Gadgetory

now it used to be that there was only one game in town for Blizzard licensed gaming peripherals but I've already unboxed one of razor's Blizzard licensed peripherals and here is another one this is the Razer Marauder this is a Starcraft 2 gaming keyboard and we're going to be having a quick look at it today first let's see what razer has to say for themselves on the box here so first of all 1,000 Hertz ultra polling so that means that the responsiveness of this keyboard should be about as good as it gets APM lighting system so we'll have to get into what exactly that is a little bit later on the fly' macro recording this is a feature that I love seeing on keyboards because it makes recording macros a little bit less tedious if you don't have to bring up a big old software program in order to do it laser-etched keys pool very nice and a braided fiber cable which we're pretty used to seeing on any quality Razer product here we go fully backlit keys interesting 7-foot lightweight and untangle cord oK we've covered that APM lighting system we've covered this to optimize key travel and spacing this is a little bit different so what razors basically saying is that the key travel which is the distance between being not depressed and being depressed not to say sad but rather pressed down is optimized for presumably RTS gaming integrated number pad ok that is a keyboard feature I suppose on the fly macro recording APM lighting system and elevated keys with optimized travel distance and spacing so it's a little bit redundant I guess what they mean to say is it is a keyboard ok actions per minute lighting so actions per minute lighting system that's it you know I figured that might be what they mean by APM but I wasn't really sure how you could have a lighting system that's actions per minute so we're going to have to find out exactly what that means so it looks like there actually isn't a seal on that side I'm not sure how to get this box open ah here we go so there's a seal on this side so it looks like you can actually only open this box one way so I'm going to take points off of the marauder keyboard because as a nun boxer I like to have the freedom to choose how I'm going to unbox my product now I'm just kidding I'm not going to take any money off the product because because the Box can only be open from one side that actually doesn't bother me very much all right so here's the marauder keyboard so Wow the box actually makes it look like if you see here it's more of a black keyboard but you can see quite clearly that it's more of a silver keyboard so if you were expecting a black keyboard then you better sort of adjust your expectations because this is the color scheme that we actually have going on here so this says armored assault and apparently armored assault means lifting up a tab and pulling out the lining box okay here we go with the included bits I mean razors great at presentations so let's see what they have to say for themselves first we have the Quick Start Guide which shows us that is a good idea to plug it into a USB port and furthermore that it is a good idea to register your product so not a whole lot going on in there next we have some Razer stickers as I recall these are UV sensitive only one way to find out for sure though guys come on let's go find out if they're UV sensitive so I'm in my computer room now hold on a second it's going to turn off the light and oh they are not UV sensitive bummer okay never mind that I think they think it's possible they used to be but at any rate these ones are not so there that goes off with the QuickStart guide next we have the main manual which is in French master guide there we go now okay so programming macros using your marauder the only reason I have this open right now is to find out what a PM lighting is so you can customize the look of the Marauder by adjusting from over 16 million colors so you can adjust the main the side strips and the under glow lighting colors click any of the three color boxes so you can choose the color to assign to that lighting area okay a p.m. in alerts tab so actually for a minute selection on the top flanked at the bottom of the drivers allows you to customize the lighting behavior based on the number of actions per minutes used in starcraft2 suite so the more APM's you have while you're gaming with this keyboard the more different your lighting scheme will be so let's have some pretty a pretty close look at the keyboard itself as far as keyboards go it's a fairly standard layout it has letters and it has numbers and it has some media keys that are accessed via function key hey this is smart okay I'm actually wait hold on is this the way I prefer it yes I believe this is the way I prefer it I prefer the windows key over here I know I'm one of those horrible awful people who doesn't bump the windows key when they're trying to game with WASD but I prefer the function key over here for these items because think about it this way if you're going to press function and this for example to mute your volume are you going to go like this or would this be more natural oh what a concept right oh you know what we should actually do here let's plug this thing in so it actually has two gold plated USB plugs and I'm guessing it is just for extra power so what I'm going to do is I'm going to plug these into my MSI GX 660 our gaming notebook and see what happens it lights up look at that okay I don't have the drivers installed so I'm not going to be able to do any additional testing on the different lighting configurations but that is what it looks like once it's lit up it's got a pretty even overall backlight the one key that I'd say doesn't get as much love as the others is probably the Escape key but it looks pretty darn good even in the bright lights that I have shining down at me right now so not bad at all I'll turn those lights off and I'll give you guys a better look at it in a moment so let's flip it over and see what we have to see down here so first we've got a couple of lighting strips at the bottom of the keyboard we have two of those little red risers you want to Incline the keyboard that's more comfortable for you we have rubber pads on the bottom of the keyboard to keep it from slipping big ones at the front small ones at the back so even if you are using those cabs it shouldn't slip around and then okay I'll finally get in close and have a look at what all keys you guys are going to find here so function keys we've got mute volume up volume down we've got play stop forward back and then we have oh oh hmm this appears to be brightness on and off okay and this oh okay is for gaming mode versus not gaming mode which probably turns off the windows key that would be my guess okay here we have oh this is interesting so we've taken the insert homepage out delete and then page down and we've put them all in the number pad which I actually can't decide if it bothers me or not I'm going to go ahead and say no for now because we can always go into number mode and then we still have insert home and page up now what I probably would have done was I probably would have gone like a delete home or a delete page up and page down or something to find like sort of three useful keys and leave them here even a number pad mode but I mean it's it's up in a but it's never easy when you're trying to decide how to sort of butcher a keyboard layout to condense it so you know they chopped it up and they did the best they could here are the arrow keys if you're not a number mode so yeah yeah you know it's not bad it makes it more compact I mean it's a lot shorter than than a typical keyboard I mean here's a standard layout keyboard this is a SteelSeries 70 so you can see that it is a good like how much Lobster is this it's like a good two and a half three inches shorter than a 7g keyboard so here's our little Starcraft 2 thing overall feel of the keys honestly isn't exceptional I mean I'm not going to lie to you guys it's a it's a gaming keyboard it's not a mechanical keyboard like their Black Widow series so you're not going to get that great tactile feedback however I can't really comment on how well optimised it is for RTS gaming but I can tell you guys that they feel like very adequate key switches especially considering the fact they are not mechanical key switches so what I'm going to do is I'm going to turn off these lights and give you guys a look at what the keyboard looks like there's my Star Wars shirt I'm so cool when the lights are dimmed yeah you can see it's much more noticeable the Escape key doesn't get much lighting because you can see the laser etched keys allow the backlight to show through okay remember these are not blue colored these are actually just lit up by the blue light behind them seeing all of the edgings on the keys so it looks pretty sweet in the dark guys don't forget to subscribe to Linus tech tips for more unboxings reviews and other computer videos and thank you for watching my unboxing of the Starcraft 2 Razer marauder keyboard