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When you can’t spend a Benjamin-plus on a mechanical gaming keyboard, a membrane-switch model is where to look—despite their lesser keys, some of them pack plenty of bling and functionality. Example: the $79.99 Razer Cynosa Chroma Pro, an alternative rendition of the $59.99 Razer Cynosa Chroma. It introduces LED “ground effects” underglow to Razer keyboards. That’s the main difference between the two, so whether the Pro is worth $20 more depends on how big a jones you have for gratuitous RGB lighting. If the answer is, “Not much,” weigh your options outside the Razer-sphere. The Roccat Horde AIMO, for one, nets you a wrist rest, an experimental tuning wheel, and dedicated media keys for just $10 more.
Slight Upgrade, Pretty Penny
A $20 premium is a lot to ask for a few more lights. Granted, the Cynosa Chroma Pro adds 22 customization zones to the front, back, and sides of the keyboard, so look at it this way if you’re an RGB lighting fiend: You’re paying less than $1 per extra zone.
Boasting a classic 104-key design, the Cynosa Chroma Pro keeps the feature set simple—indeed, simpler than some other keyboards in its price range. The layout is no different than on the non-Pro Cynosa Chroma ($40.41 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , down to the lack of dedicated macro and media keys.
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Their dimensions are about the same, too. (The Cynosa Chroma Pro measures 1.3 by 18 by 6.85 inches.) Both are about the same size as the Ornata Chroma ($49.99 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , Razer’s other membrane keyboard. The Roccat Horde AIMO, meanwhile, is much larger (1.22 by 21 by 9 inches).
Because the Cynosa Chroma Pro has that LED underglow, Razer had to design it with a different lip around the edge for the illumination to be effective, hence the larger dimensions. The few ounces of added weight (2.27 pounds, versus 2.1 pounds on the non-Pro) are the consequence of its additional LED hardware. Aside from those minor distinctions (and the fact that you can buy the Pro only from Razer’s website), the hardware is the same as the Cynosa Chroma’s before it. The only other differences lie in the Razer Synapse 3 software, set to leave beta sometime in June 2018. (For a deeper dive into the Cynosa Chroma Pro’s feature set, check out our review of the original Cynosa Chroma.)
The Synapse 3 software interface is clean and simple. You’ll find it refreshing if you’re a casual user familiar with Logitech’s convoluted Logitech Gaming Software (LGS) or Corsair’s comprehensive Corsair Utility Engine (CUE). Synapse 3 doesn’t tack on lots of extra trappings, so manipulating the lighting on the Cynosa Chroma Pro is as painless as opening Synapse, waiting for it to update, clicking a picture of the keyboard, and pointing your mouse over the Lighting option.
In the Lighting Effects panel, you’ll find eight Quick Effect presets; you can save these to profiles created from within the same window. Toggle over to the Advanced Effects tab, and you can open up Chroma Studio, where all the fun happens.
Getting Down to Each Key
Unlike a lot of budget keyboards on the market, the Cynosa Chroma Pro features per-key backlighting, a handy quality for a gaming keyboard when you have 127 lights (104 individually lit keys, 22 underglow zones, and a backlit logo) in the mix. Most membrane keyboards that light up feature zone-based backlighting, whereby the keyboard is divided into three to five sections that can display just one color at a time. The Cynosa Chroma Pro, in contrast, lets you customize the color of each key as you see fit. That way, if you want to light up, say, the WASD keys in isolation for easy visibility, you can accomplish that with ease from within Chroma Studio.
You can also personalize individual key functions in Synapse 3. For instance, you might program the right Shift key to act as a shortcut for taking screenshots, or configure F8 to paste a wall of lorem ipsum text into your latest graphics-design project. Though support for custom key assignments is commonplace among keyboards in this price range, it’s still a nice touch. After all, if you are buying the Cynosa Chroma Pro over other keyboards like it, you’re likely doing so because you’re a fan of the brand, the software, the lighting scheme, or some combination of these.
You’re also buying it for the underglow, of course, the Cynosa Chroma Pro’s main distinction from its non-Pro counterpart. Even if it serves no functional purpose, its colorful desk-facing sheen is satisfying to look at. And if you’re sitting in a dark room, it at least provides ambience to help you relax during anxiety-inducing matches of Fortnite’s Battle Royale mode, wherein the objective is to not be seen (until you are). I can only hope that, in the future, underglow becomes a standard inclusion for all of Razer’s Chroma-branded keyboards rather than a premium feature.
Then there are the keys themselves—as, well, typing objects. Granted, I’m accustomed to mechanical keyboards and island-style laptop keyboards, but the keys on the Cynosa Chroma Pro feel spongy and unnatural. The switches it uses Razer calls “mecha-membrane.” To my fingers, these switches feel a lot more membrane than “mecha.”
Also, compared with Razer’s in-house-designed Green, Orange, and Yellow mechanical switches, as well as other mechanicals from Cherry, the Razer Cynosa Chroma Pro feels shallow on travel. And compared with a normal membrane keyboard, the switches feel about the same—somewhere between a low-profile laptop keyboard and a high-profile mechanical.
Bask in the Glow…or No?
For $59.99, you can buy the non-Pro version of the Razer Cynosa Chroma, complete with per-key RGB backlighting, the same quiet-but-mushy key switches, and software that takes little time to master. Or, you can muster up $20 more for the Pro’s extra strip of lighting on its underside. But, if you’re willing to spend almost $100 on a gaming keyboard, you might as well go all the way, and go with a mechanical model.
Rather than buying the Cynosa Chroma Pro, I would shell out a few dollars more or less for a basic mechanical keyboard such as the Alienware Pro Gaming ($85.49 at Dell)(Opens in a new window) despite its generic, non-Cherry, Kailh Brown switches. Otherwise, an older model like the Corsair Strafe ($160.99 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) will net you genuine Cherry MX Red or MX Blue key switches for around the same price as the Cynosa Chroma Pro. Alternately, the membrane-key Roccat Horde AIMO we mentioned earlier gains you a full stack of dedicated media and macro keys. Each of these alternatives has more to offer for the money than the Razer Cynosa Chroma Pro.
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The Cynosa Chroma Pro is a bling-heavy, budget-minded membrane gaming keyboard that will please the Razer faithful; for everyone else, the pricing needs tweaking.
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Source link : https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/razer-cynosa-chroma-pro