Gadgetory


All Cool Mind-blowing Gadgets You Love in One Place

Is This Gaming Keypad Perfect or Pointless? Razer Tartarus v2

2019-05-03
the gaming desk is a highly competitive space to survive one must overcome the challenge of economic support visual stimulation and satisfying the fingertips of the host this ancient species of navigation is quite the rare and until now was on the verge of extinction however the latest research suggests the growing population of these small one-handed keyboard species it is unfortunately still unclear why many of its kind have disappeared this is the Tartarus v2 the reproductive snake helps to lure nearby prey locking them to become lifetime hosts or until it dies little blast from the past the tart recipe - let's check it out the legendary hyper 212 CPU cooler from Coolermaster now comes in this breathtaking matte black finish the included Silencio 120 millimeter fan delivers great airflow and reduced noise plus you can pick up an RGB version of this cooler as well learn more about the hyper 212 black edition and it's RGB sibling down below by the way everything is linked in description below thank you very much alright so I'm honestly quite surprised at the number of people who have commented on our Twitter post saying they still use a one-handed keyboard either for I cannot do anything but game with it or the exact opposite using it for professional applications and using it for macros so not gaming I remember owning the Logitech g13 and that was a pretty interesting experience but you know since then the mainstream keyboard market has expanded with tons of affordable and excellent quality mechanical switches and that is the reason why we are visiting the Razer Tartarus v2 it comes with Razer's Mecha- membrane which is which are less clicky blues and because of the membrane thing in the bottom it has that typical squishy bottoming out of a membrane keyboard in total we have 19 keys in the main front area with the Oise layout program by default and you can see the arrows for that visual guide now it's kind of weird using the shift key because it's so small and had to program mine 211 so the 16 key could be my control the scroll wheel is quite poor here with very loose scroll steps but it is easy accessible when you point finger while the thumb gets a whole lot more than usual so there's the d-pad that's well-positioned with the option to remove the knob to slim down the joystick the round button above and your space key below that is quite heavy because of the Mecha membrane switch and I wish that they did not have that much travel distance so everything is easy to remap but this is Razer synapse that we're talking about so a login is required to create those custom profiles and you can see what key map setting you're using with these three side LEDs so the size is the obvious advantage with these products I love 10 keyless keyboards because full-size boards are just always in my space for Mouse navigation while these keypads open up so much of there's no real estate for Mouse movement and actually a lot of flexibility to position the keypad however is more comfortable for you like this rotated the close to your body wrist position allows the elbow to rest on the surface without anything interfering with your mouse area also I think the keypad is a massive compliment for notebook gamers because anything is more comfortable than a flat surface with that 2 millimeter of travel distance but more importantly it's located on the side of the notebook instead of the front where you could typically place a keyboard thus the overall setup is just more comfortable the ergonomics on this one in particular a far superior to even the keyboard with the wrist rest so the slight dip and the keys strength in my fingers from a claw grip to something a bit more natural and because the spacebar is lower the entire wrist is more balanced versus a regular keyboard and that can immediately feel some strain relief after a few days my finger memory kind of kicked in and the only thing that I never really used is a scroll wheel it is a bit unnatural for my left hand by the way you can remove the wrist rest and move it back slightly and it flattens out the entire structure that makes the space key a lot more comfortable to use but there is no way to further angle the keypad from the bottom alright so from a gaming perspective despite the ergonomic and size advantages the keypad only fits a particular play style which is why it clearly hasn't become this mechanical keyboard killer for example in the division 2 you have 10 key commands just for your inventory alone and I attempted to remap everything needed to the keypad but kind of got awkward and I was still reaching for my keyboard to execute basic stuff and we can all find the G key in our sleep on the standard keyboard but because that column of keys is absent on the keypad thus it's kind of awkward not having our standard grenade key on the gaming pad I also had to map an escape key to the keypad and also control to the bottom-left and generally for any game that has a semi complex control system the keypad might not be sufficient for example an escape from tarkov there are so many controls from checking your ammo type to switching between flashlight and laser to cycling between reticle on your scope that I just couldn't fit all of it on the keypad but for games with simple control schemes like bf5 apex legends quake champions Metro Exodus there are no hiccups and gaming on the keypad aside from that missing G key but you know if you use one those crazy mice with a thousand buttons many of the shortcuts that don't really fit the keypad could be allocated to the mouse instead as for professional applications outside of gaming I think would be a fantastic addition to macro managing certain things that require let's say three presses like ctrl shift and L control shift and something else on the keyboard that you can easily macro that to the keypad or keys that are slightly further away from each other like ctrl + ctrl - ctrl page down something that does not require you to lift your mouse hand to the keyboard and therefore you can just Mac macro those keys to the keypad and my workflow for resolve and Adobe Premiere and other Adobe applications has improved greatly I now have my editing profile saved with over 10 shortcuts on to the keypad which is awesome I colored that in orange and it is on whenever I am editing anything and this way my keyboard hand stays in the keyboard area and doesn't have to move too much in my mouse hand always stays on the mouse and the main benefit with these type of keyboard products is obviously the size because if you were to get a separate keyboard just for macros that definitely is going to occupy more room versus the Tartarus V2 or the orb-weaver but it will definitely be cheaper because for some reason these tiny keyboard products are quite expensive and also the lack of mechanical switch options for users is a massive roadblock for this becoming a bit more mainstream even so it has that dual functionality either for gaming or productivity that you could fit into your lifestyle and for work efficiency but yeah it's just not there yet and I don't think it will ever get there and really one of the main challenges with this keypad is the lack of a proper size shift key because the one that's included here the regular key is actually quite small and the muscle memory kind of has to rework itself so you recognize where to press and so it makes sense why these tiny keyboard species have not exploded in popularity despite their dual life style and ergonomic benefits the host might choose a larger more abundant and cheaper animal to avoid any future bottleneck I'd love to hear your thoughts on these one-handed keyboards and if you'd consider getting one now we must leave the snakes alone the mating season is about to start thanks for watching until our further explorations
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.