Razer Lycosa Programmable Backlit Gaming Keyboard

Rating:

I was a little unsure about buying this keyboard because of a lot of the reviews, but I put my faith in RAZER and took the plunge. It shipped in 1 day and since it has arrived, I've been using it every day. The feel of this keyboard is fantastic. The look is awesome. I haven't played with the programming option yet, but so far everything is great. I have been investing in Razer products for the past couple months and couldn't be happier. I also registered the product online and they sent me a $5 coupon via email.

Rating:

God, endless problems with this keyboard. Media keys barely function half the time, and it's irritating to have to stop mid-game because your d or w or other key gets stuck, leaving you walking when you don't want to. The keys will wear down fast (I now have left and right blob keys instead of arrow keys due to Trackmania), and your keyboard will sometimes randomly decide to change your backlighting. The crappy razer drivers are necessary if you want to be able to turn the lighting back on when it goes rogue, but then it decides your keyboard media pad is only compatible with certain programs.

Pros: It's pretty.

Do not buy.

Rating:

I highly recommend you choose another expensive keyboard instead of this one. I bought this keyboard at best buy for about a $100 because I really wanted a great programmable very high quality gaming keyboard. I thought that at the $100 price range I was sure to get quality. I was sorely disappointed and reading the 1 star reviews on this product its obvious I am not the only one.

My problems:

1. Random keys just stop working on the keyboard. This is totally obnoxious when you are in the middle of a high energy intensive game of Starcraft 2 and all of a sudden your hotkeys stop working. Its clearly a problem with the keyboard drivers and software but there is no fix for it. Looking at the other 1 star reviews its obvious this happens to other people as well.

2. The software it ships with is useless. Really useless. Its supposed to be a programmable keyboard but the software is so convoluted that only the Razer development team can understand it. Its a horrible UI.

3.The back light is VERY weak. Its barely noticeable in fact. This is compounded by the fact that they choose to make back lighting the ONLY way to mark the letters and numbers on the keyboard. So if the back light is weak, best of luck trying to discern whats on your keyboard.

For a $100 this keyboard is WORSE than the free keyboards you get with your desktop computer. I can't believe they tried to sell this bad piece of junk. It just doesn't work and it makes me angry that I paid a premium for it.

Rating:

My brother had picked up a Lycosa and said he thoroughly loved it. I too was quite impressed, thick cabling and the ports on the back of the keyboard make it pretty easy to add another USB device and additional headset\speaker plugin.I love the light up function on the keyboard, makes it easy to see at night and even during the day, even with natural lighting. My problems came when I installed the software for the keyboard. Keys at random would stop working altogether(one day it was q, one day it was tab, one day it was k) and the only way to fix it was to unplug the keyboard and replug it back in. This became rather annoying and tedious. Another problem I had was that my media player(you can select wmp\winamp\itunes from the program menu) would randomly start up out of the blue and constantly open over and over even if I close it. This will last about 15min until it decides to randomly shut that function off, or you can unplug it and replug it back in like the solution to the previous problem.

I looked up the problem and supposedly it was specifically with a certain range of serial numbers that was defunct and Razer replaced them. I looked at my serial number and found that it did not fall within that category, but I decided to email Razer anyways. The support suggested to do a bunch of things that didn't help, I decided to try and troubleshoot it on my own. I tried uninstalling the software and drivers for the keyboard and use as is. Ever since then I have not had any problems. I rate it down because what is the purpose of having a gaming keyboard if you can't even run the software for it?

Disappointed. :\

Rating:

Nice looking keyboard out of the box, real tactile key feel.. except that the zero key stopped working on number pad after 2 weeks. Waiting on replacement from Amazon.

Keyboard is also very hard to keep looking nice.. the areas with the glossy finish show smudges and finger prints that really detract from look after just a little bit of use.

Programming seems straight forward, haven't done much yet, but what I have done works well for playing EQ2 as well as automating some work tasks using MS Office stuff.