Razer BlackWidow Elite Mechanical Gaming Keyboard review

Razer BlackWidow Elite Mechanical Gaming Keyboard review

Razer BlackWidow Elite Mechanical Gaming Keyboard review

PROSVery well-built design.
Very comfortable wrist rest.
Excellent typing experience.
CONS
Slightly unstable wrist rest.
Customization only available on Windows.

what's up guys after numerous requests over the past few weeks we've got a highly anticipated review for you guys where are we checking out the razer blackwidow elite gaming keyboard I know I know I'm sorry to keep you waiting but better late than never so in this review we're gonna talk about the pros and cons some of the features all the things you're gonna want to know if you're interested in picking up the Black Widow elite so first off this definitely looks just like the previous Huntsman Elite keyboard but I'll tell you right off the bat actually has more features in the Huntsman lineup for a cheaper price so it's got your standard layout that you're probably used to with previous Razer keyboards but like I said before we have some welcoming changes the body is made from quote military-grade metal take that for what you will but the construction here is identical to the previous Black Widow X chroma key board

that was released over two years ago in 2016 so your more rugged matte finish versus plastic it's definitely a nice change taking a look around on the top right side of the keyboard we have one of my favorite features dedicated multimedia keys and to the right of that we have the return of the multifunctional digital dial this thing is great on stock out of the box it's gonna be your standard like volume wheel we could press it in to mute it and the quick little adjustments but within their software you can really change it up to launch programs or just no key bind it to certain effects or programs it's a really great little tool maybe you want to scroll in and out of your desktop or up and down on a page use it for color correcting that was an exclusive feature on the Huntsman elite keyboard so I'm really happy they brought it over here now to this one we also have two things that that keyboard did not have and that's the return of a USB pass-through plus an audio pass-through for plugging in something like you know headphones it's

embedded right here on the left side of the keyboard again the huntsmen elite did not have that so you can use this for plug it in like a flash drive or what I use it for is plugging in my mouse so you can just plug in the mouse here so dumped into prowl another cable on your desktop and then again same for headphones you want to plug them in here then flipping it over underneath we do have five ever pads to prevent from sliding around on your desktop and a 3-way cable gutter so you can kind of manage and route this really thick cable now this cable is very stiff and since it is so thick it's not the easiest to route and like actually kind of annoying so you're gonna have to bend it quite a bit which isn't too pleasant you can round at the top of your keyboard or the left or right side but then we also have feet to elevate his backside with two

different levels of height adjustment then above your arrow keys you're gonna have some light indicators here for things like when your caps Locker on you have your razor gaming mode key which will disable the Windows key plus your onboard macro recorder again all indicated here and function 9 and 10 of the keys is gonna give you the macro recording and the gaming mode then also inside the box that included attachable magnetic wrist rest and I absolutely love how soft and cushiony this is you can just slide it up right to the bottom of the keyboard where it's kind of slanted it is gonna cover your Razer logo so keep that in mind although we do have one now kind of embroidered into it on the middle but a very comfortable wrist rest really happy they included this one again because I actually use this with numerous keyboards and stuff

razors got it right here so so far out of the box like the way it looks with that simple metal finish got the nice features and stuff for the multifunctional dial USB pass-through all that good stuff and the one combo could take away from now that I'll mention right away is with those teeth and the gutters on the back for routing your cable and since it is so thick I only put it in like two or three times just for review purposes you know to get some b-roll of you guys with demonstration you can already see the teeth and those gutters are kind of putting an indent and a marking to my cable not something I want to see just for rowdiness two or three times so moving on while the huntsmen elite had those exclusive purple optomechanical switches they're now bringing it back to their usual lineup of razor green orange and yellow being available in this with it being you know the smooth and linear ones the silent switches and the green being the very loud and clicky tactile ones that we're all used to so in this unit here we do have the

