Our trusty Apple wireless keyboard broke down after a horrific coffee spill accident. This led us shopping for a new keyboard last weekend and being the gamers that we are, we ended up buying the Razer Starcraft II Heart of the Swarm Marauder Gaming Keyboard! We were thinking of getting another BlackWidow mechanical keyboard but we decided to go for this one since we already had the Starcraft II gaming mouse.
By the way, we’ve already featured two Razer keyboards in the past. Check out the links below if you wanna read about them some more.
Okay with that out of the way let’s jump right into the unboxing!
Packaging and Unboxing
The keyboard came in your typical black Razer box. What caught our attention though with this particular box was the red/pink colors, lol. Apparently they used the same primary colors that were used for StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm.
Unboxing was straightforward. We peeled off the tape and pulled out the inner carton compartment. Other than the actual keyboard we found the usual Razer manuals and logo stickers.
Initial Impressions
The Marauder features a full keyboard layout with the integrated number pad with arrow keys. Since the keypad is integrated with the number pad the over-all size compared to traditional keyboards is slightly smaller. This means a reduced desktop footprint.
In terms of design, the Marauder has laser-etched keys which look incredibly stunning. Definitely one of the most kick-ass keyboards we’ve seen! Truly made for gamers. There are also LED strips along the sides and at the bottom. These strips as well as the keys light up with the colors determined by the Razer APM (action per minute) lighting system. You can set what color lights up as you scale up the number of actions per minute that you have. It’s a nice reminder for professional or incredibly competitive StarCraft II gamers.
The Marauder has a braided 7-foot USB cable. Unfortunately to use the Marauder you’ll need to plug-in two USB slots. Looks like these beast is a power hog as well since it needs to draw energy from two USB sources. This is a pain in the ass for Mac users since MacBook Pros usually just have 2 USB slots, lol.
The keys of the Marauder are elevated and optimized for distance and spacing. Actuation is good but it can feel a little bit resistive especially if you’re coming from a mechanical keyboard.
For gamers one good feature is “On-the-fly Macro”. You can basically program sequences of key presses with just one click. Definitely helpful if you can naturally weave it into your gameplay.
As the name suggests, the Marauder is really made for gaming. If you’re looking for a keyboard that’s more for typing then you might wanna invest in a mechanical keyboard instead.
The Razer StarCraft II: HoS Marauder Gaming Keyboard is now available locally at Razer distributor and retailer partners for Php5,020. We got ours from PC Express in SM Megamall Cyberzone.
