Saitek Eclipse II Illuminated Keyboard

Input device has fun backlighting as well as solid performance

By Charlie White

The Saitek Eclipse II Illuminated Keyboard is a follow-on to the company's first Eclipse Illuminated Keyboard, which had a few shortcomings. However, unlike many sequels, this one's much-improved over its predecessor, with new features and significant quality enhancements. We've been banging on the keyboard for the better part of a week, teasing out its strengths and weaknesses.

Our first impression of the keyboard is that it's just downright heavy. Putting it on our precision scales, we were surprised to discover that it weighs 47.2 ounces -- that's 2.95 pounds. To put that into context, a basic Microsoft Keyboard weighs roughly half that, just 28.7 ounces. But its generous weight is not a bad thing at all. Its heft affords more stability on the desktop and a more substantial build quality. It just feels solid. It also has a wrist rest that's easily adjustable, and which has click stops that keep it in place once you've decided which of its positions is most comfortable for you. There are also two legs in the back that can be flipped up to raise the back of the keyboard. Plus, it has rubber feet that offer a great grip on the desktop as well. The overall effect is one of steady immovability.

Then there are the actual keys themselves, which make a muted noise when pressed. If you're looking for a clickety-clack style keyboard, this is most definitely not it. The Saitek Eclipse II keyboard's keys are arranged in the traditional 104-key layout, which is fine if you're using one of those now, but if you're using one of Microsoft's keyboards with the enlarged Delete key, it takes a bit of getting used to. Even so, the key travel distance with that forgiving cushion at the bottom, the feeling of the keys when pressed down and the overall solid quality makes this one of the best keyboards we've used. 

Even without its backlighting, this keyboard is excellent, if you want to just leave it at that you can turn the backlighting off so that it never shows. However, turn on the back light, and although it's gimmicky, it's an entertaining enhancement. You can change the color of the back light from blue to red to purple, and in addition to the light being visible beneath the keys, there's a slot on each side that resembles a neon light as well. Plus, it's also possible to dim the intensity of the back light with a knob conveniently located on the upper right side of the keyboard. 

The backlight dimmer is located between the media keys for volume control, play pause and skip tracks

The downside of this backlighting is that it doesn't offer enough illumination of the characters on top of the keys. It would have been better if each key had an individual light underneath that was bright enough to illuminate each numeral and character. As it is, the QWERTY section of the keyboard is bright enough so that you can see each character, but it's rather dim in the area where the numerals and various symbols such as the "@" and "$" reside. It's also a problem if you're trying to see these characters in the dark, because the monitor you're using is so much brighter than the keyboard, it can be difficult to see the numerals and characters.

That said, the keyboard is a marked improvement over its predecessor, where the Saitek Eclipse 1 had silver keys with black labels on each key, while this Eclipse II has black keys with white labels. But the labels are just light-gray; it would've been better if these laser-etched numerals and characters were bright white. We can only hope that the next version will be better illuminated and use bright white characters instead of these less-visible light-gray ones.

Summing up, we liked this keyboard a lot, with its substantial quality and considerable heft. Its backlighting entertained all those who laid eyes on it, and it's considerably better overall than its predecessor, which had just one color of lighting and which hardly illuminated the keys at all. With this new version II, the keys are more brightly illuminated, but still aren't visible enough to be easily seen in all lighting conditions. Their questionable practicality aside, the backlight adds an attractive flair to a keyboard that's already excellent without any of the lights turned on at all. Recommended. 8.5 out of 10 stars.