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Razer Tartarus Review: Half a keyboard for the exact same price |
August 29, 2013
There are two ways to evaluate the Razer Tartarus, Razer’s new gaming keypad. The first is as a piece of high-end gaming hardware for its own sake, and that’s where the Tartarus excels; it’s a well-made piece of hardware that feels good in your hand, especially when you adjust the palmrest to fit your needs. The Tartarus' 25 keys are all programmable using Razer’s Synapse software. Sure, Razer’s cheating a little bit here by counting the keypad's eight-way thumbpad as 8 separate buttons, but you can map command functions to each of the eight directions pretty easily so we’ll let it slide. It’s also highly portable and quick to set up, making it ideal for professional gamers or anyone who finds themselves moving between machines a lot.
The second way to evaluate the Tartarus is as a piece of gaming hardware somebody might choose to buy, and from that perspective it seems a bit pointless. I’m not entirely certain who would actually benefit significantly from learning to use the Tartarus.
Smooth design with a rough learning curve
All high-end gaming hardware comes with a learning curve; it's difficult to rewire your brain to activate your 1-9 keys with an MMO gaming mouse like Razer’s Naga, for instance. However, that initial time investment usually pays off with a big performance improvement once you’ve adjusted. The problem with the Tartarus is that even after you take the time to adjust to using it, I’m not convinced you see a meaningful benefit. Even when used to maximum effect, the Tartarus is still half a keyboard.
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Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2047578/razer-tartarus-review-half-a-keyboard-for-the-exact-same-price.html#tk.rss_reviews
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