Review: Razer Nostromo Expert Gaming Keypad

QUICK SUMMARY

A premium gaming keypad.  It appears to have been designed to allow minimal learning time from traditional keyboard gaming functions while still allowing convenient access to more controls in a rather ergonomic form factor.  Noteable design elements include a D-pad, scroll wheel, adjustable palm rest and backlighting.

In all there are 17 push-buttons, a scroll wheel and a 4-way, digital D-pad which can be configured in both 4- and 8-way setups.  The software allows for every single one of these functions to be re-assigned, including setting the scroll wheel as two separate keypresses which repeat with each indentation.  The software also allows for each key to be bound to a macro, which can be of "infinite" length (limited, presumably, by the medium storing the macro as it has no on-board memory) and up to 8 Keymaps to be toggled through at a time either by holding down a key or pressing a key to cycle them with the active Keymap indicated by way of three coloured lights.  A total of 20 profiles, each with 8 Keymaps, can be used in all with manual and task-sensitive switching.

For further details, please visit the Razer website.

BACKGROUND

In the case of the Nostromo, this is not my first experience with a keypad, nor my first experience with a gaming keyboard - but it will be my first with what I have come to know as a "Gameboard".  Previously I've used keyboards of all different shapes and sizes, ranging from the age-old Dick Smith Wizzard (a Creatavision which had both a soft-rubber keyboard and a keyboard which was on the joysticks), laptop keyboards throughout the years and all kinds of membrane, chiklet and mechanical keyboards on the desktop.  My most recent keyboarding experience has been on a Filco Majestouch Ninja (a Majestouch II with "stealth" keycaps), using Cherry Brown switches.

POTENTIAL BIAS CAUTION

Given I wish to make these reviews as transparent as possible, I feel it's necessary to include a warning for this review.  I have, in the past, owned three Razer products - and I'm definitely NOT a fan.  As far as basic functionality is concerned they're perfectly servicable, but I've always found they have flaws ranging from poor decisions to downright bad design.  Allow me to elaborate:

I owned a Lycosa keyboard.  It worked perfectly as a keyboard and, to my knowledge, it still does.  I even received one of the ones that was later identified with a fault and Razer was quite happy to send me out a new one - without even asking for the old one back.  However one of the major advertised features - the touchpad-style controls for the lighting and multimedia - was a constant source of grief and the keycaps were wearing away after less than a year of use, leading to large blobs of light where letters should be.

I have also owned a Lachesis (v1) mouse.  As a basic pointing device it, too, was perfectly adequate.  But I uncovered several issues with the additional buttons which ranged from functions that fluctuated on and off multiple times a second to a perculiar flaw which meant any of the four side buttons would disactivate their function whenever another button assigned to "Click" was released - regardless of what that other button was or what function was assigned to the side button.  This issue persisted across multiple driver and firmware revisions, though it was never constant.  To my knowledge, these issues were never fully resolved; though I would hope they don't affect the v2.

Lastly, I own an Onza gamepad.  Again, as a dual-analogue gamepad it's pretty good.  It's responsive, it's well built, and the only part that I really could have done without are the extra, configurable buttons on the bumpers (remove them entirely or put them away from another standard control, please).  However, the D-pad can only be called abysmal.  As 4 distinct buttons it works rather well, but as a D-pad for the purposes of old-school side-scrollers or fighting games it's quite possibly the worst I've ever used.  In particular, it shows a strong weakness in diagonals which makes inputting commands that require rolling more luck of the draw than any real skill (QCF+P was bad enough - HCF+P was out of the question).

As a result of this, I will probably be overly critical of the Nostromo.  In some cases this may be a good thing but I will still provide the warning ahead of time.  In fact, the only reason I purchased the Nostromo is because there are simply no alternatives available in the country (Saitek's Cyborg Command Unit was discontinued at least 2 years ago, while Logitech's G13 appears to have been discontinued in Australia).

ACQUISITION

I purchased the Nostromo from U-Mart, at a cost of $68.  Delivery was an option, however I live close enough to make the pickup in person.  This makes it extremely expensive for what is, in many ways, only part of a glorified membrane keyboard, but that price is significantly dwarfed by most mechanical keyboards.

