Performance

So after spending some time with the Blackwidow Ultimate Chroma I can finally talk a little about how it performs. To start things off I’m a little conflicted on its comfort. The wrist rest is about one inch long, this is just long enough for it to get in the way and not long enough to help. In fact, I had to be careful when gaming on the Chroma to hold my wrist out a little farther than normal, when I put weight on that area it would slide the keyboard away from me slightly. That didn’t take too long to adjust too though. I also really like the flat black finish. This is something I talked about on our last Blackwidow review as well, the new finish feels nicer in hand and with it not being glossy it stays cleaner looking. It does still collect a little grease and oil from your hands if you aren’t careful though, but it is an improvement in that department over the glossy finish as well.

How are the Razer branded Kailh switches holding up? Well my original complaint with them was that when they are pushed all the way down there is a little looseness too them. Well with this keyboard that has improved, but there is still a little looseness left. I would really like to try out the orange keyswitches because my preferred switch is a Cherry brown, I would love to see how they compare. With these switches being very similar to the Cherry Blues, you can expect the Chroma to be a little noisy. The thin ABS keycaps aren’t helping things as well.

I mentioned it previously but I really do love that Razer gives you just the right number of macro keys. You have 5 just to the left of the keyboard. Any more would be too much for me and it would make the keyboard to large. Razer also gives you the option to be able to program any key at all so it’s a bit of a non-issue. I would LOVE to see Razer or someone try to move those 5 macro keys from the left over to just above the 12345 number keys directly in between them and the F keys. I think this might be easier to reach for people playing both MOBAs and FPS’.

The Razer Blackwidow Ultimate Chroma really isn’t any different than the Blackwidow Ultimate (that we have reviewed before) other than the RGB lighting so really most of my focus. I spent a little too much time playing with lighting options both because it was fun and also because I was curious how they work. While I was doing that I did get some photos. So overall I was very impressed with the backlighting. The white backplate really sets the RGB lighting off and the LEDs are extremely bright if you turn them up. You get a glow around the keys as well as behind the legend. This makes mixing colors interesting because of how they mix together in the glow around the keys. I will say that Razer did a great job letting you get the full color spectrum but with that I should point out that there are some limitations that are beyond Razer’s control. For one, when you are looking through the full color spectrum on a PC every color is perfect. With lighting when you set different shades, the difference is so small they you can hardly tell the difference. In addition, on a PC you can make for a darker color but with lighting this just means a dimmer color, while they sound the same they look very different. In the end you really end up with maybe 20 truly usable colors, everything else is just a slight shade difference. This isn’t a complaint though, I really loved having the option to set my backlighting to any color I would like. Where this comes in handy is setting the specific keys that you use in game. You could for example set your flash key in LoL to be yellow and ignite to red.

image 25

image 26

image 27

image 28

image 29

image 30

image 31

image 32

image 33

image 34

image 35

image 36

image 37

 

Log in to comment

garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #35869 14 Nov 2014 16:55
Happy Friday everyone, today I take another look at the Razer Blackwidow Ultimate. This time it is the Chroma edition with its RGB backlighting.
trgtprctc's Avatar
trgtprctc replied the topic: #35872 14 Nov 2014 21:59
Thanks Wes. The Stealth version of this keyboard is on my radar. Thinking of finally making the jump to a mechanical plank and dig the RGB lighting.

We have 1724 guests and one member online

supportus