I have been waiting for this keyboard for a few months now. After a few delays and when I have forgotten about it, it finally arrived at my door. The Black Widow is Razers most prestegious keyboard with full mechanical keys. Heres an image of it with its brilliant blue glow, with futuristic character font printed on the keys. Unlike any Logitech keyboard this is full mechanic like the SteelSeries 7G except with a few differences. The keys have a rubber coating which makes them feel great and best of all t hey are fully backlit as well. Unlike many backlit keyboards which has a rubber membrane they diffuse light into. Mechanical keys require each key to have a separate LED for lighting making the backlit version cost much more. If you know mechanical keys, the main manufacturer of mechanical keys is Cherry. They produce many keys with different profiles named by their colour under the cap. The ones used on the Black Widow is the Cherry Blue keys. The Cherry Blues actuate (trigger) at half depression and produces a tactile click when it does. You may have read that Razer designed the keys to work that way but to be honest, they didn't design anything, they just ordered the keys from Cherry. If you want Cherry Blue keys, they are available on a few other keyboards. The Cherry Blue keys are slightly different to the more common Cherry Black keys used in many other mechanical gaming keyboards. The Cherry Blacks doesn't actuate until after the click, but the click is very slight, almost non-existent so there is a less tactile feel but depresses faster. The Cherry Blue keys which actuate at half depression is both a benefit and a curse. The keys triggers faster which is great. At the same time, the actuation happens half way so you must let the key fully bounce back up before you can press it again. This can be a problem when trying to mash a single key repeatedly, but you can make a macro for that anyway. One thing I don't like about the keyboard is the lack of a wrist rest. Most keyboards at this price range would include one but I guess I would have to manage. Another disappointing thing is the media controls and backlight button. On most keyboards they would have made extra keys to accomdate the backlight and media controls. However the Black Widow simply gives you an FN key and map the functions on F1 through F12. Once again a keyboard at this price should really have these features. It features a USB and audio pass-through. The USB is useful for plugging in USB keys and such but the audio pass-through is fairly useless. Since most people generally use the backpanel ports to plug in speakers and use front panel ports for headsets and microphones. Using a pass through to bring the back panel ports to the keyboard is quite useless. All in all this keyboard is very similar to the iOne Xarmor U9BL if not the exact same keyboard. Rubber coated Cherry Blue keys, blue LED backlight, USB and audio pass-through. The Razer does have the advantage of macros, better looks, and media control (despite the FN key). Overall I really like this keyboard. I got exactly what I wanted. Nice mechanical keys + full backlight. If you are considering a new keyboard, definitely go for mechanical. There are a lot of keyboards with cherry keys like the SteelSeries 7G which uses Cherry Blacks. However I find the Back Widow one of the better looking ones and I prefer Cherry Blue keys more.
I have the standard editions, I love it other than the horrible finish, it attracts fingerprints like crazy. The lack of wrist rest doesn't really bother me as I have a gel one which I prefer over the ones that usually come with keyboards.
