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Tech · SteelSeries · 2024

SteelSeries Apex Pro TKL Gen 3

Actuation you set per key, from a hair of travel to the full stroke, on a board that charges for it.

A desk that looks right, and what it costs the hand — #3

Overall

7.9

out of 10

Axis scores

Tech is scored on these 5 axes. The total is their plain average — nothing is weighted.

SteelSeries Apex Pro TKL Gen 3 — axis scores out of 10Horizontal bar chart of editorial scores out of 10 across 5 axes. Bars run from a shared zero baseline; longer is better. SteelSeries Apex Pro TKL Gen 3: Performance 9.4, Value 6.2, Durability 7.8, Ease of use 7.4, Design 8.6.PerformanceSteelSeries Apex Pro TKL Gen 3 — Performance 9.4 out of 109.4ValueSteelSeries Apex Pro TKL Gen 3 — Value 6.2 out of 106.2DurabilitySteelSeries Apex Pro TKL Gen 3 — Durability 7.8 out of 107.8Ease of useSteelSeries Apex Pro TKL Gen 3 — Ease of use 7.4 out of 107.4DesignSteelSeries Apex Pro TKL Gen 3 — Design 8.6 out of 108.6Editorial score out of 10 — higher is better
  • Performance — How well it does the core job
  • Value — What the same money buys elsewhere
  • Durability — Failure and fade reports past the one-year mark
  • Ease of use — Setup, daily operation, cleaning, maintenance
  • Design — Build quality and how it sits in a room

Specs

Layout
Tenkeyless
Switches
OmniPoint 3.0 magnetic, 0.1–4.0 mm adjustable
Top plate
Aluminum alloy
Extras
OLED display, onboard profiles, double-shot PBT keycaps

As published by the manufacturer. We didn't measure these ourselves.

Is it for you

Buy it if

  • Competitive games where actuation depth is worth tuning key by key
  • You want a handful of keys set shallow and the rest left normal
  • Media control and profile switching without opening an app

Skip it if

  • Typing is the main job — shallow actuation punishes resting fingers
  • You would rather not have the SteelSeries suite installed to configure it
  • You expect to change switches later; these are not sockets

Set the whole board to its shallowest actuation and it will register keys you were only resting a finger on. That is the trap, and almost everyone falls into it once. What owners settle on instead is a split: movement and ability keys set shallow, everything else left near normal travel, which is the actual argument for the switch technology. As a global setting it is a novelty. As a per-key setting it does something no ordinary mechanical board can.

The magnetic switch also changes what failure looks like. There are no metal contacts to wear or bounce, so chatter — the fault that quietly retires most mechanical keyboards — is not the expected end here. What replaces it is a sensor layer and a software dependency, and neither of those is something you can open up and fix.

The OLED handles presets, media, and profile switching from the board itself, which is more than most rivals offer without an app. Deep per-key work still happens in the SteelSeries suite, which is large and runs in the background. Weigh that the way this site weighs any driver dependency: the hardware will outlive the software support window, and when it does you are left with a very good ordinary keyboard that has a small screen on it.

Sound is the surprise. Per-key lubrication and layered foam put it near the top of prebuilt boards for acoustics, which is a strange thing to say about a keyboard sold on response time. Anyone expecting the hollow rattle of a gaming board will find it noticeably more composed than that.

Check the generation and the size in the listing title before ordering. This line runs as a full-size model, a tenkeyless, a mini, and separate wireless versions of each, with the previous generation still on shelves alongside them. The names differ by one word and the boards differ by a great deal.

Last updated . The scoring method is on how we rank.