OCZ Sabre Keyboard Review

Sabre Configuration and Description

The Sabre is a big keyboard – a tad bigger than the Logitech G15 – and features a dark-blue body with integrated rubberized palm rest. As we already mentioned, the OLED pixels are on the left side. The normal keys are excellent for typing, making the Sabre one of the best keyboards we reviewed for this purpose (we finished translating a book with it and the Saber improved our performance just for the sheer typing comfort). Unfortunately the keys are not backlit but you can always rely on the blue LEDs on each side for light source while gaming in the dark. There is no USB hub also.

Figure 3: Side blue LEDs.

The application software is very intuitive and easy to use. It opens up a grid of the nine keys so the user can program them like a puzzle, offering the most common options (Word, Photoshop, Messenger) and commands like copy, paste and save as. For the command the use needs to easily record some macros. The Sabre has a 128MB flash memory to save the configurations. Once plugged to the PC, it functions as a external drive where the software and PDF manual are stored. A neat solution.

Figure 4: Configuring the OLED keys.

The program goes beyond the initial nine options by allowing the creation of layers associated with each key, so additional commands and functions can be configured. You can set the keys for tactical commands in complex action games like Call of Duty by recording macros. The user can attach any digital image (size 64 x 64 pixels) to a key if it’s in the following formats: bmp, gif, jpg, jpeg, png, mng, jng, ico, cur, tif, tiff, tga, pcx, wbmp, wmf, emf, j2k, jp2, j2c, jpc, pgx, ras, pnm, pgm, ppm, ska, nef, crw, cr2, mrw, raf, erf, 3fr, dcr, raw, dng, pef, x3f, arw, sr2, mef, orf.