The product

In keeping with the usual naming method of Razer, their keyboard is named after a deadly animal. It’s packaged in the usual Razer livery and has a flip-front which hides the window showing the replaceable keys. The whole packing is aimed at store shelves considering the front product image and overall looks of the box.

Inside you will find the keyboard itself, a pamphlet with the driver CD and manual, 10 replaceable keys with a key removing tool. The keyboard oddly has two USB cables rather than just one, more on this later.

There is more than just the usual USB connectivity. There are two audio cables; line in and microphone. These connect directly to your sound card and extend the ports to the back of the keyboard. Next to these sockets, you’ll find two USB ports which are rated at 1.1 speeds. This would pretty much negate them for file transfers, but other devices that don’t need high-speed connectivity would find them useful. As usual, it’s nice to have the option.

The keyboard itself is in keeping with other Razer peripherals. The main body of the keyboard is glossy black plastic while the bottom wrist rest is matt black. In this wrist rest, you’ll find a large Razer logo in the middle, which will more than likely will fade blue when turned on. On the two far extremes of the keyboard, you’ll find a whole bunch of media keys. On the right hand side, you’ll find ones which link to your favoured audio application. You can start your media player, play, stop, next and previous song, shuffle, volume up and down and mute. Strangely, there is no pause button which I personally find the most useful. On the left side, there is a standby button and a home button (launches your internet client). Below these, there are buttons which link with image manipulation software. There is a rotate button, zoom in and out, and a 100% zoom key. These seem to relate mainly with Windows in built viewer rather than a full graphics suite.

Other keys of interest are the 10 macro buttons which are on the two sides of the board. Due to their position, they won’t be much use in first person shooters but could be of use in a game such as World of Warcraft where macros are the most useful.

The layout is a slightly modified qwerty design. All the usual keys are present, but they have been repositioned. The menu context button has been replaced by a Razer logo’d button which I’m guessing will start the keyboard configuration software. The second right-hand Windows key has also been removed to make way from the arrow keys. Above this is the Home, End, Page Up/Down block which has a double sized Delete key and the Insert button has been shrunk and added above the numberpad. Next to the Function keys, there is a Profile button which – according to the manual – changes the profile on the fly. All the Function buttons and the Escape key are half sized.

The back of the keyboard is still the shiny plastic, and has the usual height flip feet allowing you to change the pitch of the keyboard. In the four corners, there are rubber feet allowing the Tarantula to grip your desk better. The top rubber feet are pointless if you have the stands out however. This could be a problem while gaming as the keyboard itself isn’t that heavy.

Looking at the specs of the keyboard, you can see that it supports a maximum of 10 keys being pressed at once. This means that insane key chains can be setup without another key being pressed. That said, I personally can’t remember the need to press ten keys at once but this should stop ghosting where you press several keys and another key is sent incorrectly to your computer.

Like the Copperhead mouse, the board has 32kb on onboard memory or Razer Synapse as they like to call it. This allows you to save up to 5 different game-specific profiles on the keyboard meaning if you were to plug it into another PC, it would all be setup for you.

The keystrokes for the board have been physically shortened, so your finger has to move a shorter distance when trying to press a key. This means that you will have a very slight advantage over your competitors. Also, the board sets your USB polling rate to 1000Hz or 1ms which means the lag between pressing a key, and it appearing on screen is shortened again. This isn’t going to be by a huge amount, but at least when gaming you know it’s your reaction speed that needs work rather than your keyboard.

The keys themselves aren’t as prominent as a usual computer keyboard, and they seem to be the mid-point between computer and laptop style keys. This obviously is a product of shortening the physical distance required to press a button.