Razer has now added 4 new budget-friendly mechanical gaming keyboards into its BlackWidow lineup. Sitting pretty at the top is Razer BlackWidow X Chroma with a US$ 159.99 (~RM 624) price tag which also makes it the most expensive of the lot. It is followed by Razer BlackWidow X Tournament Edition Chroma at US$ 129.99 (~RM 507), Razer BlackWidow X Ultimate at US$ 99.99 (~RM 390), and Razer BlackWidow X Tournament Edition at US$ 69.99 (~RM 273). These keyboards come with the newly designed Razer Green Switch, and Razer has even included the older but more established Cherry MX Blue switch options for the last two models. This allows the BlackWidow X Ultimate – Cherry MX Blue variant to be priced lower at US$ 89.99 (~RM 351), and BlackWidow X Tournament Edition – Cherry MX Blue at US$ 59.99 (~RM 234). The keyboards come with a warranty of up to 2 years, and all online orders come with an exclusive Razer Keycap Keychain worth RM 29.
Those who are itching to get one would be happy to know that 3 of these are already available online via the Malaysian Razer store. The only drawback is that the prices are considerably higher than in the US: RM 849 for BlackWidow X Chroma, RM 679 for BlackWidow X Tournament Edition Chroma, and RM 429 for BlackWidow X Ultimate with Cherry MX Blue switch (the only option that is available for now).
The highlights of these keyboards are their slightly more compact footprint, compared to the more premium non-X Razer BlackWidow keyboards, as well as its basic minimalist construction. The latter comes without the protective top cover that’s found of the premium versions and exposes the military-grade metal that is found inside every BlackWidow keyboard. This approach has been credited to the low price-point that Razer was able to establish, on a high-quality mechanical keyboard that’s been built around a metal chassis, without compromising core features.
Another highlight of the X series is the inclusion of Razer Mechanical Switches that is claimed to be the world’s first to have been designed specifically for gaming. The keys feature optimised set of actuation and reset points, as well as increased durability of up to 80 million keystrokes. Though these switches come in two types, namely the ‘clicky’ Razer Green Switch and the silent Razer Orange Switch, only the green one is available for the X series (on top of the earlier mentioned 3rd party Cherry MX Blue option).
In addition to those design characteristics, Razer has also incorporated its Chroma lighting technology for its keys. Supported keyboards can have customised lighting for each key (out of the 16.8 million colour options that are available), along with numerous lighting effects and lighting profiles. The profiles themselves can either be user-created custom ones, or those integrated ‘in-game’ ones such as with ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops III’, ‘Overwatch’, and ‘Blade and Soul’ among others. On a lower level, Razer also has a single colour option with dynamic lighting effect, as well as the lowest one that doesn’t come with any backlight at all.
Being the cheaper alternative, the X series also comes without a few extras. The lighting options mentioned above are of the ‘exposed’ type which, even though is bright, is not as bright as the ‘contained’ type that’s available for the premium versions. This is on top of the missing 5 extra macro keys, non-detachable cord, and the absent USB/Audio pass through options. Still, the X series does come with cable management routing (which is not available on the premium models), as well as support for Razer Synapse, 10-key roll-over anti-ghosting, fully programmable keys with on-the-fly macro recording, gaming mode option, braided fiber cable, and 1000 Hz Ultrapolling rates.
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