Razer quality sucks - fact or myth?

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thesuperguy

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Apr 19, 2013
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I have done my fair share of research regarding multiple peripherals in the past and I have made many very nice purchases. However, all this time, I have been under the impression that razer products are like the black plague, and are a force not to be reckoned with. Seeing floods of people complaining about their razer products breaking in a year if not months if not DOA, I have definitely tried steering clear. But I'm just curious. Is their build quality really that bad, or are these people overstating their problems?
 
Solution
Late to the party for this question, but...
You see this kind of question a lot on forums, but the answers are not really very useful because anecdotal evidence tends to be too.... anecdotal. I will try to give a thorough answer but it will be lengthy, so I will break it up into two parts:
Part 1:
I've had experience with 7 Razer peripherals, and 5 of them have had some sort of problem.
1. Ferox - got these portable speakers when they 1st came out, and they had a terrible hiss when being charged. The customer service story was that some systems or laptops may have poor ground connections which causes the problem, but for me the hiss occurred in any system I plugged them in to. Didn't return them anyway because I did not like their tinny...
The few razer products I have owned have been solid for me 2 razer nagas 1st one used for 2 years then sold and got a newer one to match my keyboard which is a razer deathstalker that has been solid for the last year and a half.
 
I had my first Lachesis die at right around 2 years. Razer replaced it for me and this one has been going strong for 4 years now. I also own a Lycosa. I really enjoy the rubber feel to it on Razer products. The thing that sucks about Razer is their garbage software. I gave up trying to set on-the-fly DPI settings. They never save and revert back to default. I also used to have this cursor jumping issue. 2 software updates and 1 firmware update were supposed to fix the issue. They didn't. The issue was caused by the sensitive laser that can pick up fabrics. When I bought a hard finish mouse pad, the jumping went away. I've experienced these issues with both mice.

The Lycosa has worked without a hitch.

That's my take on Razer products.
 
I bought a Lycosa from them last year. One of the USB ports was dead from the start but it wasn't enough for me to return it. After a week the Escape key stopped working, so I finally sent it back. Haven't bought a Razer product since then. That's the only computer peripheral I've ever had to return.
 
I think Razer has gone downhill over the past few years.

I've had a Razer copperhead since 2007, and it still works like the day it was new (though the rubberized grips are beginning to wear out and I had to replace the feet with the replacements it came with after about four years). Build quality on it is flawless.

On the other hand, I've had a Taipan for about a year now, and while it still works, the palm grips are beginning to slide off (they're only glued on) and it overall feels cheaply made in comparison to the copperhead (though it's still better than your generic dell or HP bundled mouse). I know of five people who have had death adders fail after less than two years of use.

Software is the same story. The copperhead had a reasonably-functioning setup utility, but, this is the important part, once you set the mouse up once, those settings were saved to onboard memory and you NEVER needed to touch the software again. Saved settings worked with the default windows driver. For the Taipan, it has no onboard memory and the software is clunky and not amazingly easy to use. Since the mouse doesn't remember settings you have to install the software and configure it again (or download your settings from the cloud...) for each system using it.

I think modern Razer mice still use top quality components, but aren't built/QCd to the same standards they used to be.

I have no experience with their keyboards, but I've heard the lyctosa/arctosa are rather cheaply made but the black widow is quite good.
 
Late to the party for this question, but...
You see this kind of question a lot on forums, but the answers are not really very useful because anecdotal evidence tends to be too.... anecdotal. I will try to give a thorough answer but it will be lengthy, so I will break it up into two parts:
Part 1:
I've had experience with 7 Razer peripherals, and 5 of them have had some sort of problem.
1. Ferox - got these portable speakers when they 1st came out, and they had a terrible hiss when being charged. The customer service story was that some systems or laptops may have poor ground connections which causes the problem, but for me the hiss occurred in any system I plugged them in to. Didn't return them anyway because I did not like their tinny sound and poor base.
2. Megalodon - I've had these usb based headphones for a long time and they have always worked fine. In some situations I have had to go into the properties of whatever program I'm using, like Skype, and manually select them as they did not switch when they were plugged in. So maybe the drivers could be a bit better, but no real issues.
3. Nostromo - I never used this gamepad much because I didn't really like the feel and layout of the buttons. So I can't really comment on the quality or reliability of it.
4. Imperator - Two friends of mine got imperators, but one of them would randomly freeze up for about 2 seconds during games on his system. They swapped mice and confirmed that the problem did not follow the mouse but stayed with the system. My friend's system was an off the shelf Dell gaming desktop with no modifications. Razer customer service was not really helpful. They gladly sent my friend a new mouse, but as expected it also would randomly freeze. I wound up with the mouse, and I can see it pause for the briefest of moments, not 2 seconds, so it isn't a serious problem for me, but there is something up with this mouse. I can't really use it anyway since it does not work on either of my two mouse pads.
5. Naga (1st generation) - I really liked this mouse. Some of the num pad buttons were a little hard to press reliably, and the lighting was not uniform, but this was not serious. However, after about a year and a half, the mouse would randomly stop responding for as much as 30 seconds when a new program would start up. This was very frustrating, but the newest Naga had come out with an improved number pad so I got that instead of debugging the old one.
6. Naga (2014) - I really like the new number pad ergonomics and the tact switches. Huge improvement. However, it does have one annoying problem so far. In a lot of games you right click to steer the player or pan the camera view. Sometimes when I right click, the cursor randomly jumps up, or left or right 90 degrees or so, which is very disorienting in the game. If I were a more serious gamer, this would be unacceptable. I have not decided if I should return this or not yet.
7. Blackwidow Ultimate - the problem with this mechanical keyboard is that numloc will randomly turn itself off. Since I use the Naga as a num pad, I will be in the middle of a fight and suddenly the actions I've bound to the num pad stop working until I notice that numloc is off. I'm kind of luke warm to the keyboard anyway. The clickiness of the Cherry switches is nice, but there are other sounds: key rattle, key scrape, and a harsh echo sound as a key bottoms out that I do not like.
 
