Software

Ah, we now get to the part I was most looking forward to. It's hard to stay in touch with the keyboard community without hearing about Razer Synapse. There have been some complaints in the past about it, so I was keen to see how Razer Synapse 3 in its current form works. The installer can be found on this page, and Razer has a dedicated guide on its installation, which I have gone through above. Think of Synapse 3 as a menu in a restaurant, and you get to choose the various dishes you fancy. There are add-on modules galore, which is one of the ways Razer looks to establish an ecosystem revolving around Synapse, and the installer itself thus goes from a 6.5 MB executable to downloading all the chosen components and installing them. To Razer's credit, the various components are clearly listed, and you can pick and choose the options on top of the base libraries making up Razer Synapse 3.


The installer may say a restart is required, but it is not necessary. Get used to some prompts, however, as Razer would certainly like you to register for a Razer ID to use the cloud-saved profile functionality. I was happy to see a guest option that gets around this if you are so inclined, and while I see the merits with someone on the move now being able to access more complex profiles anywhere, you still need to have Razer Synapse installed on the system and might as well export/import profiles on a USB drive instead. It also goes without saying that Synapse, or any other such program, isn't allowed in competitive gaming anyway. Don't let me get you down, though. If you find the cloud-saving feature attractive, do by all means go for it. I just don't see any need to get this data going back and forth and potentially taking up more system resources on top of other potential hassles.


The first time you open Razer Synapse 3, you are offered a quick tutorial that goes over its various components. This can be quite handy, as are the various guides and YouTube tutorials from Razer. As someone new to the Razer ecosystem, all these help with the learning curve, and help me better understand how a paying customer would fare with one of the most feature-rich software drivers for keyboards. The biggest issue for newbies as I see it will be the overwhelming options just to set up Synapse, let alone use it, so there may be a tendency to stick with the default installation options. This is also where I learned that the actual macro editor functionality in Synapse is an optional module, which is a weird move, so take your time to get this right.


By now, you would have seen all the green and black ongoing with Razer Synapse 3, which is one of my complaints with the user experience. The green is too harsh, badly contrasting with this otherwise clean UI, and the black is not dark enough for it all to meld into a true background. Razer does provide a white theme option, but I am going to go on record and say that it is even worse in this regard, as you will see in the video below. There is some method to this madness, with the green bar at the top consistent across windows, but you will get more green accents in different windows, and that is even before a pop-up comes in as seen above. If you are fine with the color scheme, there is a lot to like here. I mentioned before how the UI is clean, but it is also well laid out and scales beautifully with monitor DPI and OS scaling. The text entries are appropriately sized for the window itself, and changing over to different tabs also happens quickly enough. Helpful cues come up as needed, and there are multiple modes of navigating between menus with the keyboard and mouse. It's obvious that Synapse has a larger team behind it than many keyboard companies have in total. Some of the more feature-rich modules take a second to load, but still color me impressed—just not in that green color.

Seen above is a video going over using Razer Synapse 3 with the Huntsman V2 TKL keyboard, as well as some of the general settings in the software itself. I mentioned above how everything is pretty well laid out, and I found myself using the forward and back arrows more than I thought, too. The keyboard-specific items include general performance settings and global shortcuts, as well as the ability to set the polling rate to 8 kHz to match other 2021 keyboard flagships from competitors, including CORSAIR. Key-mapping is quite extensive, and here too do you get a reminder to download the macro module if you have not done so already. Most of the key-mapping options and created profiles are saved onboard the device. I do like that it's clear which ones are not, which means they need Razer Synapse to be running to work. This is the same for lighting, with the simpler effects marked as such and available on the device and the program allowing for more granular control over the specific color and speed/direction of said effect. More complex ones require the Chroma Studio module, which works by allowing layers to be added—the complexity of the final effect determines whether it can be a hardware or software effect.