wolfeeh
One of Freddy's beloved
- Joined
- Jun 7, 2012
- Messages
- 383
So, Some of you may know about my ongoing keyboard drama over the last couple of years... For some reason that I'm not abundantly clear on, I'd had a run of bad luck when it comes to keyboards; I bought a Corsair K60 - fantastic little number - until I spelt a pint of water on it when I was addled with Flu.... It died... several weeks worth of drying out, and various treatments couldn't get it to work again.
This eventually got replaced with a Corsair K95 - which pretty much from the get go displayed some manufacturing faults - keys that wouldn't register, warped backplane.... additionally, that bank of macro keys that seemed like a good idea at the time, turned out to be a magnificent pain in the ass as they mess with natural hand placement on the left hand side and actually impair your performance in FPS games. not to mention MMO's which it was actually meant to be good for...
Then I tried a bunch of other stuff - Coolermaster TriggerZ (I think), in an MX Brown, which was not overly pleasant and a Logitech G710+ which while it was OK, left a bad taste in the mouth with the price being far above what it was worth.
So.
A couple of days ago I happened across a new Razer Blackwidow Tournament Edition 2014 in Currys, when I was in there finding bits and bobs for my mum.
I'd heard good things about the new Razer Green switches and the tenkeyless design appealed... I haven't got a small desk but I find having a number pad on a keyboard skews my mouse placement too far to the right or my keyboard placement too far to the left and I end up compromising my comfort one way or the other...
I'd already been toying with the idea of a tenkeyless keyboard and felt I could survive without the numpad anyway so I thought: "what the hell, go for it".
Man, am I glad I did! let's be clear, first and foremost, the most important thing is going to be the typing action of a keyboard... and this new switch excels. Takes the lovely action of the Cherry MX Blue from keyboards of legend...and makes it better....Basically, if you are considering a purchase of any keyboard with a Cherry MX Blue, you should immediately consider the Razer green to be a more than viable alternative.
Other factors to consider? Robust build quality... They keyboard itself has a stout plastic shell, plastic base, blatantly packs a steel backplane inside due to the rigidity and heft.
Keycap font - large and legible. Would prefer a more traditional font, but hey, this is Razer, no common sense...Comparing the font size to several other keyboards, it's much larger than average. so even if the font is stupidly futuristic and robotic in appearance at least it's still easy to read.
Overall shape and design of the keyboard is actually very attractive and appealing. Matte keycaps married to a matte body with a rubberised finish that is not the fingerpring magnet of the new DASKeyboard series 4. or the Bugger to clean steel finish of the Corsairs.
Detachable Mini USB lead (Micro? I can never remember which is which). Bonus. Also a keyboard carry bag is enclosed if that is your thing...
Lastly - the negatives... well assuming you count the keycap font as one negative, although in view of its easy legibility I'm inclined to be neutral on this, then the only other negative is the fact that the media functions require an Fn key to be held down to access them.
I'm not going to score the keyboard down for lack of features like USB Hub, headphone and microphone sockets as they are just nice extras, but if you're going to have media keys at least make the things bloody accessible, or don't put them there at all.
In conclusion... if you view this keyboard as a pure typing experience, I.e. the bare minimum of gimmicks and extra extravagances (redundant extra there?) then this keyboard is actually a thing of pure beauty, where form follows function, but the form actually looks attractive too.
Ways to improve it? Change the bloody keycap font, Implement the Razer Chroma coloured backlighting (although that said, I have mixed feelings on that as I feel I would spend an unearthly amount of time potching about setting up different profiles for games that would ultimately be a complete waste of time).
This eventually got replaced with a Corsair K95 - which pretty much from the get go displayed some manufacturing faults - keys that wouldn't register, warped backplane.... additionally, that bank of macro keys that seemed like a good idea at the time, turned out to be a magnificent pain in the ass as they mess with natural hand placement on the left hand side and actually impair your performance in FPS games. not to mention MMO's which it was actually meant to be good for...
Then I tried a bunch of other stuff - Coolermaster TriggerZ (I think), in an MX Brown, which was not overly pleasant and a Logitech G710+ which while it was OK, left a bad taste in the mouth with the price being far above what it was worth.
So.
A couple of days ago I happened across a new Razer Blackwidow Tournament Edition 2014 in Currys, when I was in there finding bits and bobs for my mum.
I'd heard good things about the new Razer Green switches and the tenkeyless design appealed... I haven't got a small desk but I find having a number pad on a keyboard skews my mouse placement too far to the right or my keyboard placement too far to the left and I end up compromising my comfort one way or the other...
I'd already been toying with the idea of a tenkeyless keyboard and felt I could survive without the numpad anyway so I thought: "what the hell, go for it".
Man, am I glad I did! let's be clear, first and foremost, the most important thing is going to be the typing action of a keyboard... and this new switch excels. Takes the lovely action of the Cherry MX Blue from keyboards of legend...and makes it better....Basically, if you are considering a purchase of any keyboard with a Cherry MX Blue, you should immediately consider the Razer green to be a more than viable alternative.
Other factors to consider? Robust build quality... They keyboard itself has a stout plastic shell, plastic base, blatantly packs a steel backplane inside due to the rigidity and heft.
Keycap font - large and legible. Would prefer a more traditional font, but hey, this is Razer, no common sense...Comparing the font size to several other keyboards, it's much larger than average. so even if the font is stupidly futuristic and robotic in appearance at least it's still easy to read.
Overall shape and design of the keyboard is actually very attractive and appealing. Matte keycaps married to a matte body with a rubberised finish that is not the fingerpring magnet of the new DASKeyboard series 4. or the Bugger to clean steel finish of the Corsairs.
Detachable Mini USB lead (Micro? I can never remember which is which). Bonus. Also a keyboard carry bag is enclosed if that is your thing...
Lastly - the negatives... well assuming you count the keycap font as one negative, although in view of its easy legibility I'm inclined to be neutral on this, then the only other negative is the fact that the media functions require an Fn key to be held down to access them.
I'm not going to score the keyboard down for lack of features like USB Hub, headphone and microphone sockets as they are just nice extras, but if you're going to have media keys at least make the things bloody accessible, or don't put them there at all.
In conclusion... if you view this keyboard as a pure typing experience, I.e. the bare minimum of gimmicks and extra extravagances (redundant extra there?) then this keyboard is actually a thing of pure beauty, where form follows function, but the form actually looks attractive too.
Ways to improve it? Change the bloody keycap font, Implement the Razer Chroma coloured backlighting (although that said, I have mixed feelings on that as I feel I would spend an unearthly amount of time potching about setting up different profiles for games that would ultimately be a complete waste of time).
