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With the recent post about the Moshi Celesta Keyboard, I was tempted to post another review about yet another revolutionary keyboard - the much vaunted Razer Tarantula Gaming Keyboard. Touted as the big brother of the older Lycosa keyboard, the release of the Tarantula in early November 2006 sent the gaming world into a hype. It took Razer sometime to iron out creaks and a bug in the workings of the keyboard and the finished product was a gaming-intensive but still versatile keyboard.

On first glance, the Razer Tarantula does not look glamorous, especially sitting beside my Moshi Celesta. It is about 21 inches long, which is longer than your average keyboard, and wider too. It takes up more space than average, thus it might not be a good idea to try to fit the Razer Tarantula into sliding keyboard trays. The keys have a standard layout, but the orientation is slightly awkward at first and would take some getting used to. The keys are displaced slightly to the right, so first time users would find it disorientating, especially during games. The keyboard has a glossy black finish and a stylish Razer logo that lights up with LED lighting when the keyboard is plugged in.

The Razer Tarantula requires the plugging in of two separate USB cables, instead of the usual one, likely due to the constant LED glow taking up extra power. However, one need not worry about the keyboard using up USB ports on the computer needlessly - similar to the Celesta, the Tarantula has built in USB ports at the side, for plugging in mice or thumbdrives.

The main feature about the Tarantula that Razer boasts about is the ‘anti-ghosting’ capability. Anti-ghosting refers to the ability of the Tarantula to respond to simultaneous key presses on the keyboard, even when they are depressed all at the same time. This would be a very significant advantage for gamers playing First Person Shooters (FPS) or Real Time Strategy (RTS), as now they can perform multiple actions. There are also 10 macro keys on the Razer Tarantula that allows customizable programming of macros, for in-game use. Razer helpfully included several custom keys, labeled with knife and gun icons, for the user to install wherever they wish.

After a few days of use, one thing I did not like about the Razer Tarantula was how prone it was to leaving smudges or fingerprints on the exterior. The glossy surface has a rather slick and menacing look, but only when it’s clean. Prepare to have a piece of smooth cloth to give it a wipe-through after usage. Also, due to the slightly different orientation of the keys, I tended to hit wrong keys very often, and it really took me quite a while to get used to it. There have also been much talk circulating online that the Tarantula was ‘buggy’, in the sense that many reprogrammed keys often did not work and commands being unable to be bound to keys. This required the release of many updates and patches for firmware and drivers by Razer.

What really impressed me was how fully customizable this keyboard was. Every single key can be remapped to serve a different function. By using the bundled software, settings can be made on-the-fly and on a very basic, idiot-proof interface. Furthermore the keyboard has an onboard 32KB memory to store key profiles, identical to that of the Razer gaming mice (like Lachesis).

If you have extra cash to splash out on a gaming accessory, I would recommend this. Complementing a good gaming mouse, your gaming experience would be very enjoyable indeed, as the Razer Tarantula Gaming Keyboard fully justifies the US$120 (US$79.99 now) price tag. Otherwise, if you are not fully into gaming, go for a cheaper, more functional keyboard.

Razer Tarantula Gaming Keyboard

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