Now that the Xbox One finally has mouse and keyboard support, Razer is delivering the ultimate solution for clicking and typing away from the couch. At CES 2019, Razer gave us some hands-on time with the Turret, the world's first official wireless keyboard and mouse made specifically for the Xbox One.
The new Turret is the successor to a model we reviewed in late 2016, which was designed for living room gaming from a desktop. You can preorder this Xbox edition from the Microsoft store today for $249.99, with an expected ship date before Apr. 1.
I battled through a couple of waves of enemies in the defense strategy game X-Morph Defense during my demo of the Turret mouse and keyboard. Right away, I noticed how responsively the peripherals behaved. I didn't experience any lag or connectivity issues, even though I was sitting a fair distance away from the console. Better yet, the keyboard and mouse use the same unified dongle to achieve a 2.4 GHz connection with the Xbox One. Razer rates the product's battery life at 40 hours.
But by far the most impressive part of the Turret is its adaptive lighting system. I've always appreciated Razer's dedication to Chroma RGB lighting, and the Turret certainly didn't let me down. Not only can you customize the color of each key on the keyboard, but the RGB light can actually react to what is happening on-screen.
For example, when I played X-Morph Defense, the first four F-keys acted as a health indicator for my spaceship, while the F4 to F8 keys showed me how much damage my tower had taken. The keys indicated when I was getting low on health by switching from green to red.
The adaptive lighting may not be all that practical — I can't really imagine looking at my keyboard for in-game information — but it's a fun inclusion regardless.
The design of the mouse is based on the Mamba, while the tenkeyless keyboard is essentially a BlackWidow. These were two of our favorite peripherals of last year, and I found them to be extremely comfortable to use in my testing. The mouse was appropriately sized, and Razer's snappy proprietary key switches kept my fingers flying.
Razer devised a sliding mechanism that extends and retracts the hard touchpad surface from the keyboard to keep the Turret compact. Unfortunately, the slider wasn't as smooth as I wanted it to be, and the amount of horizontal space you save doesn't seem worth the hassle.
I do, however, like that Razer added magnets to the touchpad so that the mouse doesn't slide off when you're using the Turret on your lap. The keyboard also has a dedicated Xbox key, so you can go back to the main menu without digging up your controller.
Overall, the Turret felt like a great solution for Xbox One gamers who want to precision and comfort of a mouse and keyboard. We'll need to get more hands-on time to give you our definitive take on the Turret, but I like what I saw during my time with this wireless solution.
Here is the full list of games that support the Turret's Dynamic Lighting:
- X Morph: Defense
- Vermintide 2
- Gears of War 5
- Gears Tactics
- Day Z
- Deep Rock Galactic
- Children of Morta
- Moonlighter
- Roblox
- Strange Brigade
- Vigor
Fortnite, Warframe, Sims, Minecraft, PUBG and several other games will support the mouse and keyboard, but not dynamic lighting. We look forward to putting the Turret through a slew of different titles in our full review.
Credit: Tom's Guide
