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Razer has always been known to produce some of the best gaming mice, but it wasn't until late last year that they decided to venture in to the keyboard market with their Tarantula keyboard. Razer's slogan has always been "For Gamers. By Gamers". It says it all in my opinion.
The Tarantula created quite a fuzz late last year because it featured a system that lets the user reassign every button on it and has 10 extra keys that can be assigned to macros and special functions. Besides that the Taratula featured some new extra function that you wouldn't normally find on a gaming keyboard, e.g. zoom and media control buttons.
Right from the beginning the Tarantula was aimed at the hardcore gamers because it has anti-ghosting features and the keys have a short traveling length. As with most Razer products the Tarantula has 32 KB of embedded memory that lets the user store up to 6 different profiles.
Let's see how this feature rich keyboard performs!
The Package
The Tarantula keyboard comes in a big cardboard box, on the back you have the complete specification list of the keyboard. The special thing abut this keyboard besides from the 10 back-lighted keys is that it features 32 KB of embedded memory and the drivers lets you reassign any key. This can be useful i.e. BF2 doesn't let the user assign arrow keys as back and forward, with the Tarantula you can overcome this problem by assigning WASD to arrow up/down/left/right.
The keyboard comes with a quick start manual that helps the user setup the keyboard. Besides that you get a big sticker and a certificate of authenticity. The drivers were easy to install, I just inserted the CD and ran through the setup wizard.
Another new feature introduced by Razer with this keyboard is the BattleDock, a small port on top of the keyboard where you can insert various gaming accessories such as the Razer BattleLight, which is a small cathode tube, mounted so that it can illuminate the keyboard and a new BattleEye webcam.
As you can see from the picture above the keyboard is relatively big and has a shiny surface, just like the new iPods. I looks quite stylish compared to my old Logitech G15.
One thing you notice right from the begining is the rather odd key layout. In order to keep the width of the keyboard to a minimum, the key section above the arrow keys are rotated 90 degrees clockwise.
Even though the Tarantula primarily is a gaming keyboard it does have some nice multimedia features such as Zoom +/- and rotate. On the right side of the keyboard there are some media control buttons such as: play, skip +/-, stop, open media player. Besides that there is a volume control and shuffle function control on the right side of the keyboard.
Besides the common media functions and stuff like that the Tarantula features two USB 2.0 ports on the back along with two mini-jack ports. These USB ports are connected via two USB connectors to the motherboard's USB ports. This enables you to connect two power demanding USB 2.0 peripherals to the Tarantula keyboard instead of just one. The two mini-jack ports enable you to use a headset with a short wire.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Raze ... nsmall.JPG
To my surprise the Tarantula is actually a bit lower than the G15. The height of the Tarantula is a nice compromise. It is comfortable and doesn't look like a giant sitting on your desk in the same way as the G15 does.
When it comes to lighting the Tarantula is a bit disappointing because only the ten L and R keys are back lighted. I quite liked the keys on the G15 because the lighting was really bright and therefore easy to see when it's dark. To make up for this Razer has announced a BattleLight which can be mounted in the BattleDock of the Tarantula.
One of the most interesting things about the Tarantula is the changeable keys. The system allows you to remove any key on the keyboard and replace it with a blue special character key.
This is how it looks when you replaced the original L or R keys with some of the special keys that come bundled with the keyboard. Instead of having a character on them they have an icon. As you can see from the images above the special key set looks quite nice in the dark.
The reason why all this is possible without breaking the internal contacts of the keyboard is this.
There is a specially designed key remover that can grab the keys without applying unnecessary force. The buttons on the keyboard are situated on top of a hollow plastic box which means that the buttons are only held in place by it and the rubber contact on the bottom of the keyboard. A normal keyboard has a retaining mechanism made of metal holding the buttons in place, thats why you can't remove the buttons on a regular keyboard without the risk of ruining it. Razer has found a nice way to get around this particular problem and after replacing the same button ten times there was no noticeable damage to the socket.
The Tarantula cord splits up into 4 separate connectors, two 3.5mm mini-jack connectors for sound and two USB 2.0 connectors for internal power to the USB hub in the Tarantula. As you can see on the picture above the connectors are quite sturdy.
The drivers for the Tarantula can do a lot of tricky stuff. One of these unique features is the ability to swap every button on the keyboard. This particular function can come in handy if you play e.g. Battlefield 2 / 2142 where you can't use the arrow keys instead of WASD, with the Tarantula you can rebind WASD to the arrows keys to one of the 6 profiles you can store on the keyboard. By doing this you can get around the natural limitations of the game and thereby improving your game.
Here we have the basic layout of the driver for the Tarantula, it's quite simple. The way to use it is to press one of the buttons on the keyboard that you want to reassign, click it and then press the button you want it to replicate.
If you click the profile selection button this little menu pops up and lets you choose the profile you want to use. Because the keyboard has 32kb. of internal memory you can store up to 6 different profiles directly on the keyboard, these stored profiles can be used on any PC even one that doesn't have the Tarantula drivers installed.
If you press one of the macro keys you get this dialog. It basically lets you record any macro into the one of the L/R keys. The only thing I find a bit annoying about this is that you can't store more than 8 keystrokes which is hardly enough for any useful macro, at least for my use. The stuff I normally have as macro is some mIRC scripts and some greetings for CS:S and BF2. That is at the moment impossible because the driver only lets you create macros consisting of 8 keystrokes.
Well this is really hard to test with a keyboard because what defines a "good" keyboard. For me a good keyboard should have some keys with minimal traveling length, this should make the keyboard feel faster because you don't have to press the keys a long way before the action is done on screen.
The Tarantula is quite special because it has some anti ghosting features this means that the key grid which sends information about a key being pressed is divided into several pieces each capable of registering a given amount of key presses. I tried stressing it in CS:S but I couldn't gain a benefit from this, I think you have to play some of the special special games where you utilizes many keys at one time like i.e. O2 Jam or some games in that particular genre.
One of the things I really liked about the Tarantula is the feel of the keys, they are a bit harder than the keys on by G15 and have a shorter traveling length. Another thing that makes the keys on the Tarantula a bit special is that their height is something in between that of notebook keyboard's and a regular keyboard. It seems like a nice compromise while gaming and is quite comfortable to work with.
I tried testing the macro functions in BF2 and they worked alright, I guess if you play a lot of WOW or WC3 it's a nice function because you can spare yourself some key strokes.
http://www.razerzone.com/index.php?main ... ucts_id=40
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... 23&subcat=
Exibit
I use this keyboard and I love it, Para also has the same board
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