Razer has a penchant for flashy products, but rarely has it embraced physical customization in the way it has with its upcoming mechanical gaming keyboard.
Recently, Razer announced the BlackWidow V4 Pro 75%, a new version of its flagship tenkeyless keyboard designed to cater to both tinkerers and competitive-minded players; those who don’t just swap out keycaps, but also replace their mechanical switches and even the innards. However, at a price point of $300 – $70 more expensive than the full-sized BlackWidow V4 Pro – it’s certainly reserved for the enthusiast crowd.
I got my hands on several custom designs of the BlackWidow V4 Pro 75% at a Razer showcase, and even as someone who’s built custom keyboards in the past, I was impressed with its mix of Razer’s premium design qualities and the ease of customization. A handful of them had a mix of mechanical switches, including third-party switches that weren’t from Razer’s proprietary lineup – as long as it's a 3- or 5-pin switch, you can swap it into the BlackWidow V4 Pro 75%. It was simple to replace the parts with the packaged keycap puller and mechanical switch tool, all of which can be done without removing any part of the keyboard's chassis.
With a mix of third-party double-shot PBT caps and some heavy-set ceramic keycaps, I got to see a variety of setups with various keystroke feels and “thock” sounds, as well as custom paint jobs on the keyboard’s front plate. A few custom BlackWidow V4 Pro 75% boards had internal foam plates removed or replaced to give it a very different tactile feedback with each keystroke.
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Of course, none of these features would be worth exploring if the keyboard itself wasn’t great in its stock form. Like other BlackWidow V4’s in Razer’s lineup, the V4 Pro 75% is as good as its counterparts. Despite its added focus on the vanity aspect, it’s still a “Pro” model designed to perform in competitive settings. I don’t make too big of a deal about higher polling rates on keyboards in particular, but the V4 Pro 75% is capable of up to 4000 Hz, letting it send inputs to your PC more frequently for a theoretically faster response.
It’s a fairly versatile keyboard, too, since it comes with Bluetooth 5.1 connectivity in addition to Razer’s Hyperspeed wireless tech through 2.4 GHz dongle. It also comes with a built-in power saving mode that toggles off all extraneous features, stripping it down to the essentials to maintain battery life.
One of the features distinguishing it from its non-Pro counterpart is the OLED command dial at the top-right of the keyboard. You can program it to display information and control volume, polling rate, RGB presets, and more since you can cycle through its onboard settings. While it’s easier to customize these settings through the Razer Synapse software, it is programmable on the fly with its built-in controls. I don’t see it as a necessity, but it’s still a nice addition.
The Razer BlackWidow V4 Pro 75% is set to launch on September 24 for $300, and it’ll be available on the Razer store and other retailers. It’ll be a hard ask when its contemporaries currently go for significantly less, but I’ll be diving deeper into it as we get closer to its launch.