I did discover, however, that obtaining a Nostromo is no easy feat.  Most larger electronics stores and many computer hardware stores will list them on their websites, but only the latter seem to keep them in stock.  I actually tried three electronics stores before I went to U-Mart and all of them informed me that they were online-only deals.  This isn't a problem for someone who makes a habit of buying things online but I still prefer a good brick-and-mortar establishment in case something goes wrong.

Most every online PC retailer will have these listed and in stock, however, so if you really want to get one but don't mind waiting than you should have no problems.

WHAT'S IN A NAME

Officially, the device in question is known as the Razer Nostromo Expert Gaming Keypad.  It's the successor to the Belkin Nostromo SpeedPad n52, and the Belkin n52te (Tournament Edition), which were designed in conjunction with Razer and used Razer-provided software.  Unlike Razer's other products, however, Nostromo name doesn't appear to have been sourced from a dangerous animal - though it may be named after the spaceship featuring in the 1979 movie "Alien".

IMMEDIATE IMPRESSIONS

The first thing that struck me was that my hands must be a slightly different size to the ones the device was made for.  Despite the "adjustable" wrist rest, I was unable to find a position which I was suitably happy with.  The default, shorter location (which I suspect I will stick with) feels slightly too cramped, while the other, longer location made reaching the first row of keys feel like a stretch (which seemed counterintuitive).  Removing the rest entirely made things no better (in fact, it felt even more cramped), but I'm hoping that most of this has to do with simply adjusting to a new device.  Time will tell, but I would have appreciated either a slider or a third placement in between the existing two.  In spite of this, while resting my hand on it the whole setup did feel quite comfortable (and no stabbing pains in my wrist to speak of).

The next thing, and one I suspect many gamers either haven't noticed or haven't realised that they've noticed, is the locator "bump".  It sits on button 08, which is in the very middle of the keypad.  As a touch typist I didn't fully appreciate how much this would bother me until I actually got a good chance to sit my hand on it.  This puts it directly under my middle finger, instead of my index finger, which continually makes me want to re-adjust my hand into somewhere more appropriate, despite it actually being the correct position.  Since I also game with my left hand in the "home" position (I use ESDF instead of the more popular WASD) I can see this taking quite a bit of time to get used to.  Either having it on the 09 key instead, having it switchable, or not having one at all would have been a better idea in my opinion.

As for the keys themselves, they feel like reasonable quality controls.  They don't have quite the assuring feel of my mechanical keyboard, but they're nowhere near as soft as many "gaming" keyboards I've felt in the past - especially Logitech's G1x-series of keyboards.  They have very little sideways motion, require minimal but deliberate force to actuate, and feel re-assuring in use.  As of this point in time I have no real insight into their longevity, both mechanically and aesthetically, but at worst I can always replace them with Cherry switches (and accompanying keycaps) at a later date if things go astray.

Up next is the D-pad.  While it seems that the Nostromo was designed with the intent that the D-pad would not be used for directional control (hence the arrows on buttons 03, 07, 08 and 09), that really does seem to be the best purpose for it.  As this is just my initial impressions I haven't really had a play around with it yet, but the feeling it gives is very soft and unconvincing.  It still responds as you would expect and it's arguably a large improvement over the D-pad on the Onza, but I'm still not sold that it's going to be as useful as I'd hoped.  Since this is the part which actually makes it more useful than simply a number pad (or even just a standard keyboard) it strikes me as odd that so little "polish" has been applied to this area.  With the size and shape of my hands, I see myself leaving the provided thumbstick in place - otherwise reaching for forward is somewhat uncomfortable.

Lastly, the default lighting is very bright.  I'm not exactly sure why peripheral makers even allow their lighting to go to such levels, but if they're meant to allow playing in the dark than it's clearly unnecessary.  There's a toggle switch on the bottom which can be used to completely disable the lighting (save the Keymap indicator lights), while the software allows it to be dimmed.  There's only one colour option, however - blue.  It could probably be changed by way of a screwdriver and a soldering iron, but I'm not really much of a fan of losing a warrenty so early for something so trivial after the MMO7 incident.

BEFORE USE

Getting it all set up was pretty much as straight forward as it could be.  In fact, the only part I found in the slightest bit unusual was that the software required a system reboot.  A reboot?  For what is, essentially, a keyboard?  Weird.  In any case, I installed the latest 2.02 software direct from Razer and, though I had downloaded it in anticipation, discovered my unit already shipped with the latest 1.02 firmware.  No driver disc was included (in fact, no software at all was included - just some advertising stuff and a "quick start" guide) which means driver downloads from the Internet are essential if you want to reconfigure the Nostromo in any way.

