Keyboards occupy kind of a weird place in the pantheon of PC hardware. You want a good one, especially if you type a lot, but they're also not an especially glamorous piece of it. I mean, it's just a keyboard, right? So for me, at least, the thought of spending big bucks on one is a struggle: I know I should, but I don't wanna. That's where Amazon's Black Friday deal on the Razer Huntsman V2 tenkeyless comes in: It's a really good keyboard, and it's 50% off.
The Huntsman V2 features Razer's second-gen linear optical switches, which promise improved sound-dampening to cut back on the incessant clackety-clack of heavy typing, and an 8000Hz polling rate, which in simple terms is a measure of how often your keyboard sends input data to your PC: When it comes to gaming, faster is better, and the Huntsman V2 is very fast.
There's also sound-dampening foam to help keep down the racket when the keys bottom out (which is to say, when you're mashing them really hard), onboard memory for up to five macro profiles, an ergonomic wrist rest, and of course the most important feature of all, Razer Chroma per-key lighting. (That's not actually the most important feature, but let's be honest, we all like it.)
For a more practical perspective on this board, let us take a look at our review: We scored the Huntsman V2 very highly, praising its fast, quiet, and durable linear optical switches, and its effective noise dampening. The TKL version lacks the number pad and media keys, which may or may not be important to you—for gamers in particular, numeric keypads are often wasted space, as evidenced by the rise in popularity of TKL designs—but it will also eat up a lot less real estate on your desktop, which can be a big plus if you're working in a cramped space.
- We're curating all the best Black Friday PC gaming deals right here.
Bottom line, the Razer Huntsman V2 is "one of the best, most practical mechanical keyboards out there today" in our estimation, and we know about this stuff. For $79.99—half the regular $159.99 price—it's a good one to look at if you're interested in making the move yono all app to mechanical.
If you'd like to shop around before you commit (and honestly, you always should), we can help with that too—here are all our favorite Black Friday deals on gaming keyboards, and mice too.