I mostly test wrist rests for about five minutes after which I'll throw them back inside the packaging for an indefinite amount of time, but I found myself using this one for the vast majority of my testing period. The wrist rest is made out of a very soft and comfortable leatherette fabric, and it attaches to the keyboard via magnets, making it extremely easy to attach or remove. When companies include a wrist rest it mostly feels (and looks) like some kind of afterthought, but that's not the case here at all. The last thing that we need to talk about is the included wrist rest. They do their job well and have a rubberized texture on the tip so no complaints there. It's not a huge deal (especially since cleaning a keyboard isn't some massive undertaking) but to me it would've made more sense if these design elements were swapped between the two versions.įive rubber elements underneath the board help it stay secure even during intense button mashing sessions, and underneath the board there are two feet which can be used to angle the keyboard. You'd think that they would also go that route with a keyboard that's designed for portability and ease of use, but they opted to have the keys be recessed here. The Blackwidow Elite, for example, has the switches sit atop of the keyboard which makes it way easier to quickly blow out dust and other unwelcome additions. The switches and keys themselves sit inside the keyboard on top of a white backplate, and while I agree with all of Razer's design choices so far I feel like this one's a bit weird.
Luckily I didn't ever have an issue where the cable disconnected because of me moving the board around (which is something that I do quite often when gaming) so no issues there. The cable itself is braided and rather stiff, and that last part can be a problem if the connection to the board is too loose or flimsy. I mentioned this earlier, but this is an absolute must for me when it comes to smaller form factor boards. To further drive home the 'made for competitive players' point the (micro USB) cable on the Blackwidow Tournament Edition is completely detachable. Media buttons and dials are an awesome addition to any 'home station' keyboard, but they'd just be taking up space on a keyboard that's designed with competitive players in mind, so I don't really see it as a negative that the TE doesn't have any additional features on that front. All media controls are accessed by pressing one of the function keys along with the fn key, which is fine to me. I never use the numpad (for browsing or gaming) but I do use the arrow keys (mostly for browsing and productivity) so when it comes to the size the Blackwidow TE is ideal for me.Ĭontrary to the Elite version, the Tournament Edition doesn't have any extra media buttons. Whether or not you need a numpad is going to depend entirely on personal preferences, but for me this is the ideal form factor. The first (and most obvious) change when compared to the Elite version is the fact that there's no numpad on the TE.
#Razer chroma blackwidow v2 portable#
Now that doesn't mean that it's only suitable for gamers who are often competing in real life tournaments, but it does mean that some compromises have been made in order to make the TE more portable and compact.
The keyboard, featuring an all new font, a matt black plastic front and back, 5 Macro keys along the left hand edge, soft plastic keycaps and a large, glossy panel in the top right.The Blackwidow Tournament Edition is built for, you guessed it, tournaments. We decided to use the keycap in replacement of the “esc” key, purely for aesthetic purposes.
The Keycap Keychain this is a genius use of a redundant part of the packaging. There’s also a duo of Razer stickers, the instruction manual, a small write up, and the Razer Keycap Keychain, which features the Razer Green mechanical switch and RGB lighting effects when pressed. Included within the box, along with the keyboard, is the wrist rest, which features a magnetic strip to align with the keyboard, this means there’s no clips to break. You will also notice, along the bottom of the box, is a 4 step process on setting up your Razer Keycap Keychain.
#Razer chroma blackwidow v2 manual#
Inside the lid are the instruction manual and a small ‘Welcome to the cult of Razer’ greeting card, from the Co-Founder of Razer, Min-Liang Tan. Once opened, the keyboard is held in place by soft foam at either end, with a protective plastic shield over the top. The rear of the box highlights the main features, including the differences in the three switches that Razer now offers: Green, Orange and the brand new Yellow. Also included on the front of the packaging is a sample key, used to provide an example of how the Razer green mechanical keys feel this also doubles as a keyring, which you’ll see later. Absolutely no surprises with their packaging black and green, a simple design and a tendency to show off their RGB scheme.