Razer BlackWidow V4 Professional overview: Lightning fast and loaded with macros

Worth When Reviewed

229.99

Greatest Costs At the moment: Razer BlackWidow V4 Professional

$229.99

The Razer Black Widow V4 Professional mechanical keyboard crept into Razer’s peripherals line-up as the primary V4 product the corporate ever made—and certainly it’s an excellent check case to point out off simply how lavish the corporate’s V4 merchandise are prone to get.

The keyboard’s deserves learn like an inventory of esteemed honors, together with options like its Doubleshot ABS keycaps, 8,000Hz hyperpolling fee, eight devoted macro keys, and a number of the glitziest RGB you’re ever prone to see. It comes with a silver spoon value of $229.99 USD, which admittedly is a tricky capsule to swallow, however we predict severe players aren’t going to be too fussed concerning the value as soon as they get a style of what’s on provide.

Additional studying: See our roundup of the greatest gaming keyboards to study competing merchandise.

Razer BlackWidow V4 Professional design and construct

The V4 Professional is a hefty full-sized battle station of a keyboard. Measuring 1.7 x 18.25 x 9.25 (HWD) inches with the wrist relaxation connected, it was so massive I wanted a number of free area round me simply to make use of it. For dimension comparability, it’s half an inch wider than its predecessor the Razer BlackWidow V3 Professional. It additionally weighs 2.40 kilos (once more with the wrist relaxation connected), which can make some players who like to hold their keyboards to LAN events wince on the prospect.

That stated, should you do have the room to deal with it, it’s a luxurious that you just’ll get pleasure from for absolutely anything you do in your pc—be that gaming, mucking about in Home windows, and even for these lengthy hours of leisure spreadsheeting you love to do every evening after work.

Why? As a result of Razer has poured its best possible applied sciences into the V4 Professional and it actually exhibits. Take the keys as an illustration: They function delicately carved concave tops so your fingertips sit neatly in place with out sliding off. Per-key RGB lighting additionally shines brightly although every key cap, which by the way, are made Doubleshot, which suggests the lettering is sealed beneath a coating so it’s nearly inconceivable to rub off.

Dominic Bayley / IDG

As for the switches, the V4 Professional comes with the easiest Razer has to supply—both Inexperienced (Clicky) or Yellow (Linear) full-sized mechanical switches, every rated for an exceptionally hardy 100 million presses.

The swap variants do differ barely in how they reply and really feel. As an example, the Yellow switches are stated to be quieter and smoother. They’ve an actuation level located 1.2mm above the keyboard and supply 45g of actuation power. Inexperienced, then again, have the next 1.9mm actuation level and ship 50g of power, in order that they’re a bit of extra tailor-made for stopping unintended keystrokes.

For structure, the V4 Professional may be very thorough, with nearly every part however the kitchen sink thrown in for keys, together with an array of 4 media buttons and eight macro keys—the latter of which weren’t included within the V3 Professional and which is able to undoubtedly show very talked-about with MMO players.

5 of those macros are situated as a neat row numbered M1-M5 on the keyboard’s far left flank, whereas one other three could be discovered on the left facet of the chassis. The V4 Professional’s Command Dial can also be a winner. It’s very tall and joystick-like and situated within the top-left nook, the alternative of the place it was within the V3 Professional. It helps as much as eight programmable capabilities, 4 of that are prepared to make use of within the default setting.

Razer BlackWidow V4 Professional software program

Razer’s downloadable Synapse software program means that you can customise the BlackWidow’s performance by assigning or altering the instructions and modifying what the keyboard’s Command Dial can do. You may’t remap the Command Dial, however you may activate a further 4 capabilities which might be switched off within the default setting. You may also personalize the dial’s RGB indicator colours as a way to extra simply determine every operate.

In Synapse you may as well arrange and edit the 5 onboard profiles or swap between saved configurations. All of the profiles will, nonetheless, stay locked into Synapse itself, so that you gained’t have the ability to export them out elsewhere.

Dominic Bayley / IDG

With all its wonderful RGB lighting zones the BlackWidow V4 Professional makes an excellent candidate for tweaking in Razer’s Chroma Studio, the place you may create distinctive lighting results and colours for keys and even assign particular results or shade mixtures to particular person video games. In case you’ve collected different Razer Chroma RGB merchandise, you may as well synchronize your RGB lighting throughout these units to create some dazzling mild exhibits.

Razer BlackWidow V4 Professional gaming efficiency

Throwing down $229.99 for a keyboard—the V4’s present value—isn’t any small feat nowadays, so I used to be tremendous eager to see if it carried out effectively sufficient to make me need to pay that a lot. Nevertheless, what’s on provide appears to match the fact of the keyboard’s stiff value.

