2 days ago I was roaming around the 5 story Funan Digital Life Mall in Singapore when I stumbled across a Razer Black Widow keyboard in one of the more "gaming" oriented stores. After finding nothing else of interest in the mall and being unsuccessful in haggling down the price of 40GB Intel SSD, I bought the keyboard.
The keyboard is presented in the sort of clean, 1337 box one would expect of Razer. Opening up the package reveals the keyboard along with a smagorgasm of papers: a master guide, a quick start guide, 2 Razer stickers, a "Certificate of Authenticity", and a product catalog.
The keyboard itself carries over the clean, 1337 looks which are typical of Razer. Indeed, "1337" summarizes the main design theme of the keyboard, as is apparent in the angular lettering as well as the overglossy, fingerprint revealing keyboard shell. None the less, while the keyboard remains striking from afar, I find it not to be the most attractive of Razer's keyboards.
The build quality of the keyboard is high, with a braided USB cable as well as a hefty, sturdy design. The keycaps are textured and have an average level of wobble, but still feel durable.
The keyboard features a gentle slope of the keycaps which increases ergonomics, as does the slight incline of the area below the space bar, which makes for a convenient thumb rest. Two feet are present to increase the height of the keyboards if need be, with two (near indistinguishable) height settings.
The only concern I find is the junction between keyboard and cable which looks precarious, be sure to not rip the cord out by accident. Also, the m1-m5 keys are easy to hit when reaching for the right ctrl key.
The keycaps themselves appear to be made of an ABS-esque plastic with pad printed lettering. The lettering is not surrounded by the extended lettering pad associated with crappy OEM keyboards, as only the letters are printed. What is intriguing, however, is that within the lettering there is a fainter letter, which may be a form of semi-transparent material to allow light to pass through in the more expensive model. Overall, though, I find it difficult to determine the exact nature of the lettering printing process.
Moving on, we have the alternate lettering, which encompasses all the secondary functions (E.g. "!" instead of "1", ">" instead of ".", Volume Up instead of F3). This lettering is dark grey instead of white, and appears to be pad printed.
However, due to its color the lettering is difficult to make out in harsh light.
The switches of the keys are clicky and tactile, although I have yet to pry off a key to affirm what type they are (I really don't want to break the keyboard).Being my first clicky keyboard, I can appreciate the lightness of the keys when compared to the high force buckling spring mechanism of the Model M, which killed my wrists.
Despite apperaing to be cherry blue switches,when I used the Rip-O-Meter tool, I got a measurement of 60g (12 nickels) on the "F" key, "[" key, and the spacebar! This is intriguing, given that the cherry blue switch is designed to actuate at 50g.What really makes the Blackwidow different from other mechanical keyboards, however, is not the switch type, but rather the software features. Out of the box, the function key is able to control the F-key commands of audio volume, media playback, and gaming mode (F11 - it disables the windows key). The F12 key combined with the function key changes the brightness of the razer logo on the bottom of the keyboard, it can be set to either low, medium, high, variable, or off.
To get the benefit of macro keys the software must the installed. The interface is clean and 1337, and enables each individual key (including letters) to:
a. Be remapped to another key
b. Initiate a recorded Marco
c. Switch Profiles
d. Launch a program
This tool is incredibly useful, making the registry hackery of SharpKeys unnecessary.
The macros themselves may be carefully constructed with the software macro tool, which takes into account delays. Additionally, by pressing [Fn] + [Right ALT] the macro recording feature is enabled. Simply press [Fn] + [Right ALT], then the desired macro, then [Fn] + [Right ALT] again, and finally the key to map it to. This feature does require the software to be installed to function.
The LED num lock indicators are hidden are hidden underneath the plastic shell, and are very subtle when compared to the blinding LED's of other keyboards. Each indicator has the shape of the lock it corresponds to, "C" for Caps Lock, "S" for scroll lock, and "1" for Num Lock.
Finally, we have N-key rollover. The BlackWidow doesn't have full n-key rollover, but is optimized for gaming. As such, it is sufficient for most gamers.
NKRO Test:
ASW - YES
ASX - YES
GHY - YES
ASDF - YES
JKL - YES
ERF - YES
In fact, most realistic combinations have 3 key rollover, and a few have four. The QWEASD, WERSDF, and YUIHJK cluster all have 6 key rollover.
Some combinations without 3-key:
CXI - NO
XVI - NO
And so forth... as you can see they aren't commonly used combinations.
Overall, I have to say that the Razer BlackWidow is a high quality, extremely functional product, especially given the $80 asking price. The apparent pad printing process raises concerns about the durability of the lettering, but at a price of $80 I would be hard beat to find a higher quality product. The Razer BlackWidow is definately worth a look for those looking to enter the mechanical keyboard game.