green switches I'll do a sound test now so you could hear how those sound and as you may have heard they added stabilizers now to the keys like spacebar shift enter backspace the all these loop stabilizers now so it's not gonna be as ratalie and loose so it's nice we have the option from picking between three different switch types from green yellow and orange when you pop off a key cap you will see the little RGB light shell embedded right above the switch now let's talk about the RGB lights I'm not gonna spend too much time on it cuts 2018 odds are you've seen all the effects probably 700 times before interviews from previous razer keyboards and all that stuff you're used to the effects you can still do them here and it's gonna look nice and bright the light shell they use here is definitely wider than that single light bulb they would use in previous keyboards that's gonna result in just more light but one thing you'll notice is there is no light

ship around the back side or on the side or underneath because that was also one of the more premium features to the huntsmen Elite keyboards so in the Black Widow elite you saw the RGB lighting effects just not the under glow in the outer glow light strip that they had I'm really not a big deal I don't think I wasn't too worried about it when I took it out and noticed that so again you're saving money still with this it's a beginning on this for around 2 weeks now like I said before just very comfortable overall at that wrist rest and stuff so it's been a great experience but I have to admit at first I was like who is this keyboard for like where is its place because you have still the previous Black Widow keyboards I think hold up you have the the huntsmen elite the regular huntsman so I was kind of confused but then what I saw it still had that multifunctional dial you still have you know the onboard storage the same pretty much features as you do with the huntsmen elite but plus the USB pass-through and the audio pass-through that I got me thinking who is the huntsmen elite for yes you have the Optima chemical

switches in the huntsmen elite and they're quicker but by like a fraction of a half a millisecond quicker so really not a big deal in that it seemed that keyboard was $$ and like I said that got me thinking who is that husband elite for because this is coming in at a cheaper price point of 169 and just really impressed over all and I mean the only real con and knock that I can give to this is the fact that like I said before with the teeth kind of you know denting the cable already that's pretty annoying not a huge deal but do keep it in mind and the second thing to bring up that's not really a condom or something just to be aware of since these new stabilizers and the keys are like lube and oiled to make them smoother if you get that on your fingers and then on the keys it's gonna be very very noticeable and hard to get off because the keys themselves so that nice you know kind of matte finish to them so they're nice and smooth we're gonna get the oils from the lube and stuff on the keys and it's gonna be kind of an eyesore it annoyed me but

again it's only because I was filming and coming at contact with those regularly so odds are that won't be happening to you so besides those two things I really love the black widow elites to the point where I'm thinking this is gonna sell a lot more than the huntsmen elite keyboard kind of making that irrelevant because this is cheaper it has most of the same features if not more - that light strip and those optima clinical switches but I really like where this comes in in the market and I think it is a great keyboard overall which is very minor in a few complaints on my end um so if you want to check it out I know it's kind of in a weird spot on Amazon right now I think they're out of stock but for a future reference and you're watching this in the future hello futureman .

Razer BlackWidow Elite Mechanical Gaming Keyboard review

no going to be unboxing the newly released Razer BlackWidow elite keyboard right here it's just got delivered this morning and I can't wait to actually unbox it all so this does come with like this little plastic film on it which we can take off quite easily we'll just put that to the side there right so here's the actual keyboard itself there are some actual switches exposed in the little packaging here so you can actually have a feel for the switches before you buy it if you do find this keyboard in store but apart from that it's your typical razor packaging really very similar to the packaging of the Huntsman lete that I have beside me here and I do actually have the Huntsman elite keyboard in my syrup and I'll be posting two reviews over the next I think week or two comparing the newly released Black Widow elite keyboard to the previous generation BlackWidow chroma v2 and then I'll be doing another video comparing the Black

Widow elite to the newly released Huntsman elite so expect to see those videos coming soon and if you need to channel hit that subscribe button so you be notified whenever I upload a new video but apart from that let's go ahead and Ashley unbox this I've got my awesome little red and I fear that iron box everything on the channel wave and I am planning on upgrading this to something more fancy here's the keyboard we're going to be unboxing it Razer green switches so we do have a little booklet here as well let's take this that we'll probably get some Razer stickers will we get some fancy new ones as with all race of products you do always get this little piece of paper here I guess welcoming you to the releases the community and then right here we have the Black Widow elite booklet that you get with the keyboard as well so here just kind of shows you that the keyboards compatible Razer synapse free eyewear to get support if you need help with the keyboard it shows you how to set it up and stuff and some of its features and ooh some stickers slipped out so let's put the booklet away so here we have the generic like RGB

