Razer Tartarus Pro Gaming Keypad

While I do a fair bit of gaming (mostly action & FPS games likes Rainbow Six: Siege, Hunt: Showdown, Outriders, etc.), when I discovered this product it was the last thing on my mind. That said, if you're reading this review to get my feedback on its usefulness and responsiveness in games - this review will have zero pertinent information for you. If, like me, you were looking at this as a potential editing console/controller - this review is for you. I am a professional graphic designer and digital illustrator who regularly uses Adobe's Creative Cloud suite. In particular, I use Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign and Xd daily. For some of these programs I tend to use a Wacom Intuos Pro medium in place of a mouse and, of course, a keyboard. This is the main reason I purchased this device. While I'm perfectly at home with a mouse and keyboard, I can attest to and must admit that having the Razer Tartarus Pro has sped up my workflow EXPONENTIALLY. As some of you reading this may know, using a graphic tablet is great for countless applications but personally when I'm using a tablet for something other than digital painting, using the express keys makes it awkward to operate one-handed and flipping back and forth between having both hands on the tablet (1 on the express keys, 1 on the pen) or having one hand on the keyboard and the other on the pen. As you might imagine this can actually slow your process down somewhat significantly. Especially when you consider that the keyboard shortcuts that you use frequently can be between 3-4 simultaneous keystrokes which adds to the uncomfortable nature of switching. For this reason, some people start to look at editing consoles/controllers to help with this. The main two I personally had been considering were the Tour Box ($169 MSRP at time of review) and one of the Loupedeck devices ($250-500). While both were fine products, I heard this mentioned in passing and decided to investigate. I was a bit surprised because I've pretty much always used Logitech products, I knew nothing about Razer's catalog except that they were popular with people who take gaming much more seriously than I do and that's about it. At a MSRP of $129 I had to at least try it. When it suddenly went on sale from $129 to $79, I pulled the trigger. This has been my experience so far: The short: I wholeheartedly recommend this device if you are looking to use it the way I am. I cannot speak to this device's use in games because I haven't used it for that, I wasn't planning on it and frankly, the other thousands of reviews have that aspect covered pretty thoroughly. The long: I chose the Pro over the V2 for a few reasons I think you'll find important. The main advantages the Pro has over the V2 are that it has optical switches, the keys are dual-action and the keys actuation is adjustable. If you're used to mechanical keyboards, the key "feel" may mess with you at first but unless you're a particularly heavy-handed typer I don't foresee any adjustment issues. The keys on the Pro are a little on the heavy side but because of the nature of the dual-action keys, they kind of have to be. While you can set the actuation (ostensibly how hard you press before the unit recognizes that it's been pressed far enough to trigger the secondary action) to your preference, it will take some light adjusting. The primary function triggered by the initial keypress can be extremely light and the secondary action is generally triggered around half way to "bottoming out" (key being pressed in all the way). It's also important to know that regardless of what you have assigned to the primary and secondary actions to any given key, the primary action will always be triggered first and there is no way to bypass the primary function. While that may sound limiting, it just means you have to be thoughtful about what you assign. I'll talk about this more later. The beauty of the dual-action keys for design software is that you can just set all of your most-used functions to single key presses as there is no string limit per key. That said, as I mentioned, the way you stack keys matters. For instance, if you wanted to set up a key to "Save" on primary and "Save-As" on secondary - it's still gonna overwrite your file because it has to "Save" before it can get to "Save As". A better way of grouping similar commands would be to set "Copy" as primary and "Cut" as secondary so that it doesn't matter that you only need to cut as copying won't prevent you from cutting immediately after. And it's not just the keys - you can even program the scroll wheel and D-pad. Might sound useless to a mouse user, but being able to immediately switch between scrolling and zooming on that wheel without having to move your hand - it's just one of those little things that, in tandem with the rest of your efficiency binding, make this thing fast and fun to use. You also have them ability to designate a key as a "Hypershift" key in Razer's Synapse software (more in that in a sec) wherein instead of tweaking the actuation to your liking to make use of the dual-action keys, you can sacrifice a key to be the modifier instead of using the "pressure" settings. Feels a bit silly to sacrifice a key for that reason to me but it's a reasonable alternative for the more heavy-handed among us. Razer's Synapse 3 software (needed to program your keys and lighting) is not the most immediately intuitive, but once you get the hang of it - it becomes fairly easy to use. From Synapse, you can create profiles for your respective games/applications with their own independent layout and lighting options. You can adjust the key actuation, macros, brightness and for all your RGB lighting needs, Razer's Chroma suite has you covered. You can even sync your other Razer devices or have the lighting effect(s) (Yes, you can even layer lighting schemes and effects) or incorporate multiple Razer devices into a single continuous effect. This is one of the other reasons I opted for the Pro over the V2. I tend to work in little to no light, so the per-key RGB lighting (Yes, even the scroll wheel) is much better than the V2 in that there is no light bleed on the Pro. Depending on the environment, the light bleed on the V2 is pretty egregious by comparison. On the Tartarus Pro, I've never been confused as to which key I'm about to hit and while that may sound like a minor issue for a difference of $50, like any other piece of equipment, there's gonna be a learning curve. That learning curve can be shortened drastically if you start out by color-coding keys which is a huge help until muscle memory develops. Some have complained that the unit has no onboard memory and while this is true, Synapse has cloud storage for settings, so unless you intend to take this device with you everywhere and need to use it in 100 different machines...I'd argue that's a bit of a moot point. I know everyone's needs are different, but realistically I see most people using it on their main workstation and maybe a laptop...even if I still worked at an agency on-site, I'd be hesitant to request IT clear Synapse for my work machine but maybe we're different. The last thing to touch on are the ergonomics. I have large, but not huge hands and I find (for my purposes) that reaching all the keys is comfortable and intuitive (even when you start building speed - and you will). If you have larger hands, the palm/wrist rest is adjustable but if you have smaller hands, I could see this being less wieldy although not uncomfortable. If you have average to large hands I think you'll be at home. The palm base/ wrist rest is lightly padded but not so much so that you notice it which is great because I've dealt with a myriad of "comfort" features that only served to irk during extended periods of use. Thankfully, in the case of the Razer Tartarus Pro, I can use it for HOURS without any discomfort whatsoever. There's something extremely cathartic about being able to work without moving your hands unnecessarily. It's a huge help if you deal with strain from carpal tunnel or tendonitis especially. Whether you're a mouse, tablet (or both) user, I think everyone considering this to speed up their design workflow should at least try it. Do some experimentation with your binds both in physical placement and how you "stack" commands and group your keys colors by tool/function and I'm willing to bet it won't take long before you start wondering how you were getting by without it.