Black Widow Elite Review / Razer is Misleading You

[Element23]

Hey there,

 

I have recently bought the Razer Black widow elite (orange switch) and I have a few things to say. I hope my experience helps anyone doing some research before buying it. My previous keyboards were the Ornata Chroma and then the Black widow v2 Chroma (green switches). I have the Razer Mamba Tournament Edition  and DeathAdder  Elite (Chroma) mice. I also have the Razer PewDiePie headphones. So I am no stranger to Razer and their shifty double-speak or their synapse software; however, this experience annoyed me enough to say something and write my first review for one of their products. So if anyone is looking to buy the Black Widow Elite and saving custom lighting is a factor, this is a PSA.

 

Chroma Lighting and Macros:

 

They market the Black Widow Elite as having on board memory to save profiles and lighting options. This is only half true (at best). I wanted to use the keyboard at my office and am unable to install synapse 3 on my business PC. I was imagining that I could set up my Macros for Outlook and Excel as well as my preferred lighting on my personal PC and store them on the keyboard to be used at work. I have included their marketing pictures below as they are what caught my eye and influenced my purchase (sorry but there is one in German).

 

 

 

If you want to save lighting profiles, you can only save any of the 11 "Quick Effects", and nothing that is custom made in Chroma under "Advanced Effects". That is a bummer as I spent a lot of time creating a keyboard lay out that looks like the LCARS from Star Trek TNG.

 

 

I also noticed now that when I lock my computer (windows+L), the keyboard reverts back to the default spectrum lighting option. This is new, as the BW V2 did not do that; it would stay with whatever lighting profile was selected when I opened Synapse 3.

 

Furthermore, whenever I use the function key, all the lights on the keyboard turn off.... This is pretty counter intuitive when buying a backlit keyboard in a low light setting forcing me to crane my head down to see which key I am pressing with.

 

Other than the lighting issue, I can say that the Macro feature seems okay. It does what they say. The only drawback is they took off the Macro key on this black window and we are left using Hypershift; again, which requires us to use the function key and kill the lights on the keys.

 

Switches:

 

As mentioned, I have the orange switches. This is a big change for me coming from the clicky greens. I find them nice and responsive. I find that I am not bottoming out the key each stroke like I did with the greens and that my fingers are not as tired after typing large documents. Everyone seems to compare them to Cherry Browns, but I can not say, I have never owned or typed with browns. I can only tell you that you feel the actualization of the key stroke and do not need to press so hard to get there as compared to the greens.

 

 

 

Miscellaneous:

 

• The wrist rest is good and exactly what I expected after my previous two Razer keyboards.
• The multi-media keys are nothing to be excited about as the volume wheel does not have much resistance when scrolling and the three keys for "Pause", "Forward" and "Back" are not lit up (only around them).
• The 5 lights above the arrow keys (the ones for CAPS LOCK, Gamer Mode, Macro Recording ect...) might as well be just 5 random white dots that you can not control and are oddly placed. You do not see what each dot is for in the dark.
• The metal design gives it a heavy feel and zero bend when typing.
• As I was typing this review, something triggered the key "m" and it kept typing with out me pressing down on it... I was unable to make it stop until I unplugged the keyboard. There is nothing in the switch that would trigger this, but it is worth mentioning.
• Synapse 3 crashed twice while writing this review, causing macros and lighting to revert back to default.

 

Overall:

 

This is a good keyboard if it will be your first Razer Keyboard and you are not as worried about the lighting profiles as I was. If you already have the black widow v 2 Chroma, there is no need to "upgrade" here.  You could save yourself some money and get the BW v2 and not really miss out on anything.

 

If this purchase has influenced me in any way, it would be that I wish I bought the Black Widow V2 Chorma with orange keys, or that I may in the near future switch out all my Razer gear for corsair and use real cherry switches.