Perhaps worth mentioning is that the Nostromo is not (yet) supported by Razer's Synapse 2.0 suite.  I'm unsure what exactly this means as far as compatability and features is concerned, but someone with a more vested interest in Razer hardware might find this to be relevant information.

IN USE

As with most of my gaming hardware, the fact that the Nostromo supports profiles is likely to be something that I don't use much, if at all.  I may, at some stage, set up some detection stuff just so I don't need to switch back and forth to my keboard as often for things like web navigation but it will ultimately be left with pretty much the same setup 90% of the time.  This is mostly because I have things set up so that if I'm not able to use my Nostromo for any reason (it fails, I leave it somewhere, etc) than my controls will still function perfectly on the keyboard as I left them before.

Obviously, the Nostromo is something of a niche product.  The vast majority of people will never really want or need one.  Myself, I needed something that I could easily position on my desk tray alongside my mouse for what I spend the bulk of my time doing - gaming.  My old setup was an ergonomic nightmare which my wrists were becoming more and more vocal about, and it was either a case of getting a gameboard or getting steel splints in my wrists.  However, it bears mentioning that, like many other "gaming" peripherals, the Nostromo isn't simply limited in use to gamers - the buttons can really be defined for just about any purpose, so it could very well be quite useful for content creation and digital media of any kind.

However, I will point out one very major flaw I discovered when first trying to set up my profiles.  My aim, as mentioned earlier, was to use the D-pad for directional control.  Using the latest 2.02 drivers (which are the only ones available directly from Razer) this simply isn't possible with my configuration.  Setting the main axes to ED and SF respectively, while disabling the diagonals, basically meant I could only use one direction at a time - moving to the diagonals gave no control at all.  Since the programming facilities only allow you to bind a single function to each button, and the macro engine doesn't allow you to create a macro which simply holds 2 keys for as long as you're pressing the button, there doesn't appear to be any way around this.

The earlier 1.03 drivers (you will have to search for those as Razer does not offer them for download) don't suffer this limitation, fortunately, and I've also e-mailed Razer hoping for a better solution which still allows the use of the newer drivers in case there are any other improvements worth mentioning.

As I don't use my PC for much other than gaming, and that is the intended purpose of the Nostromo, I'll be doing the bulk of my evaluation with regards to gaming.

WORLD OF WARCRAFT

Firstly, the Nostromo is a compromise for how I play WoW.  It will not completely replace my keyboard 100% of the time, but it should put in a reasonable effort.  My configuration requires me to not only have access to the basic cardinal directions of movement, but also no less than 16 action keys, at least one modifier, a targetting key and jumping, in addition to a PtT key for Ventrilo, while having access to at least one more key to "skull" targets is nice.  Using the Nostromo gives me cardinal movement, one modifier, two targeting "keys" (I'm using the scroll wheel), a PtT key and 15 action keys - I lose jumping and ducking (flying up and down, more importantly), a single action key and all quick access to target markers.

Suffice to say, the setup I originally used didn't really work at all.  I moved things around, tried to get comfortable with it, but in the end it just kept coming back to the same basic problem - it was too different to using the keyboard and muscle memory wouldn't let me appreciate the difference because the two devices are so similar.  The biggest problem, in fact, seemed to come from attempting to use the D-pad for movement, in spite of all my time on consoles doing exactly that.  My thumb kept wandering off the stick, leaving me stranded.

This would soon become an even bigger problem as I experimented with different layouts.  Firstly, I attempted using the marked keys for their marked purpose, and then working around this.  It was a disaster.  My basic setup has a dependance on 5 keys being pretty well side-by-side, sometimes even a 6th, and the default layout means that this is no longer possible. I tried breaking it up into two parts but that just made things worse.  Perhaps if I'd been using it like this from the start (read: If I'd been using it when I first started playing, not if I'd tried that layout first) than it wouldn't be an issue, but honestly it just feels too weird to use because the controls are so similar to a keybard but they're in such different places.  I even tried moving the whole thing back so that my hand would "rest" on the 4-long row, which did help somewhat with the scroll wheel but made the rest of the pad awkward to use (not to mention simply moving with this configuration felt weird due to the different angles).  On top of that, I do have to say that a thumb pad makes a terrible control interface for MMO-RPG skills.

