As a 15 year console user (note the ps4 banished in background) i have finally seen the light, ascended and became a razer whore

The fact remains, most industry reviewers give it glowing reviews.

These are the exact reviews that convinced me to buy the Blackwidow (older model with the cherry mx blue switch), yet I learned the hard way that reviewers are probably rating these based on how they compare with other "gaming" brand keyboards, which sometimes sacrifice quality in exchange for other things like fancy packaging, marketing, gaming features like macro keys, rainbow colors, etc.

Last I checked, the chroma is the #2 best selling gaming keyboard on amazon, with the original blackwidow in the #3 position. Lots of 5 star customer reviews from people happy with the way it lights up or whatever, yet on /r/mechanicalkeyboards:

The general consensus about the Blackwidow is that for that price, you are getting a fairly below average experience in the mechanical keyboard spectrum.

The keycaps on the blackwidow are worse than what I had on an ancient rubber dome keyboard, which is kind of pathetic considering they don't even use better quality ones on the $160 Chroma version. You don't need to be an expert reviewer to notice this, it just takes a few keystrokes.

The Black Widow doesn't feel right. As I understand it the switches are plate mounted instead of PCB mounted and the latter just feel better. The Filco, Cherry and Das Keyboard unit's I've used are simply superior. I tried to like the Black Widow, I really did but I went back to my Das Keyboard Professional.

Try a high-end board and you wont want to go back - these boards are roughly the same price as the Razer Chroma if you don't need the macro keys or backlighting. I think even a mid-range board like the ducky zero feels like a night and day difference compared to the cheap keycaps and weak stabilizers found on a blackwidow. K70's keycaps also look to have thin walls with no reinforced corners. Not sure about logitech, but I personally would not touch that G910 with a ten foot pole after seeing Linus complain about how the keycaps are angled and catch your finger when you are typing. I also remember seeing Linus' video about the TTeSports Poseidon where he explained that the Kailhs didn't seem to feel much different from Cherry which I think is for the most part true, but he completely left off the fact that the keycaps on it feel cheap and hollow just like the Blackwidow's. The Poseidon is a fully backlit mechanical board for $80 so maybe this was understandable, but just like many other reviewers, Linus did not bring up keycap quality. One other annoying thing - NKRO was not possible on the older BW and the "gaming optimized key matrix" was not enough to cut it in all situations:

When fighting Solomon Grundy, you have to run around holding the W and Space keys and when you get over those vent things you have to double tap 3 to do a quick fire of Batman's explosive gel. It wouldn't do it everytime. Barely half the time. I can register 6 keys on those NKRO test websites but that particular combination didn't work. I pulled out my G510 (which I dearly love despite not being mechanical) and it worked like a charm.

The new models still don't do NKRO over usb, you need an adapter, whereas most newer boards can.

One "gaming" oriented board that I am curious about is the FUNC-KB-460-US - another pcmr person mentioned that they were happy with it and looking at it's specs, it seems like it could be a good value board - onboard memory for saving profiles, includes wrist rest, fully backlit, cherry switches, and nkro over usb - was at one time $99, currently $120. Truth is you will not know whether you like a board or not until you try it because there's minor differences in all of them.

/r/pcmasterrace Thread Parent Link - imgur.com