(bought keyboard from Razer own store but reviewing here for amazon shoppers benefit).
I needed a hot-swappable mechanical keyboard because I know there is a high possibility I won’t be satisfied with stock switch.

Note that Deathstalker V2 is not “officially” advertised as hot-swappable, I assume mainly due to fact that Razer does not have any real options for it so just sells a stock clicky and linear variant. However, switches use form factor exactly same as Keychron low profile optical (at least switch case, as Razer stems are slightly taller due to extra silicone dampeners).

One upside to optical switches they don’t require any connections to board as sensors simply “see” the switch positions – hence for hot-swap capability no special sockets are required. And they are lot simpler to pull, just never use force, use puller to push on locking tabs top and bottom, if you disengage tabs switch should come out very easily. Also optical switches have simpler construction and cost noticeable less than mechanical.

First I’ve got an “optical switch” tester from Keychron, and I highly recommend trying it since for example low profile brown optical switch has very different feel from “classic” brown switches. And on trying them out I found that I liked browns the most so I’ve bought 90-switch switch pack from Keychron. Replacement was very straightforward, and I left original red switches on arrow keys and numpad.

Actually original red switches were surprisingly good. I originally thought I wouldn’t stand them, but I actually had to consider hard if they even worth bother replacing. Razer linears are so smooth and much more stable and quiet than Keychrons, because they have extra layers of silicone pads inside. Still I do a lots of typing daily so for me its more important to have this bit of tactile feedback.

Mechanical quality of keyboard is top-notch by the way. Its not gasket mount since it strives to be very thin instead (which I wanted), but the body is unibody milled from aluminum and super-solid. It has really nice non-obtrusive matte finish. Including keycaps, they also matte. They are ABS so I don’t expect them to last forever, still should be feasible to replace (even while its somewhat harder to find good low-profile keycaps its still far from impossible).

I appreciate that it has standard layout. I got very annoyed with modern “trends” which Logitech and Cherry fallen into when doing weird experiments with F-keys and removing printscreen&break keys etc. The roller bar is very useful and chunky – I use mine to control volume (can be programmed using Synapse).

Now on Synapse. Yes its obnoxious bloatware. I have mine installed on throwaway VM and use it only once to configure/pair the keyboard. Luckily hardware stores all settings after all and Synapse not needed to be running on main machine. Also most of basic functions like backlight mode color, gaming mode – can be controlled entirely by FN combinations.

I like the backlight, it have lots of control to brightness (down to super-low). Colors also nice, even green is that special “Razer green”. I mostly use solid color in wired mode, but there are some interesting modes, e.g. “matrix-like” effect which briefly highlights random key – this is beneficial if you want to save backlight power on wireless (as having all keys lit all the time is quite power hungry).

Now on single “not ideal” point I see – battery life when on wireless. Unfortunately its not that great and in my testing ended to be about ~150 hours with *backlight entirely off* and in *razer 2.4ghz mode*. This is about 1.5 weeks of usage keyboard entire day.

This is somewhat surprising since this is actually lot less battery life than its partner mouse Orochi (which lasts 1.5 *months* on single AA). I assume that battery life low due to 2 factors:
– Keyboard uses optical sensors. They require sensing LEDs to operate continuously to “see” keys so in essence there is always “internal backlight”.
– Keyboard has very high polling rate which requires high amount of sensing and exacerbates above drawback. I do appreciate high polling rate as it definitely has noticeable lack of lag (e.g. comparing to Logitech Unifying), but I would’ve liked ability to tone down it somewhat to save power. Its possible to reduce polling rate for Razer mice in synapse, but unfortunately not for this keyboard. Note that this still pretty much in top-of-the range ballpark for low latency gaming keyboards out there as I am not aware of any which has battery life *significantly* higher.

So at the end I’ve decided to mainly use keyboard wired to get advantage of continuous backlight and only occasionally use it wirelessly. Note that otherwise wireless is completely flawless both in Razer 2.4 and Bluetooth. You get full-NKRO and sub-10ms latency with razer own receiver, also ability to use keyboard in UEFI. Also receiver can be unified with certain Razer mice (worked fine with Orochi).
Bluetooth also worked flawlessly, and also shows current battery level which is appreciated esp. when you don’t want to install Synapse.

So in a nutshell – this is the best “low-profile hot-swappable wireless mechanical keyboard chassis” at the moment. Best value if you getting it specifically for all customization options in mind since this clearly makes it stand of above all competition. And its absolutely no slouch as low-latency gaming mechanical keyboard either. If you only want max wireless battery life and don’t care for anything else, only then consider Logitech.