You can beat Baldur's Gate 3 nearly 13 times before this keyboard runs out of battery

The new Razer BlackWidow V4 Pro 75% has just landed, and it brings a surprising number of upgrades over its non-Pro sibling with it. Along with a new multi-function Command Dial and OLED display, this Razer gaming keyboard can chat to your PC at a 4,000Hz polling rate yet also last a massive 2,100 hours on one battery charge.

We’re not entirely sure why you need such a long battery life on a desktop PC gaming keyboard, but it’s impressive nonetheless. The new Razer contender for a spot on our best gaming keyboard guide also includes hot-swappable switches and Razer’s HyperSpeed wireless tech, as well as Bluetooth 5.1.

The new board is the follow-up and upgrade to the BlackWidow V4 75% and BlackWidow V4 Pro, the former of which we found to be a fantastic offering that nicely balances being a straight-to-the-point speedy gaming keyboard (for a non-ridiculous price) with offering some of the customization options that many keyboard buyers now want. The new BlackWidow V4 Pro 75% cranks up the formula by several notches, though, with one very strange change.

The biggest new feature of the Pro is its OLED screen and Command Dial. The latter is a typical configurable digital encoder dial that sits in the top right of the board, although rather than sitting on top, as on the Glorious GMMK 3, it’s tipped over and onto the side. Through a combination of turning the dial and tapping its neighboring button, you can control functions such as the polling rate, lighting effects, power saving options, volume adjustment, zoom, track selector, and more.

Another switch on the back of the board provides the option to slide between 2.4GHz wireless and Bluetooth, with the latter able to connect to three devices at once, so you can quickly switch between controlling your PC, console, and phone or tablet, for instance.

The 4,000Hz polling option is also available via the 2.4GHz wireless connection, but using the wired connection drops this down to a maximum of 1,000Hz. Not only is that odd in isolation, but it’s even stranger when you consider that the non-Pro version of this board, which is wired only, offers up to 8kHz polling. So continues Razer’s recent trend of making its product stack decidedly confusing – we’re looking at you Razer Viper V3 Hyperspeed.

Another slight oddity is that the V4 Pro 75% will ship by default with Razer’s orange tactile switches, rather than linear switches, which tend to be preferred by a lot of gamers. It’s also notable that both the BlackWidow boards don’t offer analog switches with the much-talked-about Razer Snap Tap technology for speedy counter strafing. This feature remains exclusive to the Razer Huntsman keyboard range.

Per-key backlighting is of course present, and the keycaps are made from hard-wearing PBT plastic so the keyboard should stand the test of time. Sound dampening is also prevalent, with two layers of foam and even a “tape-enhanced PCB,” which literally refers to the act of putting sticky tape over the back side of the PCB to help absorb higher-frequency noises.

As to that battery life, that full 2,100 hour figure is only obtainable by using the board’s power saving mode that disables the lighting and OLED display while also pausing comms to Razer’s Synapse software. Presumably a relatively low polling rate is also required, though Razer doesn’t specify. In more typical “everything turned on” scenarios, you’re likely to be looking at battery life in the region of 50-200hrs, we would estimate.

The Razer BlackWidow V4 Pro 75% is available now for a rather wince-inducing price of $299.99 (€349.99), making it a particularly expensive keyboard considering it doesn’t venture into the realm offering analog key functions, or the customization of other more premium offerings.

For a closer look at another premium offering, check out our Drop CSTM80 review, and you can also read about the controversy surrounding the Razer Snap Tap CS2 ban recently.