 Now it used to be that there was only one game in town for Blizzard licensed gaming peripherals, but I've already unboxed one of Razer's Blizzard licensed peripherals, and here is another one. This is the Razer Marauder. This is a Starcraft 2 gaming keyboard, and we're going to be having a quick look at it today. First, let's see what Razer has to say for themselves on the box here. So first of all, 1000 Hertz ultra-polling, so that means that the responsiveness of this keyboard should be about as good as it gets. APM lighting system, so we'll have to get into what exactly that is a little bit later. On the Fly Macro recording, this is a feature that I love seeing on keyboards because it makes recording macros a little bit less tedious if you don't have to bring up a big old software program in order to do it. Laser-edged keys, ooh, cool, very nice. And a braided fiber cable, which we're pretty used to seeing on any quality Razer product. Here we go, fully backlit keys. Interesting, 7 foot, lightweight, non-tangled cord. Okay, we've covered that. APM lighting system, we've covered this too. Optimized key travel and spacing, this is a little bit different. So what Razer's basically saying is that the key travel, which is the distance between being not depressed and being depressed, not to say sad, but rather pressed down, is optimized for presumably RTS gaming. Integrated number pad, okay. That is a keyboard feature, I suppose. On the Fly Macro recording, APM lighting system, and elevated keys with optimized travel, distance, and spacing. So it's a little bit redundant. I guess what they mean to say is it is a keyboard, okay? Actions per minute lighting, oh, actions per minute lighting system. That's it, you know, I figured that might be what they mean by APM, but I wasn't really sure how you could have a lighting system that's actions per minute. So we're gonna have to find out exactly what that means. So it looks like there actually isn't a seal on that side. I'm not sure how to get this box open. Ah, here we go. So there's a seal on this side. So it looks like you can actually only open this box one way. So I'm gonna take points off of the Marauder keyboard, because as an unboxer, I like to have the freedom to choose how I'm going to unbox my product. No, I'm just kidding. I'm not gonna take any marks off the product, because the box can only be opened from one side. That actually doesn't bother me very much. All right, so here's the Marauder keyboard. So, wow, the box actually makes it look like, if you see here, it's more of a black keyboard, but you can see quite clearly that it's more of a silver keyboard. So if you were expecting a black keyboard, then you better sort of adjust your expectations, because this is the color scheme that we actually have going on here. So this says Armored Assault, and apparently Armored Assault means lifting up a tab and pulling out the lining of the box. Okay, here we go with the included bits. I mean, Razer's great at presentations, so let's see what they have to say for themselves. First, we have the Quick Start Guide, which shows us that it is a good idea to plug it into a USB port, and furthermore, that it is a good idea to register your product. So not a whole lot going on in there. Next, we have some Razer stickers. As I recall, these are UV sensitive. Only one way to find out for sure, though, guys. Come on, let's go find out if they're UV sensitive. So I'm in my computer room now. Hold on a second. I'm just gonna turn off the light, and... And... Oh, they are not UV sensitive. Bummer. Okay. Never mind that. I think it's possible they used to be, but at any rate, these ones are not. So there, that goes off with the Quick Start Guide. Next, we have the main manual, which is in French. Master Guide. There we go. Okay, so programming macros, using your Marauder. The only reason I have this open right now is to find out what APM lighting is. So you can customize the look of the Marauder by adjusting from over 16 million colors. So you can adjust the main, the side strips, and the underglow lighting colors. Click any of the three color boxes so you can choose the color to assign to that lighting area. Okay, APM and Alerts tab. So Action Per Minute selection on the tab, flanked at the bottom of the drivers, allows you to customize the lighting behavior based on the number of actions per minutes used in StarCraft II. Sweet. So the more APMs you have while you're gaming with this keyboard, the more different your lighting scheme will be. So let's have a pretty close look at the keyboard itself. As far as keyboards go, it's a fairly standard layout. It has letters and it has numbers and it has some media keys that are accessed via a function key. Hey, this is smart. Okay, I'm, actually, wait, hold on. Is this the way I prefer it? Yes, I believe this is the way I prefer it. I prefer the Windows key over here. I know I'm one of those horrible, awful people who doesn't bump the Windows key when they're trying to game with WASD, but I prefer the function key over here for these items because think about it this way. If you're gonna press function and this, for example, to mute your volume, are you gonna go like this or would this be more natural? Oh, what a concept, right? Oh, you know what we should actually do? Here, let's plug this thing in. So it actually has two gold-plated USB plugs and I'm guessing it is just for extra power. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna plug these into my MSI GX660R gaming notebook and see what happens. Ooh, it lights up. Look at that. Okay, I don't have the drivers installed, so I'm not gonna be able to do any additional testing on the different lighting configurations, but that is what it looks like once it's lit up. It's got a pretty even overall backlight. The one key that I'd say doesn't get as much love as the others is probably the escape key, but it looks pretty darn good, even in the bright lights that I have shining down at me right now. So not bad at all. I'll turn those lights off and I'll give you guys a better look at it in a moment. So let's flip it over and see what we have to see down here. So first, we've got a couple of lighting strips at the bottom of the keyboard. We have two of those little risers if you want to incline the keyboard, if that's more comfortable for you. We have rubber pads on the bottom of the keyboard to keep it from slipping. Big ones at the front, small ones at the back. So even if you are using those tabs, it shouldn't slip around. And then, okay, I'll finally get in close and have a look at what all keys you guys are gonna find here. So function keys, we've got mute, volume up, volume down. We've got play, stop, forward, back. And then we have, uh-oh. Hmm, this appears to be brightness. Oh, on and off, okay. And this, oh, okay, is for gaming mode versus not gaming mode, which probably turns off the Windows key. That would be my guess. Okay, here we have, oh, this is interesting. So we've taken the insert, home, page up, delete, end, and page down, and we've put them all in the number pad, which I actually can't decide if it bothers me or not. I'm gonna go ahead and say no for now, because we can always go into number mode. And then we still have insert, home, and page up. Now what I probably would have done was I probably would have gone delete, home, or delete, page up and page down or something to find three useful keys and leave them here even in number pad mode. But I mean, it's something of a, it's never easy when you're trying to decide how to butcher a keyboard layout to condense it. So they chopped it up and they did the best they could. Here are the arrow keys if you're not in number mode. So yeah, it's not bad. It makes them more compact. I mean, it's a lot shorter than a typical keyboard. I mean, here's a standard layout keyboard. This is a SteelSeries 7G. So you can see that it is a good, like, how much, how much shorter is this? It's like a good two and a half, three inches shorter than a 7G keyboard. So here's our little StarCraft II thing. Overall feel of the keys honestly isn't exceptional. I mean, I'm not gonna lie to you guys. It's a gaming keyboard. It's not a mechanical keyboard like their Black Widow series. So you're not gonna get that great tactile feedback. However, I can't really comment on how well optimized it is for RTS gaming, but I can tell you guys that they feel like very adequate key switches, especially considering the fact they are not mechanical key switches. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna turn off these lights and give you guys a look at what the keyboard looks like. There's my Star Wars shirt. And I'm so cool when the lights are dimmed. Ooh. Yeah, you can see it's much more noticeable that the escape key doesn't get much lighting because you can see the laser etched keys allow the backlight to show through. Okay, remember these are not blue colored. These are actually just lit up by the blue light behind them seeing all of the etchings on the keys. So it looks pretty sweet in the dark, guys. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos. And thank you for watching my unboxing of the StarCraft II Razer Marauder keyboard.