Home » Review: Razer Turret Living Room Gaming Mouse and Lapboard

Review: Razer Turret Living Room Gaming Mouse and Lapboard

Razer is one of the top brands that is available on the market for gaming accessories. The company has now come out with a device that lets you sit back on the couch in comfort, while you couch-surf. The company’s new Turret is a $185 wireless gaming keyboard and mouse combination that features a folding lapboard with mouse surface and a charging cradle for keeping both peripherals ready and available.

The Turret is a well-designed package – it consists of the keyboard/lapboard, a wireless mouse, a charging cradle for both, a USB cable that terminates in a proprietary power connector for the cradle, a USB wall adapter, a USB extension cable with a small weighted base for putting the extended port on your desk, and a wireless USB receiver. Everything is solid black, with the keyboard and mouse also sporting some green highlights for that Razer style.

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The Turret weighs around 1.4-kgs – so it is easy to carry around. The charging cradle is a small, weighted black base that measures 3.8-by-3.1 inches, with a rubber base to keep it from sliding across a desk or a table. It has two recesses: a curved one for the mouse and a rectangular one, which opens up the sides of the cradle, for the keyboard. Each recess has two pin contacts for charging their respective device.

The keyboard/lapboard is the most prominent part of the Turret. It’s a 20-inch-long (11.6 inches when folded), 4.7-inch-wide black plastic slate consisting of a keyboard and a mouse pad. Unfolded, the lapboard measures just 0.4-inch tall, with the keys adding less than a tenth of an inch to that total. The keys are square, chiclet-style buttons, similar to those found on very slim notebooks. The left edge of the lapboard holds the Power button and a 2.4GHz/Bluetooth switch.

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The lapboard also folds back less than an inch past the right edge of the keys. The other half of the board is a mouse surface. The mouse surface is a very smooth material separate from the plastic of the lapboard itself. The wireless mouse is small, measuring less than 4-inches long. This ensures it can make the most of the mouse space on the lapboard.

It’s surprisingly ambidextrous, considering the lapboard is designed for use only in a right-handed configuration; the mouse is symmetrical, with two thumb/pinky buttons each sitting on the left and right sides. The entire top panel of the mouse pops off to reveal the battery compartment and a space to store the Turret’s USB receiver when it’s not in use.

Razer estimates that the mouse will last for 40 hours of continuous use before it has to be docked to recharge. Razer cleverly designed the Turret to be compatible with both 2.4GHz Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. You can plug the included USB receiver into any free USB port on your PC or Mac and both the keyboard and mouse will automatically connect to it when their respective switches are set to 2.4.

The keyboard is perfectly functional. The chiclet keys have very short throws, making typing feel less knuckle-jarring only than drumming your fingers rapidly on a table. However, need to hold down the Function key to use the keyboard’s volume or playback controls is irritating, but then most keyboards on laptops today work exactly the same way – so it’s a no biggie.

The mouse is also extremely accurate on the lapboard’s mouse surface, which proves to be very stable when set on a lap. You can’t beat the stability of a deskbound mouse and keyboard, and a controller is still more convenient when playing games on the couch. But the Razer Turret makes true FPS gaming on your television possible. The keyboard works fine, though it hardly impresses, and the lapboard’s mouse surface offers plenty of room for the included mouse to work. Neither component is remotely comparable to the dedicated, wired equivalents, but as a single package to facilitate using your PC on your couch, the Turret works very well.

Price: $185 approx.

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