A traditional maker of gaming-grade peripherals, Razer introduces its mid-level keyboard, the Lycosa. Small and slim and featuring rubber-coated keys and headset connections, the product has an elegant and high-tech design – especially when the blue backlighting is on. But beauty can only go skin deep, so it’s time for us to check out if functionality goes with its gorgeous design. Let’s put the Lycosa through the test.

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Figure 1: The Lycosa.

At first glance, the rubber coating makes a good first impression until you notice that the letters are virtually invisible without the keyboard being hooked to a PC and the backlighting option turned on. From the rear side, there’s a cable with two USB outputs and two separate audio outputs. Unfortunately, the Lycosa requires two USB ports from your PC while giving back a single spare USB input on its top edge – an unfair trade-off. Of course Razer intended to keep a clear channel for the data stream concerning typing reactiveness, but we still think it’s a bit of overzealousness and waste of a USB port. Once the Lycosa is hooked to your PC, you can plug a mouse and headset to the connections in its top edge.

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Figure 2: Connections and cable.