Razer’s BlackWidow Ultimate Keyboard is big, heavy, and in its own words, features “Clicky” keys — in its case, Clicky Keys made specifically by Razer itself.
Razer BlackWidow Ultimate Keyboard: On the plus side
When I learned how to type, it was practically the dark ages.
No, really, it was, or at least for a large proportion of today’s PC gamers, it may as well have been the dark ages, because I learned to type before you could play Doom.
As I’ve noted before, yeah, I’m getting old, but I’ve seen a lot.
The reason why I bring up touch typing in a review of what is a gaming keyboard is because switching back to a mechanical gaming keyboard from my usual deck — the Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic — brought my mind all the way back to those days of learning how to quickly type using all five fingers. That’s because I learned how to type on a mechanical typewriter, and an entire TAFE classroom full of those beasts were very noisy.
Ragequitting and throwing it across the room would be a VERY bad idea. (Image: Razer)
The Razer BlackWidow Ultimate Keyboard has a similar kind of cadence, even when using it for regular typing rather than actual gameplay. Not that it’s built to be a typist’s best friend; this is, as with the rest of Razer’s output, a solid play for the gaming market. It does still remind me a lot of those mechanical typewriters of yore, because it’s incredibly solid, somewhat heavy at 1500gm — which means, by way of contrast, it’s heavier than three iPad Airs stacked on top of each other — and has USB 2.0 and audio ports on the side.
No, wait, the mechanical typewriters I learned on most definitely didn’t have USB 2.0 or audio ports on the side. I’m sure I would have remembered that.
Razer’s notable change with this year’s iteration of its premium BlackWidow Ultimate Keyboard has been to ditch the popular Cherry-made switches in favour of its own design, the Razer “Green” switch. This is presumably why the default keyboard backlighting is bright green, although you can thankfully tone that down or switch it off if it’s not to your taste.
Razer’s pitch for the Razer BlackWidow Ultimate Keyboard is that key actuation is minimised. For those who don’t like jargon, it means that it should, in theory, register a keystroke with less downwards force than a regular keyboard switch. The idea is that you can tap light, move fast and score more precious kills with less effort. At least, that’s the theory.
Razer BlackWidow Ultimate Keyboard: On the minus side
Like most keyboards that use fully mechanical switches, the Razer BlackWidow Ultimate Keyboard can be a noisy creature in extended use. If you’re frantically tapping away blasting the enemy, it sounds rather like gunfire, which undoubtedly may be part of the point, being slightly more intimidating and making you feel as though you’ve purchased a solid quality product, but at the same time if you have to game around those less inclined towards digital warfare, you may cop more than a few nasty looks due to your increased audio output.
The Razer BlackWidow Ultimate Keyboard uses two USB ports. One is for direct connection and the other is to pass through USB 2.0 power to the port on the side. While the connection cord is of a healthy length, there isn’t all that much separation space between the two USB plugs. Razer’s presuming that everyone using the Razer BlackWidow Ultimate Keyboard will be plugging it into USB ports sitting next to each other. If you’re not, it can quickly become a mess of cables.
The real test of any gaming keyboard — and Razer makes no bones about the fact that this is a keyboard designed with pro gamers in mind — is how much of an improvement it can make in your gaming experience.
I can’t say that I’m a hardcore PC gamer of any note, but the promise was inherent in the product, so I fired up evergreen favourite Team Fortress 2 using the Razer BlackWidow Ultimate Keyboard as my test platform.
To say the results were mixed would be an understatement.
I got slaughtered, and slaughtered a lot. It’s certainly fair to say that the slightly quicker keystroke register on the Razer BlackWidow Ultimate Keyboard’s keys did lead to slightly faster motions, but that has to be seriously mapped against the actual skill level and reaction times of the individual gamer.
It’s almost an impossible thing to quantify, because for every gamer who figures they’re getting killed due to slower response there’s likely to be one who’s fine-tuned their synapses to account for that and could find faster response times a detrimental factor. A question then, not only of mechanical keyboard skill, but also taste.
There’s also a slight issue — and this may have just been with the review sample I tested — where some keys had a slight delay in unsticking when returning back up after a keystroke. This wasn’t something that was uniform across the entire keyboard. I noticed it more frequently with keys on the right hand side of the keyboard, most noticeably with the backspace key, which is going to more affect you if you’re typing than gaming — but heavy PC gamers may find that a key sticking up and therefore not registering further taps is the exact opposite of what they actually wanted.
Razer BlackWidow Ultimate Keyboard: Pricing
Razer lists the RRP for the Razer BlackWidow Ultimate Keyboard at $229.95, although shopping around can drop that price below the $200 price point; at the time of writing for example EB Games is listing it at $199.95.
Razer BlackWidow Ultimate Keyboard: Fat Duck Verdict
I’ve been using the Razer BlackWidow Ultimate Keyboard both as a gaming and typing keyboard.
I have no doubt whatsoever that I’ll be switching back to my ergonomic keyboard for writing purposes, because it’s way more comfortable and better suited for those tasks. But that’s not a fair assessment of a gaming keyboard, and that’s clearly what the Razer BlackWidow Ultimate Keyboard is.
Because gaming, you know? (Image: Razer)
It’s certainly solid, and the promises of improved actuation are true to an extent, but only to one that’s true for some of the keyboard, not all of it. I can’t say that anything I’ve tested using a standard WASD layout has suffered much, but at least on my review sample the right hand side of the keyboard has been noticeably stickier on that return keystroke than I’d like on a premium keyboard. It’s possible that repeated thumpings might remove that as an issue — but that’s hardly an ideal outcome for a premium product.