After investing time and resources to create products designed for gamers – including the most demanding ones -, Razer has entered another sector, that of streaming, with a straight leg. She did it with microphones, webcams and now the new one too Razer Key Light Chroma, an LED panel that promises to illuminate you and your setup in a simple and intelligent way. But how does it actually work? We tell you everything in this review.
The Razer Key Light Chroma review
This reviewer has been streaming live for some time, enough to know how crucial good lighting is. Nobody likes to watch a live in which the background is illuminated to the detriment of the creator who, in most cases, is the real protagonist of the live broadcast.
To be able to obtain a good result, streamers resort to the most desperate solutions: from using a white screen of the PC to illuminate the face to the use of a webcam like the Razer Kiyo – with integrated light – to get to the purchase of lights that they start from a small and simple ring light up to more advanced and expensive solutions.
Razer enters the field with its Key Light Chroma which masterfully balances price, panel quality and versatility.
The configuration: child’s play
Inside the box you will find everything you need: the Key Light, the rod to hook it to (with an extension from 45 to 130 cm), an adapter that will allow you to orient the panel and a vice with which to hook it to the edge of the table or desk.
And here we come across what, in our opinion, is perhaps the only defect of this product. In fact, Razer assumes that the creator’s idea is that of attach your Key Light Chroma to a desk that has a border ranging from 2.5mm to 7.5mm. In our case, however, the back of the desk offers a thickness of about 15 cm, which forced us to simply place the product against the wall, without a vice, or to use a table. Probably an alternative tripod to the clamp would have solved the problem and increased the versatility of the product.
Once the positioning is done, it will take you a few minutes to get up and running. You will only have to connect the power supply, which fits on the back of the panel, turn it on using the switch located on the lower profile and then connect it to your PC, via Razer Synapse software, or to the Razer Streaming app. How? By pressing the reset button for a few seconds, the Key Light Chroma will enter pairing mode, flashing blue, and will be ready to connect to both the smartphone and the computer.
You are now ready to take full advantage of your new Razer lighting system.
The convenience of the app
We’ve leveraged the Razer Key Light Chroma with both Synapse and the app, which allow you to do the same things – you can calibrate the brightnessto decide the temperature – from 2,900 to 7,000 K – or activate the Chroma modewith the possibility to choose a specific color or to use one of the available effects.
All of this really guarantees you excellent versatility because the wide range allows you to determine whether to use warm or cold lights while the RGB function can add a touch of color to the environment, very useful especially for creators in the gaming sector who, in all probability, already own computers or peripherals with this feature .
In daily use, we confess to you, we preferred to combine the panel with the application for two main reasons. The first concerns how quickly we can change the lights without touching what happens on the PC (typically a video game together with OBS and Discord); the second is the fact of being able to use the panel even when the computer is off, maybe to record a video for Instagram or TikTok.
For its part, however Synpase allows you to create some interaction with the community, creating lighting effects associated with subscriptions, donations and much more. You can also do this with an app but not the same one you control the panel with; for this integration you will need Razer Streamer Companion.
Razer Key Light Chroma: is it worth it?
Razer Key Light Chroma it is a tool very useful for those involved in creating content.
We mostly used it for Twitch streams but it can actually come in handy for those who have made videos on Instagram, TikTok and even and YouTube. Or all these things together considering the versatility of the panel and the small space it occupies. The price? In our balanced view: 299,99 €already on sale on the official website.