Back in June of 2005, we reviewed Saitek's excellent lighted Eclipse keyboard. The gamer in us loved the solidly built keyboard with huge "glued to your desk" rubber feet, and the modder in us loved all the "potential for pimpage" like the paint job we did here, or the mod we did here that some say led to Logitech's LCD equipped G15 keyboard, both shown bellow.

Saitek has now come out with a more refined version of the "Dog Bone", the aptly titled Eclipse II. I have been using Eclipse keyboards on all my computers for a long time now, and I was a bit worried that Saitek might mess with the formula and ruin what a great many consider the best keyboard on the market. Is that the case? Read on and find out.

You can read our review of the original Eclipse here.

You can read about painting your Eclipse Keyboard here.

You can learn how to LCD mod your Eclipse here.

And the original Eclipse can still be found at CrazyPC right here, or in red here.

As you can see in the image above, that familiar shape, although a bit more refined now, is still there. At the corners, we have the extensions that create the dog bone shape and allow for the oversized rubber feet that keep the keyboard firmly stuck to your desktop during frantic gaming action. You can also see that the space bar bump out is now gone which, when added to the sexy silver and black two-toned finish, help make the Eclipse II look a lot more refined.

With the exception of the wheel/knob to the right which we will cover later, we find all the keys one would expect on a standard 104 key keyboard. There are also the standard media keys, play/pause, volume up/down, and track skip forward/back. As before, the Eclipse II requires no drivers, and is plug 'n' play right out of the box.

I like the new aesthetic--so far, so good.

The first area Saitek addressed with the Eclipse II (besides a fresh new look) was the wrist rest. Most users were luke warm on the old design, and should be quite pleased with the new implementation. The shape is improved, and there are three user selectable positions. As I personally am not a wrist rest user, I can't really comment on it other than to say it's well built and is attached to the keyboard very securely while still being easy to install/remove. The wrist rest also features several smaller rubber feet to help hold everything solidly on your desk.