This keyboard at first glance look nice and very well built for what it meant to do. And the gaming and the laser etched key gives it a real sleek look with the light up keys. Giving it the extra bit of detail in dimly lit rooms, for those night time gaming sessions. You can also adjusts the brightness and save this setting on the Razer Synapse 2.0 cloud.
You can set macros even though there are no dedicated set of buttons like on the Razer Black Widow. Also you can set it to gamer mode where you can disable the windows button and Alt-Tab that would take you out of the game. Going back to the keyboard itself the keys are on a membrane switch and are in the chiclet layout, which feels gentle to the touch. One does get some tactile feeling when pressing the key and that you hit the desired key.
This keyboard also comes in an ultimate version that, instead of the number pad, it has the extra macro buttons that one can download from Synapse to better enhance their gaming. The keyboard also features a touch pad. The touch pad also doubles as a mouse where the player can move there mouse pointer by using it.
Pros
- Has a good feel and the keys make thing silent for people that don't want to make too much noise when they play games.
- The back light keys look nice and easy to learn.
- The modes are a good and neat little extra to have.
- Has an elegant feel when using it both for gamming and daily use.
Cons
- The keys are on membrane and don't have any sort of switches like Razers other keyboards.
- The keys can get greasy and show finger prints. For those that hate to see there keyboards look nasty.
- There are not many settings for the Extra version and the Ultimate. (As the ultimate you can change the color of the keys.)
- Sometimes the keyboard is not detected by Synapse 2.0 and it makes you have to close the app in order to use the keyboard.
Final thoughts on the keyboard:
For the months that I used this keyboard I found it good more for typing then gaming and if you would like a keyboard for more than just typing I would suggest getting the Razer Black Widow or any other gamming keyboard that is valuable on the market.
I didn't feel the need to use the macros or the gaming mode for the most part of using it and felt that the built in wrist rest would some time strain my wrist after a while. But it is a bit of a nice addition to the keyboard.
I have a review on the Razer Black Widow 2010 edition and to view that review please follow this link: Razer Black Widow Gaming Keyboard Review which contains all my thoughts on this keyboard and others by Razer.