So, I’m obviously not the first person to say this, which makes it even more infuriating, but Synapse 4 is the worst experience I’ve ever had with a software in my life. I don’t understand how a supposed “upgrade” to Synapse 3 is STILL a broken and buggy mess this long after it’s been launched, when Synapse 3 worked perfectly fine. If I could, I’d just stay with Synapse 3 indefinitely, but of course, Razer is forcing everyone to switch over within the next few months.
I’ll just start with the main minor inconvenience I’ve dealt with: Synapse 4 takes absolutely forever to start up. So instead of seeing the custom profile that’s stored in my keyboards’ onboard memory, I see the generic ugly solid orange, green etc., until I fully log in and wait 10-15 seconds. This isn’t the end of the world, but definitely an annoyance, because with Synapse 3, it was pretty much instant and even started up when I was still on my computer’s log-in screen. What is even the point of having the onboard memory in the first place? Needing to have Synapse running to use my macros is one thing, I get that, but the lighting profile? Why? But again, that’s just a relatively minor inconvenience, and if that was the only problem I had, I’d get over it, but it’s clearly just scratching the surface.
Onto the actual major issues I’ve been having in the short few weeks I’ve moved over: Sometimes my mouse just won’t work at all. I try taking out the battery and putting it back in, the light in my mouse wheel flashes like it turns on, but then it still doesn’t work. I try unplugging the USB dongle and replugging, same thing. Try turning off the switch on the bottom of the mouse and switching it back on, same thing. The only thing that works is completely restarting my PC (I suspect restarting Synapse itself would also work, but that’s kinda hard to do when I can’t use a mouse). And this is completely random. Sometimes it’s like that from when I start up my PC, sometimes it’s after multiple hours of use.
Another issue: Sometimes my lighting profiles just simply don’t work. I have two keyboards connected, and sometimes one of them will randomly go back to default patterns, sometimes both (despite again, having the profiles saved to the onboard memory of both). I go into Synapse to check what’s happening, it still SAYS it’s using my custom profile, but it simply isn’t. I have to toggle from “Quick Effects” back to “Advanced Effects” in the lighting tab, and sometimes that works, but not always, and in the case it doesn’t, I have to restart Synapse entirely to MAYBE get them to work correctly. It also seems to happen way more often on my mouse (which doesn’t have onboard memory), enough to the point where I just turned off the lighting on it entirely because it hardly ever used my actual custom profile and it was pissing me off. It’s a joke. It’s one of the main functions of the software, there’s no excuse for it being as broken as it is. Because, for the third time, I never had any of these issues with Synapse 3.
I like Razer products a lot, I clearly have multiple, two keyboards, a Blackwidow V3 and Hunstman Mini, and a mouse, a Basilisk V3 X Hyperspeed. I like the switches in the keyboards, and I like the ergonomics of the mouse. I even like the Chroma Studio software itself for making my lighting profiles, but Synapse 4 is genuinely making me never want to buy another Razer product again. It’s genuinely infuriating, especially because I remember trying to switch to 4 way back when it was still in beta and having the EXACT same problems. I chalked it up to the software being relatively new, figured the issues would be ironed out later, and just switched back to Synapse 3. And as I said, if I could just stay with 3 forever, I would without complaint. But now, Razer is FORCING us to switch to a software that is still broken. I’ve thought about getting rid of Synapse entirely and going to an open-source lighting software like OpenRGB, but I LIKE my lighting profiles and macros. I spent a lot of time making them and getting them to work the way I want, and I don’t want to switch to an entirely new software that doesn’t have the same functions and start from scratch. But it’s looking like that may be my only option until I get a new brand of keyboard. And I know I could also continue using 3 until it actually gets discontinued in January, but what’s the point? For 2.5 more months? That’s just putting off the problem that I will eventually run into again.
This software is such a joke, and the fact that so many people complain about it, but Razer has made no fixes, it’s incredibly disheartening. Listen to your customers, lest you lose them forever. I hold grudges against corporations, and I won’t forget this when I’m going to buy my next keyboard and mouse. Again, I like your products, but there’s absolutely no excuse for a software being the reason I want to switch brands. Rant over.
