Features

Gamers either prefer a keyboard filled to the brim with features or one with the bare minimum of essentials. The Razer Tarantula doesn't truly fit either category. The long list of specifications may make you think otherwise, but when you tear through the marketing you'll find the Razer Tarantula, a high-end keyboard, has no auxiliary LCD display nor does the keyboard completely light up. Some may scoff at the idea of adding another useless feature, but if keyboards that cost less then half of what the Razer Tarantula costs have built-in lighting, then this one hundred dollar keyboard should too. I am disappointed that Razer chose to incorporate the BattleDock™ as a way to encourage gamers who need the backlight to purchase a separate accessory. I understand no one is forcing anyone to buy additional products, but you must admit the entire practice is a bit sly. I fully comprehend that the physical space inside of the keyboard would have made it impossible to also add backlighting, but you are going to lose customers because you're missing this key feature. Let's be real; who really wants to connect a web cam to their keyboard so people can stare at them while playing a game? Perhaps I am incorrect in this assumption but Razer has not released the aforementioned accessories as of yet to test this out. We will conduct a follow-up review when they finally hit store shelves, so keep your eyes peeled for that.


Before truly testing the software I gave Razer Drivers a quick run and noticed that the macro buttons failed to function. No matter how simple the button combination, the macro keys wouldn't work. I uninstalled the 2.10 drivers and installed the beta 2.10b drivers. All my frustrations and problems disappeared. I won't go into the level of anger I felt while trying to figure out what was wrong, but you can imagine my relief when I performed a factory reset and reinstalled everything. You'll notice the Razer icon in your system tray when you reboot - it launches the Razer Configurator (you can disable the icon by the way, you neat freaks). The software GUI looks great but is sorely lacking a re-sizeable window. The keyboard image is a bit too small even when using a resolution of 1280 x 1024, so users of even larger resolutions will suffer through several additional squinting episodes without a doubt. As you glide your cursor over the keytop you'll note that the keys highlight green and are clickable. Here you can customize whether or not you'd like to make a standard key function as another standard key. You cannot use these keys to bind macros. The usefulness of this feature is questionable but if you encounter a rare game that doesn't allow for key customization then voilà.


As I navigated the menus I noticed a large amount of lag as I edited, saved and loaded profiles. Whenever I exited and restarted the keyboard software I would have to wait a few seconds, sometimes more for the software to initialize. This can get a bit annoying, but you'll just have to get used to taking your time editing your profile unfortunately. Although the box says the keyboard supports one hundred profiles, you only have a capacity of five available on the keyboard. The problem is that these five profiles don't allow for the full customization that the other ninety-five do. The other profiles, which are stored locally on your computer, allow you to automatically switch between profiles whenever a game is loaded. This is an admittedly cool feature but I wish it was possible with the keyboard as well. I also longed for an option to be able to physically type in the .exe filepath with additional target line commands you'd normally find on game shortcuts. Sometimes a game won't have the correct resolution so I must add the proper x and y screen size in this target line. This is impossible as you can only point to an .exe and that's it. The profile name can only be so long, which stinks because most of the names get cut off.



Another peculiarity I noticed especially during the writing of this article was the amount of double-keying that was taking place. Specifically the Z button (RaZZZZer) is extremely prone to double keying. This is incredibly annoying and doesn't make me feel any better about the technology inside the device. It's rather ironic that Razer, having a Z in its name, had to be constantly edited. Other keys are also prone to this problem but can't be replicated as well as the Z key. The keyboard already has a fair learning curve due to the unique flat design of the keytop, but having to backtrack and delete randomly inserted extra letters is a huge pain you shouldn't have to go through. Understand that even a five dollar keyboard from the flea market won't exhibit this problem, but then again they are nowhere near as advanced as the Razer Tarantula. Even after the years of research and development the keyboard still feels rushed with all these annoyances and problems. Razer is a small company compared to it's competitors and this product, being their first keyboard, is bound to have hiccups - but I totally felt I was beta testing a keyboard that was still months from being complete.