Razer is making some pretty bold claims
about their black widow ultimate 2014 when you consider that on the surface it
appears to be entirely unchanged from
their last generation Flagship is there really Innovation left in mechanical
keyboards I guess we'll find
out with its Factory tuning and data center DNA an Intel 7 30 series SSD is
an amazing choice for gamers and performance enthusiasts first up is the
packaging which razer's reviewers guide informs me is the way to tell the New
Black Widow ultimate from the old one and that it's great because of the
cleaner lines and new artwork but none of that really matters to me because
Razer missed one small nearly insignificant detail it doesn't say 2014
edition anywhere on it I sure wish whatever product naming School Razer and
Apple's iPad team went went to would go away Razer I've told you guys this
already but come on I don't care if you ran out of snake spiders and mythical
creatures different products need to have different names or at least numbers
that clearly indicate the revision or generation of the product to your
customers anyway with that out of the way let's get into the important
differences Razer has done an under the hood update that turns the Black Widow
ultimate into a completely different Beast gone are the Cherry MX Blue and
brown switches were used to finding on their clicky and stealth versions and
they've been replaced by what Razer is calling razor mechanical switches in
green and orange variants respectively
so your first reaction to this is probably what the devil is a razor
mechanical switch and honestly I said the same thing the answer is both simple
and complicated the simple version from Razer is that they recognized that the
key switch designs on the market were optimized for a great typing experience
and while they happened to be superior for gaming to membrane key switches
especially if you pre-sorted them or bin them from the factory like razer's been
doing gaming isn't what they were designed for that is why they set out to
create the first key switches made from the groundup for gaming the complicated
version is that in addition to what I just said Cherry MX switches are
expensive and constantly in short supply
and cherri's patent on their MX key switches very recently expired so now
elements of that design can be used by other companies without any legal
ramifications and Razer can move from having their key switches made that
cherry corporations factories in Germany to less expensive manufacturers in China
such as kale or even build their own facility if they wanted to now to be
clear I'm not saying that razer's new key switches are a Chinese Cherry clone
because while the design Bears many similarities to Cherry MX it is
different and the changes are positive ones first up the actuation point the
exact position where the downward keystroke is registered by the computer
is Spec 3 mm higher this has the obvious
effect of making your key presses register sooner when you press down and
it also moves the actuation point itself 3 mm closer to the reset point or the
position when you let go where the key is ready to be activated again both of
these things are designed to improve the keyboard's responsiveness which is defin
Ely good another effect of this is
applicable to razer's clicky green key switch not to be confused with cherrymx
greens totally different and that is that it moves the actuation point closer
to where the tactile bump is felt by the user meaning it's
easier to feel when you've successfully pressed the key without needing to
bottom it out or press the key all the way down to be sure this has perhaps
less relevance for typists but for gamers it makes double tapping or any
other quick repetitive actions easier to do by feel next up their design calls
for more gold on the contacts which razor determined allows an increase in
the rated durability on each key from 50 million keystrokes to 60 million
keystrokes and finally they are improving quality by employing their own
QA staff on the factory floor to achieve
A4 mm variance in pre-travel distance
versus cherry 6 mm variance this should improve the
consistency and feeling from One keyboard to another and even across all
the keys on a single keyboard not being Elite hack or gamer like the Esports
players who Razer has had testing the keyboard since last year I didn't notice
the raised actuation Point much but I
also really didn't find anything to complain about the green Razer key
switch keyboard here definitely felt different from my ducky shine 3 with
Cherry MX Blues but but it didn't feel much different and in fact if I didn't
know I was using different switches I would have guessed it was just batto
batch variance between Blues rather than a completely different manufacturer but
I really like cherrymx Blues so if they feel like Blues to us regular folks but
they have added benefits for more demanding users then that's great now
Cherry's pitch for their switches is unparalleled quality due to German
manufacturing but if razer's solution to combat that notoriously inconsistent
Chinese build quality is to submit their own specifications and put their own
staff on the floor for quality control then I think ultimately the question
Gamers need to ask themselves is this
are you buying a keyboard or a key switch do you really need to know where
the bread came from you know at Subway
if the sandwich Artisan delivers a delicious and nutritious sandwich to you
do you need to know where Razer is sourcing each individual component of
their keyboard or do you trust Razer to deliver you an exceptional product as
long as they're overseeing the manufacturing leave your comments under
the video and let me know your thoughts
speaking of exceptional products I've spent so much time talking about the key
switches that I haven't actually given you much information about the keyboard
itself it's got fully programmable keys and five additional gaming keys with
support for on the Fly macro recording individual per key back lighting with 13
levels of brightness all the way from off to a phenomenally vibrant beautiful
green it's got media keys with the function key to control them on the
right so it takes up less Prime gaming real estate on the left side of the
keyboard 10 key rollover so you're not going to have to worry about ghosting
and both USB and audio pass through
ports over here on the right hand side the build quality of the keyboard is
solid as we've come to expect and the matte black finish is fantastic a huge
improvement over some of their previous designs that used glossy plastic if I
had to point out something I don't like about the design um all I really came up
with is that uh there's no wrist rest included but that is becoming um a more
common thing in general and I guess I don't like this at symbol very much
seriously Razer like what is that but anyway all things considered those are
really minor complaints and if this product is an indication of the kind of
more affordable mechanical keyboards that will be available for gamers with
these switches which are not exclusive to R are in any way they're saying well
yeah sure whoever can use them then I think the future is very exciting
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