Razer logo sticker right there we have the actual Razer logo in text - powered by Razer chroma stickers here as well these actually look very nice and then we also have the for gamers by gamers sticker down there as well so some pretty nice thick as I get on the keyboard these same exact stickers there you go with the Huntsman elite keyboard as well but now that we've gone through all the manuals and stuff and all the stickers we can actually take the keyboard out itself alright so how are you actually going to unbox this there's a little lever here and that pops out okay cool then this won't pop out as well I'm guessing we have the keyboard wire right here I'm guessing this is like a let's try it out again I'm guessing this is like a 2 meter wire you need 2 years people to this keyboard 1 for the keyboard itself and an optional one I suppose for the USB pass-through that you get with the keyboard unfortunately it's only an USB 2.0 pass-through not USB 3.0 and then of course you also get your audio pastor here as well for your

microphone or headset I guess absolute all Razer keyboards you do get a very nice braided cable right here a very high quality quite thick as well but then it does separate into three different ones your two USB ports and your audio pass through in the end alright so let's go ahead and actually take the keyboard out of its packaging and I think below the keyboard we also have the Black Widow wrist rest that you get with all black widows okay so here's the keyboard let's take off the rest of the packaging all right so let's actually unbox the wrist rest first I wonder if it's going to be an improvement over the v2 feels very very soft but I'll compare this in the side-by-side comparison video that we'll be releasing soon but you know I got to say fantastic wrist rest it's super super soft probably one of the best on the market I think raises wrist rests are actually like probably the best if not one of the best on the market right now they're just so soft and very very lovely to use in general this one actually feels quite low to the ground as well I think the rubber pads here are a little bit slimmer than the v2 so it kind of sits

like more flat against it's been desk I guess which I'm a fan of it looks pretty cool so let's actually take the rest of the packaging off off of the keyboard itself alright so I'm actually quite impressed so far the entire keyboard has an aluminium construction so it's not plastic you don't have to worry about all that it feels super high-quality and the metal that is actually made out of is quite fingerprint resistant as well like like I can touch Adam metal with all my fingers and stuff and no fingerprints really appear well they do it pay but they disappear after like a second or so so fantastic job there it feels heavy it feels high-quality there's a little illuminated Razer logo there as well that actually looks fantastic even though it's not even lit up yet ok so before we actually do anything else ice plug the keyboard in we'll do a little sound test in just a moment and I'll show you a few the lighting effects and stuff like that alright cool so it's already

on do you lights are shiny and as you can probably see the little Razer logo there is lit up as well looking fantastic feels high-quality the whole keyboard actually looks super cool from this angle as all these switches are actually exposed so you can see each individual light LED light on each switch so you can see that so you can see that each individual LED light on the actual switches it looks pretty cool right alright so I just plugged the keyboard in Razer synapse is now updating the software and downloading all the Ness drivers and stuff for the keyboard but yeah okay that's updated we'll update it again apparently it's a vent Weiss alright so synapse is now telling us to restart the PC alright so while my PC is restarting let's talk about some of the cool features of this keyboard now I didn't think that I'd actually like the keyboard as much as I do and I'm kind of considering replacing my hunter elite with this but I'm not sure yeah it's actually a pretty cool keyboard so right here we have the Razer logo that's sliding up now each one of the switches on the keyboard are exposed so you can actually see each individual light

