The SideWinder range of joysticks and gamepads was discontinued by Microsoft in 2003, citing poor sales. But now, the brand is back - Revenge of the Sith style.

Complementing the SideWinder gaming mouse released a year ago, Microsoft has now launched a gaming keyboard, the SideWinder X6, and a cut-down version of the mouse, the SideWinder X5.

All the devices in the new SideWinder range look like the kind of peripherals you'd get if you let Darth Vader assemble them using parts from a TIE Fighter. It's not a bad look though - sharp angles with subtle curves, glowing red mood lighting and a combination of glossy piano black and matte plastic. The gloss areas are sensibly restricted to bits that you wouldn't normally touch, as they show up every finger mark and speck of dust.

The X6 keyboard's headline feature is its programmable numeric keypad, which can be swapped from one end of the keyboard to the other. According to Microsoft's PR droids, the thinking is that people don't buy keyboards just to play games - they need to be able to do other, less important stuff (work, for example), with them as well. And if you're going to write up your household budget in Excel, you probably want a regular numeric keypad on your keyboard. So that's what the X6 has.

But then when you want to fire up some Call of Duty 4, that numeric keypad is in your way. Your left hand is most likely sitting on WASD, while your right is on your (SideWinder) mouse. If only you could remove the keypad, you'd have more mousing surface available and wouldn't keep getting headshotted by that damn camper on the roof. Or so the thinking goes.

Hence, the X6's numeric keypad unplugs. You can pull it off and chuck it away, freeing up more desk space. Or, you can plug it into the other side of the keyboard, by your left hand, where it can provide an extra 18 programmable macro keys in addition to the six which reside in a row beneath the Esc key.

The X6 isn't actually the first keyboard to try this idea - Logitech's diNovo Media Desktop introduced the idea of a separate keypad several years ago. But that keypad wasn't detachable so much as permanently detached; it was a clunky Bluetooth wireless affair that never worked properly. It was designed for use with home-theatre PCs rather than gaming, and cost a fortune. So Microsoft's gaming-oriented implementation of the concept is both unique and a big improvement.

Plugging the keypad into one side or the other is a smooth procedure - it's magnetised and has an angled docking port, so you practically just have to sit it next to the keyboard and it gets sucked over and plugs itself in.

The biggest benefit from removing the keypad will probably be felt by gamers at LAN events - often you have three gamers on a table designed for one, and can barely move your mouse without hitting something. Being able to shrink the size of your keyboard by removing the keypad will be a godsend to players in such situations.

Macro keys are a feature popularised by Logitech's G15 gaming keyboard, and allow you to assign sequences of keypresses to a single macro key for fast access. It's a bit like the 21st century equivalent of the "autofire" switch they used to have on joysticks back in the day. In a game like Counter-Strike, the main use for these keys is probably to speed up the purchasing of equipment - record a macro representing the keypresses to purchase an M4A1 rifle from the menus, and then when you want to do it next time you just need to push the macro key. They're probably of greater use in more complicated games such as MMORPGs or RTSes than they are in FPSes.

The X6 has 30 macro keys in all - S1-S6 are down the left of the keyboard and can be switched to become S7-S12 using a toggle button, while the numeric keypad provides S13-S30 in "gaming" mode. Recording a macro can be done at any time and is a simple case of pressing the "record macro" button at the top of the keyboard, then the macro key you want to assign, then the key sequence to be recorded. Press the record button again to save it. Macros record the time you delay between each key press, so won't necessarily be faster than pushing the keys manually, but each macro can be fine-tuned using the Macro Editor in the keyboard's control panel software to adjust or remove the delay if you wish.

In the unlikely event that 30 macro keys isn't enough, you can also switch the keyboard between three "banks" or configurations using a toggle button. By default the first bank is intended to be your "standard" configuration for non-gaming activities - the numeric keypad is set to regular mode for this bank. Then the second and third bank are for gaming, with the keypad set to macro mode. Each bank can be programmed separately with its own macro assignments, making a total of 90 possible macros. You can also reconfigure all the other buttons, such as the media controls, to do different things in each bank, and the Windows key can be enabled or disabled. All of these settings can also be made specific to a particular application - so you can have three banks of commands for playing World of Warcraft, three banks for Counter-Strike: Source and another three banks for playing Microsoft Excel. The software will automatically switch the configuration when it detects one of the configured applications is active, indicated with a row of amber "Auto" lights next to the bank selector button.