Razer Tartarus V2 Pro NZ: Price and Where to Buy It

The Razer Tartarus V2 Pro's NZ price is NZ$399.95, and right now Razer's New Zealand store is the only place selling it. Razer announced the keypad on the 17th of September and put it on sale the same day in most markets, ours included.

Now that is a lot of money for a niche product, so here is what you get for it.

What is a gaming keypad?

It's a small block of keys that sits under your left hand, instead of the left third of a keyboard. Your right hand stays on the mouse.

The point is reach. In an MMO you might have 30 abilities bound to keys, and half of them end up somewhere your fingers cannot get to quickly. A keypad puts more of them within one hand's span.

Razer has been making these since the Nostromo, and the basic shape has not changed much. What has changed is the hardware inside.

What is new in the Tartarus V2 Pro?

Razer has taken parts from its top-end keyboards and controllers and put them in a keypad for the first time.

You choose how far a key travels before it counts. On a normal keyboard that depth is fixed. Here you set it yourself, anywhere from 0.1mm to 4.0mm. Set it shallow and the lightest tap registers. Set it deep and you have to press properly, which stops accidental presses. The older Tartarus Pro let you adjust this too, but only between 1.5mm and 3.6mm, so the new range is much wider at both ends.

Keys reset the moment you lift your finger. Normally a key has to come back up past a set point before the computer treats it as released, and only then can you press it again. Rapid Trigger removes that set point. Lift your finger 0.1mm and the key is ready to go again. You can tap faster as a result.

The keypad talks to your PC eight times more often. The Tartarus V2 reports what it is doing 1000 times a second. This one does it up to 8000 times a second.

The thumbpad is gone. The old models had an 8-way pad under your thumb, which is basically a d-pad. The V2 Pro has a proper analog stick, so you can push it any amount in any direction. It also has three buttons around it. The stick uses TMR sensing, which reads a magnet's field rather than relying on parts touching and wearing down. That is Razer's answer to stick drift. It is a fair thing to fix. Scroll through the customer reviews on PB Tech's Tartarus V2 listing and a broken thumbpad is a complaint that keeps coming up.

You can change settings without opening software. There is a row of LEDs on the keypad itself for adjusting the key depth and Rapid Trigger on the fly. Everything else, including up to 24 different key layouts across three onboard profiles, is set in Razer Synapse.

What do the extra input features do?

Razer has bundled three of its big keyboard tricks in here, and the names give you no clue what they are.

Snap Tap handles the moment you press two opposite keys at once. Hold left, then press right without letting go of left, and the keypad takes the newest key. It matters in shooters where you strafe one way then instantly the other.

Snap Flex puts two jobs on one key. One thing happens when you press it, a different thing happens when you let go.

Dynamic Keystroke uses the adjustable depth. One key can fire up to four different actions depending on how far down you push it.

Can you buy the Tartarus V2 Pro in New Zealand?

Yes, but only from Razer at the moment.

I could not find a single New Zealand retailer listing for it. PB Tech still shows only the older Tartarus V2. The NZ price comparison sites turn up nothing for the V2 Pro at all. Razer's release says it is available at "select retailers worldwide", which in practice means local stock arrives whenever our distributors get to it.

Waiting for a local retailer does get you things Razer's own store does not. A returns counter you can walk into, Afterpay or interest-free finance, and a Consumer Guarantees Act claim handled by a company down the road. It is also the familiar pattern where new gear reaches us as a direct order before it reaches a shelf.

How does the price compare to other NZ gear?

NZ$399.95 puts it above almost everything else in the same corner of a desk. Here is what the nearby shelves look like today.

It is priced as competitive kit rather than as an accessory, which fits where the rest of the gaming hardware market has been heading. The same logic is behind the money now going into esports hardware sponsorship. It also lands in a year where manufacturers keep trying unusual shapes for input devices.

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