Solution
Part 2:
Since anecdotal stories on a forum may not mean much, another way to answer this question is to look at the company's organisation. And one way to look at that is to do a search on LinkedIn.
Go to LinkedIn.com and do an advanced search on company = "Razer" with the keywords "quality" or "reliability." Only a few names pop up, and none of them are currently working in those fields at Razer. This probably means Razer relies on their manufacturer's to do the quality/reliability work, and the problem with that separation is that improvements do not get fed back into future designs. Quality and reliability remain immature. Quality and reliability can only be mediocre at best.
Now do the same search on another company like Lab126. Lab126 is the Amazon subsidiary that designs the Kindle e-readers and tablets. Their volumes may be higher but their product line is much smaller than Razer's. Do the search and you will find many dozens of people that are or have worked in quality or reliability at Lab126. I don't actually know anything about the quality of Lab126's products, but I recognize some of the names in the search and these are high caliber people.
Another way to look at the organisation is to look at quality and reliability job openings at each company. For Razer, there is nothing. At Lab126... dozens. This tells me that Lab126 takes reliability seriously. Razer not so much.
It is not uncommon for a small consumer electronics company to let their customer's do the reliability testing. This appears to be how Razer operates. I like Razer's products, their approach to design and style. But the bottom line for me is that I would not buy anything new from Razer until their first customers find all the bugs. Even then it might be hit or miss.
 


I have been looking for a solution to the jumping and accuracy problems for a month now. I've done plenty of searches and I've only found one person say this. Wtf. Either way, thanks.
 



I do not recommend the Razer Anansi keyboard to ANYBODY!! I made the mistake of buying it from Best Buy, and after having had it for a couple of months several serious problems have cropped up, i.ee.; the incredibly CHEAP plastic keycaps where a couple of the keys' symbols are nothing but worn holes on top of the keycap and more caps are on their way to being illegible; the "Shift" key does not register a lot of the time; the "E" key double punches ALL the time; while other keys just randomly do not register when struck no matter how diligent you are in pressing them which makes proof reading EVERY word absolutely mandatory; which brings up how mushy the keys truly are; the futuristic key symbols are a problem especially with the "Y" and the "U" looking almost identical so that one is always being mistaken for the other since they are located right next to each other; and finally, dealing with their service dept is a nightmare! I will NEVER buy another Razer product EVER! Unfortunely I also bought a Razer mouse and Razer mousepad both of which have problems, and I have been told it is too late to return any of the products because it has been more then thirty days. Best Buy wont take any of it back and Razer wont do anything because I didn't buy them directly from them, so all Razer will do is replace the BAD product with the same BAD product.
 
I have many razer products, I don't know why I'm still using them (except for the Death adder which is one of my favorite mice).

Let get started....

Razer Blackwidow Ultimate DAO Edition: Worked flawessly but I sold it when I tried a DasKeyboard with bronws, I replaced it with a Das Ultimate (w/browns)
Razer Blackwidow Elite: I had it on my work until I sold it and I bought a DasKeyboard 3 Professional with browns
Razer Mamba 3.5G: Both right and left clicks malfunction before the year of use.
Razer Deathadder 3.5: Worked fine, I sold it.
Razer Deathadder 3.5 Black Edition: Still have it, one of my favorites but it has a left click malfunction.
Razer Onza Controller: double and triple click on the 'A' button, worked fine while I use it (and I used it a lot in Halo Reach)
Razer Sabertooth Controller: Malfunction of the left trigger, sometimes work fine, sometimes don't.
Razer Orbweaver: 'alt' key died (not mechanical), click don't work.
Razer Deathadder 2013: Works fine.

In conclusion most of the failures has been on the mice and controllers, the keyboards works fine but the ABS caps are cheap and a bit loose, but this is an issue of the most "gaming keyboards". Still I don't trust on their own mechanical switches, I prefer cherry MX.

Also I have 2 mice from Logitech that failed after months of use, again the left switches (made by Omron), so I don't think that switches really lasts 20million clicks, I had faulty ones in at least 4 mice.
 
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