So I went back to using the D-pad for movement (which means I'm stuck with the 1.03 drivers for now).  Over a little bit of time I did become more used to it but it honestly just feels wrong and it's hard to say why exactly that is.  My fingers just never really felt at "home" on any of the buttons, which means they'd continually move left and right one key and put everything out of order (I suspect this to be because of the misplaced locator bump as well as the keys being nearly flat).  The D-pad requires just that little bit too much pressure to push forward (corresponds to the Up command) so it felt awkward to hold it and my thumb would slowly slide across it whether I was using the thumbstick or not.  And then there's really no decently located keys which can be used as modifiers without interfering with the function of something else, especially given how easy it was for my hand to find its way into the wrong place.

To be honest, though, after trying three or four major reconfigurations, each with various minor tweaks, I just couldn't find something that I actually preferred to the keyboard; and that's quite possibly the worst thing that can be said about a device which is meant to stand in for the keyboard in any situation.  It just isn't set out well enough and lacks enough buttons.

BORDERLANDS 2

Given the poor showing in WoW, I was both hopeful and not-hopeful of a better showing in a title that involves less action buttons and more, well, action.  Sadly, it turned out that I was in for much the same treatment as earlier, only this time it started to show just how bad the D-pad really was.  All I really got a chance to do was to wander around Sanctuary and collect a few ECHOs before it became apparent that my thumb was getting fatigued using the D-pad to move around - and that is a really, really unusual sensation.

In the interest of absolute fairness, I didn't actually create a new profile to use with BL2 - rather I just toyed with my WoW profile to see how it felt.  This meant I was lacking a few controls (jumping, ducking and sprinting) and had a few extra buttons that served no purpose (having 5 and 6 bound doesn't help when they don't do anything), but the reality is just walking around was unenjoyable.  Potentially I could have switched to using the marked keys for movement, but that again hails back to the question of "why bother?"  If I'm going to use it exactly as I would a keyboard, why don't I just use a keyboard and be done with it?  That also would have meant re-assigning the weapon selection keys into some kind of awkward position, since there's no "number" row, which starts to eat into the usability factor once more.

Again, it's not that it specifically didn't work.  All the buttons performed their assigned function as well as I needed them to, and everything had a place.  It just didn't feel like any sort of improvement to actually try to use it given the learning curve and the minimal, if any benefit in actually getting it right.

AQUANOX

Having established what I believe works against the Nostromo, I set out trying to find something that did suit it.  This is in part because I believe it has the potential to be a good device, but mostly because I didn't really want to have paid money for something I've no intention of really using.  Given my earlier experiences with Descent, MechWarrior and AquaNox using a HOTAS unit along with the design of Razer's Artemis concept controller, it got me wondering whether replacing my throttle quadrant with the Nostromo could make for a more enjoyable experience in things which don't use a traditional throttle as such.  Due to the potential when it comes to constant, 3-axis movement, I was hopeful of the Nostromo making a good showing here.

The results were a little bit mixed, but on the whole quite positive.  As a digital throttle quadrant, the Nostromo makes a far better showing than it does as a keyboard substitute.  It didn't actually improve my abilities in the least, but it felt a lot more direct than attempting to use the throttle and a lot more comfortable than trying to use the keyboard.  My aim was still fairly lousey in the instant-action dogfight although I did win the mission so it wasn't exactly crippling.  With a little practice I could see myself faring just as poorly as I used to a long time ago when I used the keyboard and mouse for this title, which is to say badly at the instant-action part but good enough to finish the game itself.

However, it wasn't exactly a flawless entry.  Like so many other games, both old and new, AquaNox isn't exactly impressed by having two joysticks active at the same time.   The Nostromo, as part of its software, installs a joystick emulation HID device.  Even setting the default joystick to be my X52 didn't seem to satisfy AquaNox in the slightest - it just simply wouldn't accept any input from it.  The only way I could get it to work was to disable the HID device manually from the device manager.  That doesn't seem to have had any other negative side effects (yet) but it does mean I cannot easily configure the Nostromo to be a joystick as well.  I don't see this as a major issue - just something to keep in mind.