and stuff it looks frickin awesome above the numpad of the keyboard we also have the Multimedia dial found on the Huntsman elite as well as the multimedia keys right here so we can actually mute the audio on our PC using this keyboard we can also increase it and decrease it we can play music we can pause music previous track next track but absolutely awesome keyboards so far Razer have also implemented some pretty cool key management solutions for the keyboard so as we have this thick cable here not only can we put it through the center and the Canada's goes out of the keyboard like this and you know if you have a hole in your desk what you can actually do is because the cable starts like just here you can make your entire board literally look Wireless which is absolutely or somebody who don't want to do that you also have a bunch of different choices here so you can make the cable go through this little cable channel here that they've built into the keyboard and it will come out of the left hand side of the

keyboard like this but you do actually have to put some force into that to make sure it stays in place by the Escape key here and if you don't wanna do that you can also make you come out of the right-hand side of the keyboard and it will come out of this side is the multi media dock is so absolutely awesome feature I wish all keyboards had this you also do get some height adjustment for the keyboard so we have some feet on either side of the keyboard allowing you to adjust the height of it and there are three levels in total the highest one which is here then there's just a little bit of high adjustment there and we can make completely flat and make the entire keyboard is kind of like flat against our table pretty cool the keyboard does also come with an optional wrist rest here that attaches to the keyboard via some magnets but I have to

say via magnet connection isn't actually that strong as you can see right there but at least the wrist rest and the keyboard have tons of these non-slip rubber pads on the bottom of them preventing the keyboard from moving around on your desk like I can move my desk around but I can't move the wrist rest or the keyboard the desk it is like super stationary this keyboard is not going anywhere by the way if you're wondering where the USB pass-through and the

audio pass through ports are in the keyboard well they're not on the right-hand side of the keyboard like they were with the BlackWidow chroma v2 keyboard they're they're not on the back of the keyboard either they're not below the keyboard but instead razor of now move these ports below the Escape key over on the left-hand side of the keyboard do we have one USB 2.0 pass-through as well as an audio pass-through for some headphones for example pretty cool what I really like about this keyboard is the built-in care management feature allowing you to not only run the keyboard wire in three different directions but also allowing you to run a separate wire if not probably a few wires below the keyboard improving the overall Hale management to be set up so right here I've kind of got a mouse wire running below the

keyboard and it's plugged into the USB pass-through over there so it's pretty nice before we in this video before we end this video is to a quick sound sets of the keyboard so let's put the wrist rest back on and let's do a quick sound test of the Razer green switches and finally let's go over a few the lighting effects here we have breathing between random colors then we have fire reactive then we have a ripple effect then we have a spectrum cycle effect starlight a static effect and now back to wave and by the way if you haven't noticed already there are no dedicated macro keys on the black widow le keyboard not a rope there are five dedicated macro keys on the black widow vici keyboard there but none on the black widow elite but apart from that hope you enjoyed watching my unboxing and a quick overview of the Razer BlackWidow elite keyboard raises newest keyboard at the moment and to my surprise I'm actually really liking

the keyboard so far I didn't think I'd like the Black Widow elite keyboard as much as I do but it's a pretty nice keyboard very very well made all-metal construction no more plastic keyboards coming from Razer I'm very glad that they're finally making all their high-end keyboards out of metal they feel so much high quality but yeah oh my almost dropped the keyboard

taking a look at the new Razer BlackWidow elite but with that let's go ahead and just check this thing out , it's hard to miss that the black widow elite looks almost identical to the Huntsman elite that was released earlier this year so what's the deal well we'll get to that here in just a little bit but first starting as always with construction in design the Black Widow elite is a hundred and forty mechanical keyboard with that ever-popular exposed switch design which is a departure from that classic top cover design of the Black Widow however we did get a taste of it with the Black Widow X which was a pretty big hit I personally prefer the exposed switch look it makes the look at the board a little bit less bulky and overall just has a cleaner appearance one change that I do miss from the Black Widow is the absence of the white back plate under the switches usually this was hidden by the top cover so the omission is somewhat

