Razer Ornata Chroma Keyboard Review

Performance

The Chroma lighting on the Razer keyboard is simply stunning, but anyone who has ever seen one of the modern Razer keyboards in real life will know this, as Razer were one of the first brands to really get the effect to market, and the practice certainly shows in their latest products, which have some of the coolest lighting effects on the market.

Being able to tweak the colour of your keyboard is one thing, but it doesn’t mean much if the keyboard is already ugly. Fortunately, the Ornata is quite the looker, looking like a professional keyboard that would be fantastic for the office, with stealthy features like the mid-height switches that make it finely tuned for professional gaming.

So what about those new switches? Well as someone who uses MX Reds, I really do love how easy they are to trigger, allowing for lightning fast touch typing while I’m writing my reviews. I also use O-ring mods, so that membrane layer in the base of the switch gives the key a really nice bounce and super fast return rate which is awesome for rapid mashing at WASD, or just frantically F5-ing a Black Friday sale.

The “mech” part of these keys is what excites me the most, as these switches feel like a “Keyboards – The Greatest Hits Collection” when it comes to hardware choices. They’re short and fast, like a Chicklet keyboard on a laptop, they have a light bounce and action like a membrane keyboard, yet they have a tactile and audible click that’s like a Cherry MX Green in terms of acoustics and MX Blue in terms of how you feel the bump, but still as easy to push as an MX Red… manage to keep track of all that?

The keys are bloody noisy, there’s no simple way of beating around that bush. I love a clanky keyboard, but I’ll warn you that the person next to you may smack you around the head with the keyboard if they’re near you for too long. It’s a nails on a chalk board thing, it’s only annoying if you’re not the one doing it. This isn’t anything new to MX Blue/Green fans though, and the feedback is to die for, and when it comes to gaming, that the sound and the feel of the keys is great. When typing emails, you can’t help but give it a bit of over acting like your’re a child having fun on your first typewriter. What really stood out for me is that the space bar, enter key, and other wider keys all felt really stable compared to most mechanical keyboards, where those larger keys tend to rock around and can be louder too, but these ones aren’t and that’s awesome… well, they’re not more or less “very noisy” than the rest of the keys at least.

Overall, all I can think is that this keyboard is about as subjective as they come. It’s easier on the fingers with the light action and shorter travel keys, which makes it great for work and gaming, but it’s also quite noisy. If you want that speed, but you don’t want to miss out on the tactile feel of the clicker mechanical switches on the market, then this is the keyboard to get, but that’s obviously not something that everyone would want.