Razer Cynosa V2 Gaming Keyboard – A risky buy, a regretful return

Razer has a name, but that's all
(See online!)

A few years back, I bought a Razer mouse and was floored to discover that it required an online account signup with Razer just to download the drivers to make it work. Their extortive practices weren't the end as the rubber grip on the mouse fell off a while later while Microsoft and other brand mice lasted for seeming centuries without issue.

Then I spent a week looking for and evaluating different keyboard options. I had a particular set of requirements that I hoped the Razer would meet: quiet, NOT tall-mechanical-clicky keys, individual color, color profiles, and so on. Razer did indeed have these things, but they also had:

Bright AROUND the keys, but not on the letters themselves

• Weak lights… kind of. The lights are actually quite bright, but UNDER and around the keys and not on the keys themselves. If I turn it bright enough to see the keys well, the light is so bright it stings in the dark. Turn them down and it's hard to see the keys.
• Squeak! SQUEAK! A few of the keys make a terrible high-pitched squeaking noise when I hit them. No bueno.
• Tiny tips! Weirdly the key tops are so tiny that they're hard to hit.
• Forced registration. It's sneaking, it's invasive, it's totally unnecessary. There's zero need for their software to force you to make an account with Razer.com to use your property and they should be ashamed.

My Corsair replacement vs the Razer keyboard

Bottom line, the Razer had very similar features to the Corsair at half the price. But the differences came through clearly in the quality and their insistence on roping you to their stall. I'd always had a positive impression of Razer in the past, but the past few years and the handful of devices I've tried have been a huge disappointment. Fool me twice…