the lights closed. The following photos cannot convey the least bit of gorgeousness the Merc Stealth actually look like. I apologize for the quality of the photos as it was taken on my Nokia E66’s 3.2MP phone camera. But you get the idea.

With a press of the color changing button, the backlights can be color switched between blue, purple, and red. I chose to use blue because it just fits my CPU blue lights. There’s another button to switch of the backlights though I don’t see why anyone would want them off, for any reason at all.Following the aesthetics of the keyboard, I continued on to use the keyboard normally without installing the Z-engine for normal everyday usage including chatting and typing word documents for a day.




The feeling of the keys itself is one of the main concerns of consumers when looking to purchase a keyboard. Instead of having a very mechanical feel like the SteelSeries 7G, the Merc Stealth gives a very grainy and textured feeling during keystrokes. This characteristic may favor those who like a silent and less clicky keyboard.



The main attraction of the keyboard, should I say, is the special gaming key area. With the huge movement keys and shortcut keys, this gaming key area is made for the FPS gamers in mind.

The curved number layouts, duck & walk keys, jump (space) key are all placed in the perfect ergonomic positions for the left hand, eliminating awkward finger movements in order to reach a certain key during gaming sessions. The load, save, and print screen buttons are even conveniently located nearby.

The multimedia keys are located just above the gaming key area. Useful for controlling the music at the press of buttons, but those are standard for modern keyboards.
To be honest, as a long time competitive Counterstrike and Starcraft player, I found the gamepad to be unnecessary just because the fingers on my left hand is so used to the default layout of a normal keyboard. A sudden change to the key layouts during CS gameplay actually decreased my performance.

However, as I tested the new gaming key areas with the newer games like Titan Quest, Devil May Cry 4, Bioshock, Left 4 Dead, they proved to be very useful just because all the keys I need to use on my keyboard are programmed just nearby, easily reachable and prevents keystroke mistakes that might cost me the game. It took me just a little while to get used to the game keys and it was an amazing experience. I would recommend it to gamers who plays newer games, MMORPGs, and of course, FPS games.




The main middle part of the keyboard consists of, well, the normal keys, with a few tweaks here and there. As I typed more on the Merc Stealth, the extra space on the Space key is a welcoming addition, just because it feels better and it’s easier for fingers to land on. The long standard backspace key is a must for me as I hate small backspace keys. Nothing too fancy here.

I don’t know how, but they manage to stuff all the useful keys in a small numpad section at the right side of the keyboard. Hell, they even managed to include Cut, Copy, Paste, Find, My Computer and Show Desktop keys here. Very creative.
Even so, I found the keys rather awkward to use during normal keyboard usage, especially for typing long posts or documents where the delete, home, page up and page down keys are often used, due to their different locations from normal keyboards. Took me a while to actually look at the keyboard itself and find the delete key. However I do think this would improve with a few days more of usage as the keys on the right probably needs some time to get used to. Cut copy paste keys are nice too but I’m more used to Ctrl + X C V for now.
I LOVE THE SHOW DESKTOP KEY.

Also for the people who use their keyboard with the keyboard feet flipped back, worry not. It’s there.

The Z Engine software that comes along with the keyboard can also be downloaded from the SteelSeries website. It is all you need to completely customize any key and every key on the keyboard. If you’re not into customizing the keys yourself and feel like it’s too much of a hassle (just like me), there’s tons of preset configurations for almost every popular game out there. So far for the games I play, the key configurations proved to be optimal, to say the least.

To sum it all up, the SteelSeries Merc Stealth keyboard is one of the keyboards out there that wins in both the looks and usage departments, and a very welcoming addition to the SteelSeries arsenal of gaming equipment they already have. If you want a beautiful keyboard with a range of functions available, this is the keyboard for you.







Price: Unconfirmed.
Availability: Coming soon.


Next review product will be none other than the SteelSeries Ikari Optical Mouse. Stay tuned! ;)