Razer BlackWidow Chroma V2 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard – Yellow Switch

Razer BlackWidow Chroma V2 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard

Razer BlackWidow Chroma V2 is the current iteration of the now classic BlackWidow from Razer that first came out back in 2010. Razer has sought to improve their mechanical keyboards over the years and even started making their own variant of the Cherry switches commonly used in today’s mechanical keyboards. Their current in-house switches have an improved rated lifetime of 80 million actuations that should make buyers feel confident that their investment in the keyboard will be rewarded with a long service life.

Razer keyboards are unashamedly all about gaming being the number one focus and this is visible throughout the BlackWidow Chroma V2 design. The inclusion of column of dedicated macro keys on the left makes it really useful to those that would like to set up a few keys for dedicated macros, without having to press a combination of keys to run a needed macro. Do you ever need to pop all your cooldowns to survive a fight with a boss or do you have a standard “buy” command you need to use often? Then making things as simple as just pressing a button will save you precious time.

The Chroma really is a great thing for everyone since you no longer will get stuck with one color scheme and can change it over and over to your heart’s desire. It is so nice that getting stuck with the standard blue, green, and red peripherals is a thing of the past. Now with Chroma Workshop integration meaning that for certain compatible games your keyboard will be interactive with some of your favorite games and apps.

Razer product’s packaging and marketing materials have always been an area in which they excelled and the packaging for this keyboard definitely amazing. A definite draw to this product in a retail setting is going to be the sample key switch in the lower right-hand corner of the box. It lets customers feel the switches as well as see the RGB lighting, and for the person who buys the keyboard, it becomes a nice little keychain. The downside to this I am left wondering about how much extra this is adding to the $169.99 price of the BlackWidow Chroma V2.

Specifications

• Razer™  Yellow Linear Mechanical Switches with 45g actuation force
• 80 million keystroke life span
• Chroma backlighting with 16.8 million customizable color options
• Razer Synapse enabled
• 10 key roll-over anti-ghosting
• Fully programmable keys with on-the-fly macro recording
• 5 additional dedicated macro keys
• Gaming mode option
• Audio-out/mic-in jacks
• USB pass-through
• 1000Hz Ultrapolling
• Braided fiber cable
• Approximate size: 475mm/18.72 in (Width) x 171mm/6.74 in (Height) x 39mm/1.54 in (Depth)
• Approximate weight: 1500g/3.31lbs

System Requirements

• PC or Mac with a free USB port
• Windows® 10 / Windows® 8 / Windows® 7 / Mac OS X (v10.8 – 10.11)
• Internet connection
• 100 MB of hard disk space
• Razer Synapse registration (requiring a valid e-mail), software download, license acceptance, and internet connection needed to activate full features of the product and for software updates. After activation, full features are available in optional offline mode.