Disappointed with the BlackWidow

[TDub]

Hello everyone,

I am fairly new here and have just recently become a keyboard enthusiast. My first mechanical was the Razor BlackWidow(80€). I now also own a cheaper Thermaltake Meka (49€). I gnerally expected the Tt to preform much worse then the BlackWidow ( mostly bought it so I can take test the mx blacks and gut it for parts). However I just did the basic Rollover test (the one where you hold both shift and type: the quick brown fox jumps right over the lazy dog). The meka does it just fine but the blackwidow fails miserably... considering the higher price I expected much more from the Blackwidow.

BW Test:

THEQCKBRWFXJRGHTVERTHELAZYG

MEKA Test:
THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS RIGHT OVER THE LAZY DOG



Now i am thinking about gutting the blackwidow instead of the meka. I like the smaller footprint, but the layout isn't that great (why squeeze in arrow keys when you can put them into the numpad?).


BTW for anyone in Germany the meka from alternate.de is cheaper then ordering just the mx blacks from most places 49,99€/86 keys = 0,56€ per key.

[Daemon Raccoon]

The BlackWidow is only 2kro, and has a 'gaming optimised' layout, so the 'test' you performed is accurate.

[damorgue]

http://www.microsoft.com/appliedscience ... gDemo.aspx

There you have a proper test.

[TDub]

Well yeah the test is a little basic. However in the MS test you might not see the BW problem immediately. You can press both shift and qwerty without a problem (so 6 keys and 2 modifiers). If you move down one row however and try to do double shift and asdfgh, only the a shows up, revealing the crappiness. So basically you have to hunt down the combinations that won't work yourself.

So the simple sentence "test" showed it much quicker then the MS test.

Guess i got sucked in by razors marketing.

[geotang]

I mean, as silly as it is to only have 2kro, they never said that they had nkro.

[JBert]

... I just did the basic Rollover test (the one where you hold both shift and type: the quick brown fox jumps right over the lazy dog) ....
BW Test:

THEQCKBRWFXJRGHTVERTHELAZYG

MEKA Test:
THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS RIGHT OVER THE LAZY DOG

Oh hai, you is trolld.

You have to stop and think about that for a sec: how often do you press both Shift keys while typing or gaming? And if the est fails, you know a keyboard is NOT NKRO, but if it succeeds, you might still find failing combinations when you press 3 or more keys.

As for NKRO, failing combinations are almost always found by accident. Try to press 3 or more keys around the WASD cluster and see which ones fail.

[TDub]

Lol, I know the sentence test isn't perfect. The meka does it and it's not NKRO (i think it is 6KRO). It's a usb keyboard and very few of them have NKRO over usb. Not my point. I knew there were better tests, the point was that the BW fails the simplest of tests and that pisses me off.