Razer has done much for the gaming industry with its high-quality gaming peripherals, and is known for its gaming mice, keyboards and headsets. Engineered to give gamers the cutting edge in PC games, the company’s products look as gorgeous as they feel in the game. Razer’s Lycosa gaming keyboard is just one among the company’s many products, and boasts of several features for comfort and performance. The Razer Lycosa is a high-quality gaming keyboard with a host of features for you to go crazy. The keyboard comes with a great-looking gloss finish and a wrist rest which is screwed to it. The wrist rest can be detached from the keyboard, if you feel that you don’t need it or if you feel that the keyboard takes up too much of your desk space. But even with the wrist rest, the Lycosa is quite fairly sized, and we left it on as it provides a comfortable rest for the hands.
The Razer Lycosa is a USB keyboard, and comes with not one but two USB connectors, plus a microphone plug and a earphone plug, something few other keyboards, if any, provide. One USB connector feeds the keyboard its power while the other is an extension to the Lycosa’s integrated USB port. The inclusion of these features means that you no longer have to grope around at the back of your rig to find a USB port or the microphone and earphone jacks. They are conveniently extended out to the keyboard for easy access and quick connection. The keys of the Razer Lycosa are quite remarkable. They have been designed in such a way that they really allow for very accurate speed typing. The keytops feature a non-slip rubber finish which provides a good amount of grip when typing or playing your favorite PC games. The keyboard also has a gaming cluster with anti-ghosting capabilities, so that you’ll never be second best in a racing title or shooting game.
The Lycosa also has a group of touch sensitive keys called the TouchPanel. This TouchPanel has a Razer Logo key which, in combination with keys F1 to F10, can be used to toggle profiles. The section also has a few keys for media playback and you can choose which media program the keys will control such as Windows Media Player, WinAmp, iTunes and so on. The touch keys control play/pause, stop, previous track and next track functions. In addition there are two keys which can be used to increase and decrease the playback volume. Finally, there is a special key which is used to control the keyboard lighting. And you can light up all the keys, just the WASD keys, or turn all off using it.
Using macros you can practically assign any function to a certain key, and each key can be programmed with up to 16 keystroke events. Mouse clicks can’t be recorded though and must be added to the macro after you have completed recording the sequence of keystrokes you want. Using macros you can program the keyboard to react as you want in a particular game. You can even set a specific profile to become active when you run a game launcher. This is perfect for gaming. All your settings for that particular game will be automatically loaded when you run the game, and once you exit, you’re back to the previous profile. Perfect for jumping into games in between other things, and even for switching between games, without the need to reconfigure everything. Taking the Razer Lycosa into a game was the next task, and we were eager to see what difference a high-quality keyboard would make in a range of games. Playing Counter Strike was a bit easier, and you can probably go for hours without losing your competitive edge. The keyboard’s anti-ghosting capability comes in handy when making lightning fast movements to dodge enemy fire and to get into positions to strategically outdo your rivals. This capability will really be brought to the forefront of your focus if you jump into racing games.
The keyboard holds good in such fast-paced action games, but what about sports games like FIFA? FIFA 08 was our game of choice and although the average FIFA gamer might not realize it, the Lycosa does make a slight difference in the sports game. Sure, you might run riot over a small club, with or without the Razer Lycosa, but when you’re up against the big boys, every chance counts. And with a 1 ms response time, an early shot could prove to be the difference between a win and a draw. The Razer Lycosa has a very futuristic look; almost space craft-like. And its lighting effects are a really cool feature. You can light up the whole keyboard or just the WASD keys so you know exactly where to position your hand when playing.
What we didn’t like / could have been improved or incorporated: The Razer Lycosa has a great-looking gloss finish. But this makes it too big of a dust and fingerprint magnet. And the keyboard really doesn’t look good with all those smudges on it. Its black surface makes dust very visible and you can pick out even a spec of dust on the Lycosa. There was another thing we were a bit disappointed about. The TouchPanel media keys don’t allow you to jump ahead or rewind while playing tracks. The buttons react immediately when you tap them and switch to the previous or next song, meaning you can’t jump to your favorite section of a track.
The Final Word: The Razer Lycosa is an extremely thin and compact keyboard, and it offers great response, whatever you choose to use it for. When playing games in which quick response is crucial or even while typing, the keyboard delivers good performance, not compromising on comfort. The Lycosa provides the quintessential when it comes to high-level gaming, and a little bit more.
Looks: 9/10.
Functionality: 9.1/10.
Comfort: 8.8/10.
Overall (not an average): 9/10.