I'm also not a fan of how the keys actually register.  The keys themselves have a very long (relatively speaking) throw and, as they're membrane-based, don't respond until you bottom them out.  They then stop responding almost the instant they leave that position.  This means that you have to very deliberately press them which can sometimes be a good thing, but my style is a little less pronounced and I found that I would quite often hit a control and have nothing happen.  I actually found that to be rather weird as I almost always bottom out the keys on my keyboard, even when typing, yet something about the Nostromo kept me from reliably doing that.  Perhaps with time I'll come to be better at it.

On the whole, though, as far as digital throttles go it was pretty good.  The marked keys are perfect for putting basic movement on it for something like AquaNox, the scroll wheel could also be used for speed settings in other titles if you bind it appropriately (I've got it set to = and - for up and down respectively), while the thumb control can take up and down movement, and potentially banking if your stick doesn't have a Z-rotation axis like mine does (or if you use it with a mouse).  The changeover basically costs the use of (in my case) 4 analogue axes (6 if you include the "mouse" feature), a scroll wheel, a 4-/8-way hat and 3 buttons (5 if you count the "mouse").  Other throttles will naturally have different configurations.  In exchange for that, I wind up with what is essentially a 4-/8-way hat, a scroll wheel and 17 buttons - a far more useful setup for games that don't use the throttle as a one-way device like flight simulators do for engine power, or if they don't support analogue input.

This also extends its usefulness to older games that don't support the full gambit of axes available on a HOTAS unit, or for setups which simply don't have a throttle quadrant at all.  This includes both older Windows titles like MechWarrior 3, which doesn't like having more than about 8 buttons and 4 axes, as well as DOS titles which simply don't support more than 4 of either (more commonly only 2 each) outside of special circumstances.  I could see myself going back and doing a few layouts specifcally for DOS games like X-Wing and Frontier which were never entirely analogue throttle friendly.

I suppose, however, I should clarify just one thing here: how is it that it can be well suited to one kind of movement, but not another?  It really just comes down to what you can and cannot easily do better with a keyboard.  Moving around on a floor with the occasional jumping and/or ducking is one thing, but moving around freely in 3D space is quite another.  The keyboard still isn't unusable in these situations, of course.  It's just that the reduction in "twitch", combined with the lower number of non-movement controls really lend towards a better experience.

WINDOWS (OS)

Now here's the weird one - it actually feels well suited to desktop use.  The controls could be set to switch between tabs in a browser or tasks in general, shortcuts for closing and launching tabs or programs, cut/copy/paste, the start menu and so forth all felt really good to use.  Add the thumb controller for navigation and it feels like a real winner.  I could even see it being used to operate media players, both when they're active and when they're not, and it seems like it would be perfectly suited to it.

That's, of course, a far cry from what it was designed for.  It's also a pretty menial task for its price and aesthetic.  But it does seem to perform admirably at it.

NOT SO OBVIOUS OBSERVATIONS

Profiles (which I did play around with a little bit) aren't as intuitive as they could be.  An existing profile cannot be directly replaced by importing one you saved earlier.  This isn't such a big issue for the extra profiles, but it means you cannot directly overwrite the main profile with something you import.  Also, the application detection leaves a lot to be desired in that it can only be assigned to a single executable, and there's no "default" state - profiles are changed when a program loads and only when that program loads, so if you want a default setup you have to keep changing back to it later. 

ALTERNATIVES

As I mentioned earlier, the Nostromo's two main competitors - the Saitek Cyborg Command Center and the Logitech G13 Advanced Gameboard - are both unavailable in Australia.  The Saitek offering appears to have been discontinued globally for a long time (at least 2 years), while the Logitech reportedly hasn't been discontinued but still cannot be obtained save a handful of stores with old stock.  Realistically, the only direct alternative that seems to be available is the Genius ErgoMedia 500, which sports 11 buttons, a scroll wheel, a D-pad (no thumb stick), 3 Keysets and backlighting, along with an onboard USB audio device and associated jacks, though I've also had difficulty tracking down where to get one of these.

Many enthusiasts recommend hunting for an original Belkin n52 due to the onboard memory, but these can only really be obtained second hand.

