First things first, we’ll deal with the appearance of the keyboard. We personally think it looks drastically better than the previous model, the BlackWidow Chroma V2, largely down to the keyswitches protruding from the backplate and the much smaller overall footprint. The Chroma V2 had large bezels around the keyboard, as well as the Macro keys on the left edge which increased its size. Remaining on the topic of appearance, the RGB lighting is stunning, aided by the Chroma section of the Synapse software. However, there’s a couple of small issues we found, with the first being the LED indicators above the direction keys, they can’t be altered from any other colour than white which makes them stand out like a sore thumb. There’re also the media keys in the top-right, the colour can be altered on these, but all three must be the same colour.
Razer’s new sidewalls on the mechanical switches have made a marked improvement over the, already great, key switches. There’s a lot less noticeable lateral movement while typing and gaming which seriously improves the overall feel of the keyboard. Having said that, there is one downside to these new sidewalls present, O-rings will no longer fit, if you’re a fan of using them. Maybe best to choose the Razer Orange keys if you want the tactile feel with a little less noise.
Comfort of use is something we hugely praised the previous version for, and we’re happy to say, that comfort has been carried over with the plush, leatherette wrist rest, this time they’ve improved the rubber pads on the underside and mounted the magnetic attachment system in such a way that the angle of the rest can be altered slightly.
The cable routing built into the underside of the keyboard is handy and certainly welcomed over the previous version, allowing you to be that little bit tidier with your wire management. Razer have also moved the USB and headset passthrough to the left side, giving right-handed users a little more space for mouse movement.
We mentioned in the introduction that we’ve used the BlackWidow Chroma V2 for nearly 18 months so we know the keyboard inside and out. There are two inclusions on the Elite that we can’t believe we lived without, one being the media keys, including skip backwards, play/pause and skip forwards and the volume wheel/mute button. The other function is, when the fn key is depressed, the keyboard’s backlighting is disabled, leaving only the relevant buttons lit with a white backlight.
Razer’s new sidewalls on the mechanical switches have made a marked improvement over the, already great, key switches. There’s a lot less noticeable lateral movement while typing and gaming which seriously improves the overall feel of the keyboard. Having said that, there is one downside to these new sidewalls present, O-rings will no longer fit, if you’re a fan of using them. Maybe best to choose the Razer Orange keys if you want the tactile feel with a little less noise.
Comfort of use is something we hugely praised the previous version for, and we’re happy to say, that comfort has been carried over with the plush, leatherette wrist rest, this time they’ve improved the rubber pads on the underside and mounted the magnetic attachment system in such a way that the angle of the rest can be altered slightly.
The cable routing built into the underside of the keyboard is handy and certainly welcomed over the previous version, allowing you to be that little bit tidier with your wire management. Razer have also moved the USB and headset passthrough to the left side, giving right-handed users a little more space for mouse movement.
We mentioned in the introduction that we’ve used the BlackWidow Chroma V2 for nearly 18 months so we know the keyboard inside and out. There are two inclusions on the Elite that we can’t believe we lived without, one being the media keys, including skip backwards, play/pause and skip forwards and the volume wheel/mute button. The other function is, when the fn key is depressed, the keyboard’s backlighting is disabled, leaving only the relevant buttons lit with a white backlight.