I had loads of key choices for all my numerous gaming and dealing wants. However I additionally actually loved utilizing the Command Dial, which proved invaluable for zooming into Microsoft Phrase pages when my eyes bought a bit of blurry from looking at my display screen for too lengthy. The Command Dial additionally felt rather a lot taller and simpler to make use of than the equal management dial within the V4 Professional’s close to rival, the Corsair K100.

The keyboard’s massive dimension additionally allowed me to find keys a bit of extra naturally than some smaller keyboards, and I actually loved the additional area I needed to stretch out and calm down into my video games.

Moreover, the RGB lighting was at all times a shocking sight to see, and the media controls, which do a greater job separating out particular person instructions than within the V3 Professional, made controlling my numerous media applications a lot simpler and faster than regular.

Amongst all of the V4 Professional’s numerous options, nonetheless, the spotlight for me was undoubtedly the macro keys. Certainly, the V4 Professional’s macros are just like the keyboard equal of the Razer Naga V3 Professional’s mouse buttons—each provide so many choices to assign spells or instructions for abilities that they’ve rapidly turned invaluable to my gameplay. In truth, so helpful had been these eight keys for binding important actions in Closing Fantasy XIV, they really allowed me to complete quests in half the time I usually do.

Razer

That’s to not say the V4 Professional doesn’t have heaps to supply players of different recreation varieties too. With an extremely fast 8,000Hz hyperpolling fee, you get nearly instantaneous key actuation, which is right for frantic FPS gaming.

Certainly, in video games like Insurgency or these belonging to the Rainbow Six, Battlefield, or Name of Responsibility franchises, you’ll actually need to take my recommendation and go and bind your flashbang or grenade actions to your keyboard, as a result of you could not see a quicker deployment than you’ll with the V4 Professional.

I discovered the configuration to my liking too, though altering from my ROCCAT Magma keyboard to the V4 Professional did take some getting used to at first. In truth, I discovered myself miss-hitting keys rather a lot to start with. That’s just because keys like: Left Shift, Left Tab, Caps, and Left Ctrl are situated additional to the suitable than in most standard keyboards, so I needed to considerably reorient myself rapidly.

In my Inexperienced swap variant, the keys had been exceptionally fast and nippy too. They made a good quantity of noise, though it was a deeply satisfying kind—every press sounding like a clear snip lower by an exceptionally sharp pair of scissors, that had me desirous to press them increasingly.

But it have to be stated that for lengthy typing stints, like penning this overview, the Inexperienced switches didn’t fairly have sufficient cushioning to be wherever close to as snug as I’ve discovered the Yellow switches in my Razer DeathStalker V2 Professional keyboard to be. That isn’t an enormous deal—it simply meant I needed to primarily persist with gaming on my overview unit.

Regardless, the V4 Professional’s chassis is simply splendid for gaming it doesn’t matter what switches you’ve got loaded. The skin of the chassis feels extremely strong due to its immovable aluminum alloy plate.

Utilizing the plush leatherette wrist relaxation was one other expertise I savored within the V4 Professional. It felt remarkably comfortable, but in addition lit up my desktop with extra of that immersive RGB underglow—a pleasant contact that actually lifted the general aesthetic of my gaming den.

Must you purchase the Razer BlackWidow V4 Professional?

It doesn’t take mind surgical procedure to see that the BlackWidow V4 Professional is a really succesful premium gaming keyboard. A extra acceptable query is: Would you spend $230 on it? I used to be already leaning that manner, however simply to verify, I did a really fast comparability with near-rival the Corsair K100 RGB mechanical keyboard, which at the moment retails for $159.76 on Amazon. It additionally comes with extra macro keys and a multi-function dial.

By itself deserves the K100 really measures up fairly effectively towards the V4 Professional, regardless of being $70 cheaper. Nevertheless, there are a number of the reason why I’d nonetheless select the V4 Professional over it.

The primary issue is the macro keys—the K100 has six whereas the V4 Professional has a full eight. Admittedly, that doesn’t sound like a lot however even a number of extra macros could make an enormous distinction in MMOs with excessive command hundreds. Having these further choices additionally means I don’t should cannibalize keys elsewhere and jeopardize an excellent circulate to my key mapping—which in flip saves pointless mucking round in Synapse.

Moreover, whereas each keyboards function RGB, solely Razer’s wrist pad enhances the board with its personal dazzling RGB, so on the entire it seems to be a bit of extra premium than the K100’s palm relaxation. The Razer to me additionally seems rather a lot much less cluttered by way of its structure too, which on the finish of the day, makes discovering keys a extra natural and gratifying expertise.