It's no question that Saitek is a leading producer of computer peripherals. They've been most notable for their joysticks in the past, and more recently have begun gaining fame for their gamepads and keyboards. Their Eclipse illuminated keyboard was a huge success, gaining recognition from nearly every reviewer. It featured illuminated keys and backlighting, while still maintaining a comfortable design.
Saitek has just released the successor the Eclipse keyboard, with the Eclipse II Illuminated Keyboard. It improves on the original by adding red and purple to the original Eclipse's blue lighting, as well as multimedia buttons. A keyboard is the most used and most important input device. Let's see if the Eclipse II Illuminated keyboard can handle that job.
The Saitek Eclipse II keyboard builds on the success of the backlit Eclipse and Gaming keyboards, now offering a choice of colours – purple, red and blue – selectable by the user and adjustable via a dimmer mechanism. The key characters and keypad illuminate making the Eclipse II keyboard ideal for use in any lighting environment.
Solidly constructed from high quality materials including a stylish silver casing, the Eclipse II’s weighted base and large area rubber feet keep it firmly planted to the desk, while cushioned, silent keys mean hours of fatigue-free use.
- Key characters and keypad illuminate through laser-etched keys
- Media keys for volume control, play/pause and skip tracks
- Variable backlighting adjusts through dimmer mechanism
- Angle adjustment and extendable wrist rest for maximum comfort to suit the way you type
- Weighted base with large area rubber feet to keep keyboard securely planted to the desk
- Quiet, cushioned keys for hours of stress-free use
- Familiar 104 key layout
Package & Impressions
The packaging stands up to repeated shipping, that's for sure. It was first shipped to my house, and then forwarded to my current location, where it was undoubtably abused by the internal package handlers...
It came in a standard brown box, nearly a perfect fit for the retail packaging. No packing peanuts or bubble wrap were used, though they could have been fitted in. The outerpackaging, nor the retail packaging took any damage whatsoever.
The retail package was full color. It advertised the backlighting through laser etched keys, the three user selectable colors, variable lighting, media keys, adjustable angle and wrist rest and side lighting effects. The back even advertised these features in multible languages. (Reading the box counted toward my "studying" for German class.)
Inside the glossy package was a cardboard insert. It included a bagged keyboard and seperately bagged wrist wrest.