This leaves the only reasonably available options as things such as the Wolfking Warrior, Steelseries Fang and the Cyber Snipa Game Pad V2, though a few others exist.  These are all essentially stylised keyboards, lacking the extra control options presented by a thumb-operated controller, and are questionable to their worth over a normal keyboard; though many of them offer fairly ambidexterous layouts, which cannot be said for those with thumb controllers.

Update: Since I originally wrote this, Razer has announced and subsequently released a replacement for the Nostromo in the form of the Orbweaver.  It's more adjustable than the Nostromo and gives up the scroll wheel for an additional 6 buttons, while also using Cherry MX Blue mechanical switches for the keys and other, undocumented mechanical switches for the thumb cluster.  However, it is also more expensive, with early prices almost twice what I paid for my Nostromo.

CONCLUSION

There are two questions you have to ask of any product you buy when forming an opinion on it: Do you regret purchasing it, and would you buy another one?

Do I regret purchasing it?  In a word, yes.  There's still a touch of bitterness in my system when it comes to Razer goods, and the Nostromo has sadly not changed this for the better.  It's comfortable enough and does everything it's supposed to - it just doesn't do it in a way that feels natural to me, despite what its intentions appear to be.  I have found it more useful when it comes to older games - especially DOS titles - but I doubt that the intention of a relatively modern piece of hardware is to cater to games from last century.

But would I buy another one?  Not a chance.  Granted it has done exactly what I bought it for, in that my wrists don't feel like they're going to shatter after using it and all the buttons work.  But there's just so many things that bother me about it which really shouldn't have made it past the design stage.

In many regards, the Nostromo is a fine piece of kit - but it feels like it's been designed by people sitting around a whiteboard that have never actually gamed (or typed) before.  By that, I mean it looks good on paper, feels good to sit your hand on and have a play around, but when you start to put it into action the shortcomings are obvious.  The keys are nice, all the buttons work, but the layout just isn't fit for what appears to be its target audience: modern, competitive gamers.

WHAT I LIKED

• Comfortable.
• Good key feel.
• Relatively easy to configure.

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE

• Key throw is far too long.
• Key layout just feels wrong.
• D-pad is awkwardly placed for directional control, and terrible for action control.
• D-pad requires too much strain to activate, especially in the Forward/Up direction.
• Newest software removes existing functionality re: D-pad diagonals.
• No real feeling for where your hand is or should be located.
• Profile configuration was easy, but could have been more intuitive (eg Press a button, open the config for that button - or at least let the picture act as a selector).

TWO WEEKS LATER

I think it's fair to say the Nostromo has grown on me a little bit over the weeks, but it still doesn't live up to the hype that surrounds it.  I've all but delegated it to being a joystick companion, whether that means it's a communication button array, a digital throttle quadrant or just a bunch of DOS hotkeys.  It does indeed do those jobs well but that's not why I bought it, nor is it what I suspect most people will buy it for.

In all, I just don't find myself wanting to use it.  It feels like a compromise compared to a keyboard, which is the opposite feeling I should be having towards it.  The flat keys, the lack of a number row, the grid alignment, the uncomfortable stretch towards the "up" on the D-pad - all of it just works together against the Nostromo.  Realistically, if Razer had just taken a normal keyboard, complete with indented keycaps and the appropriate locator bump, cut the left off such that the last keys on the right were F4, 5, T, G and V, and put in a good D-pad where space is normally located than they could have had a winner.  Maybe curl the F-keys up a little bit to put them in easier reach (perhaps even levers, rather than keys) and drop the Windows and Alt keys - but leave "Control" there as something you can lean your palm against for things like Push to Talk.

LAST WORDS

A few tweaks and it could be spectacular.  Right now, though, it's disappointingly shy of the mark, like so many other Razer products I've owned before it, and there's very little I can actually say that I like about it when it comes to actually using it.  It's a product for a market for which a more general purpose product (the trusty keyboard, which hasn't seen a major redesign since before modern gaming PCs were sold) simply out-shines it in pretty much every regard; which probably explains why so few other companies continue to make anything like it.

In all honesty, I cannot recommend it.

LEGAL STUFF

Please note that I'm not affiliated with any of the companies mentioned in this review.  Nothing has been provided to me outside of what I have purchased myself and nothing is expected as a result of having completed this review - it's just something that I felt like doing myself, in my own time.  All names and trademarks belong to their respective companies.  Etc etc.