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0 Another day and another piece of hardware from Razer. Moving on from the Razer Basilisk V3 Pro 35k mouse, today we are looking at the Razer Blackwidow V4 Pro 75% keyboard. Another great product name! This one boasts some amazing features, but will it live up to the hype? Let’s take a look.
Command and Conquer
It’s not a surprise that we love the Razer hardware lineup and the newest Blackwidow really intrigued us. Our main concern was how all the fancy new gadgetry was going to effect the battery life. Read on to find out what we discovered.
Design
The Razer Blackwidow range covers 7 (ish) keyboards of all different qualities and features. What sets this one apart is that little OLED display on the top right of the keyboard. Aside from that we are adorned with all-around aluminium, albeit with a plastic underside. What does that 75% in the name mean you may be asking. It’s size of course. With the Razer Blackwidow V4 Pro 75% being 75% smaller in size than a standard keyboard. Which effectively means that you lose the entire right side of the keyboard where the number pad would be. Thankfully you don’t really notice it, and whilst my previous keyboard was full size, this was a welcome change.
With a big push towards customisation, the Razer Blackwidow comes pre-loaded with some lovely Orange Tactile Switches. You can however swap them out for your favourite 3 or 5 pin switches to make sure that the keys feel how you want them to. I actually tested the ease of this by replacing the Orange switches with some nice Cherry MX ones. It was so easy to do and helped me feel a bit more connected to the keyboard.
Included in the box was a nice comfortable wrist made of plush leatherette. Connecting to the keyboard using some nice strong magnets.
Features
With quite a few features, its hard to know where to start. I think firstly we need to talk about the elephant in the room. The lovely OLED display. Combined with the Razer Command Dial this is a thing of beauty. Being able to switch between menus, giving you access to your PC System metrics, as well as show custom gifs and images. You can even choose from up to 100 other modes to include. My favourite thing to do with the OLED display was to add the Thumb Culture logo. I tried to add a custom gif, but it seemed to just show the first frame rather than the animation.
Razer Snap Tap, sounds like a new dance that people are doing. When in actual fact it’s a setting in the Synapse software that allows you to prioritize the latest input between two keys. This is great as if you are needing fast reactions on a game then it just reduces the input time to allow for near-instant directional changes.
Now with everything you need to take the rough with the smooth. Whilst the smooth of the Razer Blackwidow is super smooth. The rough is really really rough. The battery life. Whilst the website boasts up to 2100 hours of battery with the amazing Power Saving Mode. What it fails to tell you is that if you are not using the power save option, you will get around 18 hours of life out of the keyboard. Meaning that if you use it quite a lot you may well be charging it every other day. In those instances it may well just be better to use it as a wired keyboard and leave it plugged in. That way you get all the nice colourful features of the Razer RGB as well as constant use of the OLED screen and Command Dial. Thankfully it’s pretty easy to switch to power save, just a quick press of Fn + Esc and the lights effectively go off.
Connectivity
Whilst I’ve talked about connecting the Razer Blackwidow with the included wire there are other options of course. You can also connect the keyboard using the Hyperspeed wireless or Bluetooth 5.1. Using the included dongle gives you access to the increase polling rate, a high up to 4000 Hz. Or connect up to 3 devices using the Bluetooth 5.1 option.
I’ll be honest, the hyperspeed wireless is the way forward if you want the best experience. Going through the Bluetooth route isn’t all that bad either but the hyperspeed wireless seemed to be more reliable in my opinion.
As with pretty much all Razer products, you can connect it to the Synapse software to unlock further options with regards to the customisation. Whether you want to change up the RGB, or play around with the Command dial settings. It’s all there and more to explore.
Final Thoughts
This is where I thought I would have the most difficulty. It’s easy to talk about the Razer Blackwidow V4 Pro 75% and the features it has, but I will always come back to the battery life. How does that make me feel? Well, pretty gutted to be honest. If the keyboard had as decent battery life whilst being off the power save mode, which is astounding by the way, as it does with it turned on, this would be getting the Platinum Award easily. Thankfully the rest of the features are such that it has replaced my usual keyboard and I’ve had house of gaming fun on this one.
With all the pros and cons taken into account, the Razer Blackwidow V4 Pro 75% receives the Thumb Culture Gold Award.
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
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