When Razer first released its pink Kraken Kitty wireless headset, my partner Tina became a Razer customer for life. Since wearing the headset every day—complete with Hello Kitty’s signature pink bow—she often thinks about turning her home workspace into a complete Kitty experience.
To celebrate Hello Kitty’s 50th birthday, Razer has released a new Hello Kitty and Friends collection that allows her to do just that. When you walk into her office, it’s now like a Sanrio store. Yesterday I caught her running her fingers over the keyboard and muttering “very demure, very cute.” On behalf of the world’s biggest Hello Kitty fan, Razer has hit the nail on the head.
The Hello Kitty and Friends collection includes kitty versions of the Ornata V3 TKL compact keyboard, Gigantus V2 mouse pad, Kraken Kitty V2 Bluetooth headphones, and the crown jewel of the collection: the Enki X gaming chair. Razer has provided samples of the keyboard, mouse pad, and headphones for testing. I’d love to give her the chair someday, but I’m afraid if I do, she’ll never leave the office again.
Starting with the Kraken Kitty V2s, they offer a modest but welcome upgrade over the original Kraken Kittys. Most notable is the new USB-C charging port, which replaces the micro port on the original. I believe the Kraken Kitty was the only reason we still had micro cables, so I’m grateful for the upgrade to the standard USB-C. I also appreciate the new lighting around the earcups, which gives the recessed Hello Kitty icon a nice glow.
The color scheme is also slightly different, with the bright pink on white of the original replaced by a soft pink all around on the V2s. You’ll find a few nice character details, including Hello Kitty, Kuromi, and My Melody on the band, matching the simple sketch style of the rest of the collection. The sound quality, comfort, and charging time all seem comparable to the original Kraken Kitty.
The Ornata V3 TKL has pink keys that match the headset’s bow, and some nice, subtle details around the frame, like bows, strawberries, and hearts. It has a low-profile design and features Razer Mecha membrane switches that have a subtle click and feel nice and cushioned – oddly enough, it’s exactly what you’d expect from a Hello Kitty keyboard. It’s larger than most TKL keyboards, which are generally 75 percent the size, but not by much.
The Razer Chroma backlighting is bright and easy to program using Razer’s Synapse software. I’m impressed with the clear keycaps, with each letter engraved to make the RGB stand out more. However, I think Razer should have just made the entire board glow pink instead of blue by default, as many fans will likely program it that way anyway.
To see the characters on the keyboard, you need to attach the included magnetic palm rest (it’s called Soft Touch, but to me it feels like a block of wood). There’s a nice continuity between the palm rest and the mouse pad (and chair), which feature the same collage of classic and modern Sanrio characters. There’s an empty bubble in the middle of the collage, the mouse pad says Hello Kitty inside the bubble, but on the palm rest you’ll find the Razer logo. I like the Hello Kitty logo much better.
The Razer Orochi V2 is also kind of part of the collection. The customizable mouse has a variety of 50th anniversary templates, including one that matches the mouse pad/chair. The mouse with the customization costs $90, but Razer included the pink “Quartz” version of the Orochi V2 in all of the marketing for the collection, which only costs $70. Personally, I think the pink mouse fits well with the rest of the collection, even if it’s not technically Hello Kitty-themed.
Without a mouse, it definitely feels like an incomplete set, and if I’m spending $120 on a wired keyboard, I want the full 10-key experience. But my partner is obsessed, and I can’t deny the pure joy this collection brings her every time she sits down at her desk to work. I asked her what her final verdict on the collection was after a full day of use, and she said, “Any Hello Kitty fan would love this.”