understandable but to me that's one of the things that really gave the BlackWidow chroma its iconic lighting prowess as for the construction of the board it sports a nice fingerprint resistant metal backplate and it's slim enough that it doesn't take up too much desk space it's nice and weighty and has minimal flex when cranking down on the board aesthetically much like the Huntsman elite it is a pretty clean looking board the only branding to speak up is the illuminated triple headed snake logo at the bottom of the board which is par for the course for a Black Widow the Black Widow elite comes with a great leather at wrapped padded magnetic wrist rest which has sort of become a standard edition and Racers keyboards and I couldn't be happier about that because it is a fantastic wrist rest as for the lighting the Black Widow elite harnesses the power of Razer synapse 3 software which allows you to create custom profiles

that can be saved both on to the keyboards memory and into the cloud to ensure you can always have your profiles wherever you go I still believe that synapse is the most user-friendly complete experience offered in a peripheral software and razer continues to roll out new features including the recently announced addition of third-party manufacturers to be integrated with synapse control as always the lights are nice and vibrant even without the white backplate now my only gripe is that the secondary functions still aren't illuminated not a huge deal but it is kind of annoying when using the keyboard in the dark if you're familiar with the huntsmen elite you might notice that there's no under glow light bar around this board or the wrist rest it looks like that feature will be reserved only for the new flagship although the lack

of this feature does allow the Black Widow elite to retain some extras that the Huntsman doesn't have namely the USB and Audio pass-through now it's a little bit weird because it's located on the left side of the board you have a single dual 3.5 millimeter audio jack and of course the USB pass-through which does require the use of a second USB connector in the PC but I'm always happy to see this addition as it is pretty handy as for some other features the Black Widow elite has a cable routing management system integrated under the board to help keep those cables a little bit cleaner on your desk and it does have the addition of dedicated media keys so finally a black widow with media keys these RGB enabled keys work just like the dedicated media keys on the huntsmen elite and include the digital dial which can be used for volume control by default or remapped for editing functions and software's for example or any

variety of uses my heart does hurt a little bit for the lack of dedicated macro keys call me old-fashioned but I just like having dedicated buttons razors new hyper shift technology does allow rapid use of a full set of macro keys on the entire board but it's just not the same as tangible buttons for me still it seems Razer is going all-in on the hyper shift tech as the last few releases have been without dedicated macro keys one of the critical differences between the Black Widow elite and the Huntsman is the switch options while the Huntsman will only offer their optical switches the Black Widow will continue to offer their three conventional mechanical switches except now these switches have been upgraded the new razor switches address the one problem that I have had with their switches over the years and that they used to have a pretty profound key wobble the new design adds side walls around the switch stems to keep the switch stable during the entire keystroke which eliminates the key wobble the razor switches will retain the same specs as before but they do have an added feeling of quality now and I'm

personally really excited to see Razer continuing to make an effort to improve on their switches which really they could have just easily kept them the way they were and just kept on going of course I wouldn't leave you guys without a sound test so here's a sound test of the new Razer green switch the key caps on the Black Widow elite are the same ones you'll find on any of razor's mechanical keyboards over the last two years they have a nice clean minimalistic font which I think looks pretty good and the key caps are made out of ABS plastic and do have a nice smooth texture to them the underside of the board has a cable routing management system that I mentioned earlier and does have two-step extendable legs to help position the board at a better angle for you and it does have plenty of rubberized pads on the bottom of the board and wrist rest to keep it from sliding around on your desk overall the Black Widow elite is certainly a change from the classic black widow design the removal of the dedicated macro keys and the

nice reflective white backplate is a bummer for me but the inclusion of the dedicated media keys is a huge plus and much like the Black Widow ex that came before it that added some variation to the line it has a clean design and some great features if you're trying to decide between the huntsmen elite and the Black Widow the main differences are the switch types and the ambient lighting around the board for 169 bucks it comes in just below the price point of the huntsmen elite and this right in line with other flagship keyboards the Black Widow elite is a solid keyboard and shows yet again that razor continues to make concerted effort to listen to our feedback and improve on their products well that's it for the review guys let me know in those comments down below what you think about the Razer BlackWidow elite do you kind of miss the old classic Black Widow design or do you like the direction that razors taking it of course you can give this review like if you enjoyed it to show your support.