Razer Lycosa Mirror Special Edition Review

Product name: Razer Lycosa Mirror Special Edition
Price: 79.99€

What a mouthful, eh? From here on out, I will refer to this as simply the Lycosa Mirror, to keep things simple.


The Lycosa keyboards (and their little brother the Arctosa) take their names, like all other Razer keyboards, from spiders. The Tarantula was the first, and the upcoming BlackWidow. And here we have the Lycosa. I once googled that word and swore never to do so again, as it is an especially large, hairy and ugly spider. It's something of a testament to the quality of this keyboard, then, that an arachnophobe such as myself can use one of these on a daily basis (indeed, I am typing this review on it right now) and not be entirely repulsed based purely on the name. More after the jump...


To start with, the Lycosa Mirror is very shiny. Very very shiny. And as with most shiny plastic things that you handle a lot, it gets very fingerprint-y, and very dusty, very quickly. It requires almost daily wiping to keep it from getting too bad, and it even comes with a microfibre cloth for that very purpose. As shiny as the Lycosa Mirror is, it doesn't skimp on the features either.

The cord leading from the back of the keyboard is a mite thicker than a standard USB keyboard, but that is for a reason. At the end of this cable you will find a 3.5mm headphone and microphone jack, and two USB connectors. One powers and transfers the data for the Lycosa, the other acts as a USB extension cable for any USB peripheral that you can think of. As the connectors for the headphones and microphone, as well as the USB connector are just above the Scroll Lock key, I would assume Razer expect you to plug a mouse in there. While this is a very nice feature to have, there is no direct way of routing the headphone and microphone lead(s) away. This results in the cable draping across your keyboard, or tucking it under the rear legs supporting the keyboard.

Just above the numpad, where you expect to find the lock lights, there is an illuminated touch panel with media functions. In the provided Lycosa software, you can make these work with Winamp, Windows Media Player, iTunes or Real Player. To the left of the Razer logo, you have controls for Play/Pause, Stop, Previous Track and Next Track. To the right of the logo, you have volume up and down controls, as well as an illumination control. Tapping this lightly with your finger will shift the keyboard between full illumination, just having the WASD keys brightly lit up, or turning the illumination off altogether. This is very nifty, and very good if you leave your computer on at night in your room, but the keyboard, nor Windows, remembers what state you left it in prior to turning the computer off, resulting in the keyboard randomly choosing one of the three aforementioned states on start up. Holding down the Windows key and tapping the logo on this touch panel will disable the Windows key, a feature that will appeal greatly to frantic gamers who often knock the key in game, bringing the start menu up, and a kill streak to an end.

Then comes on of the killer selling points of these keyboards: the macro functions. While these appeal most to the RTS and RPG players, macro functions can be used in pretty much every game, from commanding your Engineer to build a Sentry and a Dispenser in rapid succession, to chaining spells in World of Warcraft with a single button press, to simply starting various programs. The macro functions work well, but there is no live recording of macros, everything has to be set up in the Driver Control software provided by Razer.

Onto the actual feel of the keys, this keyboard has a very flat, rather shallow key depth, feeling more like a laptop keyboard than a desktop one. It's somewhere in between the two. Removing the wrist rest, however, alleviates this slightly, making the keys feel slightly deeper, with a more positive action. Depending on your preference, it's worth spending a day with the wrist rest both on and off to see which you prefer. Make sure you don't lose the screws.

Although the software and features for this keyboard are fantastic, the keys are rather loud to type on, and I can't help but feel that the non-mirror version with the rubber coated keys would produce a better typing experience. But in the end, it comes down to aesthetics vs performance. Both the mirror and non-mirror Lycosas perform virtually identically, and the choice is whether or not you want the slight extra hassle of cleaning your keyboard every so often.

Final judgement: Pretty damn awesome, but if you can, try before you buy, and keep your eye on the upcoming BlackWidow, which shares the basic genes of this Lycosa, but with bigger, mechanical keys.