Over the past couple of years, the Razer company has come up with a fairly large number of products targeting gamers in particular, covering pretty much all the sub-segments of this particular market segment. Back in October 2008, the manufacturer rolled out the Arctosa, a gaming keyboard that, unfortunately, doesn't even come close to the Lycosa or Tarantula in terms of features and specs.



Like all of the other similar products from Razer, Arctosa's keys feature Hyperesponse technology, which reduces key latency and maximize response for critical actions during fast-paced gameplay. Additionally, for supplementary customization options, all of the keys are fully programmable, supporting macro capabilities, as well as 10 customizable software profiles with on-the-fly switching.



Furthermore, the keyboard has also been equipped with several easy-access media keys, plus a gaming mode option for deactivating the Windows key, which tends to be activated by accident quite often. Unfortunately, there's no info on whether the keys are backlit or not (so they're probably not), which is a serious drawback for such a product, especially one targeting gamers in particular.



The Razer Arctosa also addresses one of the most serious issues that occur during intense gameplay, namely that of “ghosting”, the signal failure that occurs when one presses multiple keys simultaneously on traditional keyboards. By providing selective anti-ghosting around the WASD gaming cluster, the peripheral actually allows more commands to be entered (and transmitted) at one time, with a very high level of accuracy.



As expected, the device connects to a host computer via an USB 2.0 interface and supports 1000Hz Ultrapolling, while providing an 1ms response time. Unfortunately, though, the choice of supported operating systems is pretty restrictive, since we're only talking about Windows XP, x64, Vista and Vista64.



The Razer Arctosa sells for around 50 US dollars, which, to tell you the truth, is a bit much, given the features it provides, and, more importantly, the ones it lacks.