Razer BlackWidow Chroma Review

This popular keyboard comes from the well-know brand Razer. What makes this keyboard so popular? I will be reviewing the BlackWidow Chroma to enable you to decide if it is right for you.

Design

The overall design is minimalistic and futuristic. This minimal design means any RGB colour that it can produce does not clash with the overall design. Beneath the keys lies a white backboard giving a strong backlight glow as well as the coloured characters. I am yet to see a keyboard with more more impressive lighting. It comes in similarly designed packaging.

This is a perfect match for the DeathAdder Chroma mouse.

Performance and Feel

The keyboard click is satisfying; the sound of the click is however not obtrusive to your activities. The texture of the main body is a rubbery-plastic which does feel of good quality. It performs exactly how you would want a gaming keyboard to. It is good for both gaming and general use and always feels professionally made.

The keyboard rests at a good height and I do not feel the need for a wrist-rest. The whole keyboard is fairly heavy (as far as keyboards go) and has well built supports meaning it will never slide around on the desk without you trying to move it.

Functionality

As well as the full set of traditional keyboard buttons, the BlackWidow comes with five macro keys (which allows you to record and replay a combination of key presses) - a handy feature. The keyboard comes with the software 'Synapse' which can let you configure the keys, lighting, macros, stats etc. meaning you can configure any key to do a variety of things. Unfortunately, these aren't copied to all keyboard profiles meaning when you want to design and save a new colour scheme you need to manually assign all the keys again. When you first launch your computer, Synapse takes a while to sort itself out meaning you can't always use the keys you have assigned straight away. To get around these problems, I would recommend using 'SharpKeys' which has even more key-assigning options than Synapse. I personally use the numpad for media control and for things like undo and redo etc.

The lighting configurator allows you to achieve a wide range of lighting effects, but wont let you create anything you can imagine. Its main effects include breathing, reactive, spectrum cycling, static, wave and ripple. This can be assigned on a scale of priority, for example, I could have a ripple emerge from the pressed key on top of a constant wave of colours. You can save each design as a profile and switch between profiles using shortcuts. You can also create keyboard shortcuts to change the profile of your Razer Chroma mouse. I have made profiles for each of the games that I play the most.

One very nice feature is that some games interact with the the lighting of any Chroma product. This includes games like Rise of the Tomb Raider and Overwatch etc. Other games can be found here: http://www.razerzone.com/chroma-workshop/. In Rise of the Tomb Raider, for example, the keys regularly used are yellow, the whole keyboard flashes red when taking damage and glows orange when holding a torch (and more - see link above).

The keyboard comes with convenient ports on the side (USB, AUX (input and output)) which connect to the through the main cable and splitting off at the end.

Conclusion

This is a high quality keyboard and is especially recommended if you have the DeathAdder Chroma. It trumps almost every aspect and I couldn't ask for much more from a keyboard. Its current price is a little over £100 (as of 12/02/17).

It can be bought from Amazon here.

#TechReview #Keyboard