Pleasantly surprising quality for the price, get the Gift switch version! Great Sound and Value!
Honestly I'm quite pleasantly surprised with the board. Definitely get the Gift Switch version and not the Flying Fish version, at least if your preference is a slightly better feel than barely touching the key to make it immediately bottom out. The Gift switch isn't too much heavier to initially press down, but it has a stronger resistance to being pressed all the way down, and the initial difference at least for me personally is definitely my preference. If you want a super light switch though, the Flying Fish version may be for you, I just found I kept accidentally pressing keys I didn't mean to, but have a much more enjoyable experience on the Gift switch version! The overall typing experience and feel is really solid, one of the best sounding keyboards and over all feel I've ever personally typed on. This is especially considering my previous keyboard that wasn't integrated into my device I owned was I believe a corsair k70 or something similar from 5 or more years ago that was probably worse build quality and definitely lacked any sort of upgradability without needing to de-solder every switch, among other things that are just way too much hassle and when the idea of modding keyboards was way relatively novel. This board, is definitely unapologetically plastic, but for being all plastic, there really is not all that much give. It has pretty much every modern feature you'd be looking for: - Solid quality keycaps and material (at least in terms of sound and feel, how they hold up after a lot of use will need further use) - A gasket mount which makes the overall typing experience feel a little softer. - A really nice typing sound and feel, probably aided by some extra layers of foam and or other things in the board that's way more technical know-how than I can describe, point is, without modding at all, sound and feel are really nice! - South facing LEDs for less risk of clearance issues modding in the future, particularly certain keycap profiles (OEM, XDA just a few examples). - Hotswappable switches! If a key switch were to wear out and or you wanted to change the switches out for ones that feel different to type on, you can do so without needing to solder the switches, it's simply much more beginner friendly. - A Knob for easy access volume control! - A Software that admittable is kind of, not fantastic (and kind of difficult to actually find, I just recommend the v1.0 on epomaker's site) but allows you to change the lighting modes and stuff a little bit easier than following through the manuals fn + (various key presses) for different effects, as well as I believe change some keybinds on the keys. If you are having issues getting it to allow you to change things on the keyboard, note that it has to be specifically plugged in via usb and not a wireless connection with the included dongle or bluetooth. - A Screen on the keyboard that can display gifs though I haven't specifically set that up myself since it's just not that important to me. A genuinely let down on the screen is that you can adjust it to be your computer's date and time via the software, but it is not at all really customizable beyond just the gif option. It's stuck using the 24hr clock instead of am/pm, and at least I don't believe you can change it. If learn otherwise I'll update this review! - USB C to A, Bluetooth, and 2.4g Dongle connectivity that at least testing specifically via 2.4g dongle, has no real world latency difference in terms of feel wireless vs wired! - RGB! The colors are pretty solid, a fair bit of decent customization options, but nothing really to write home about, definitely less customization compared to a Razer or Corsair keyboard, but enough that in general for most people, probably won't really matter especially if you stick it to one solid color. A couple downsides to the RGB is that if you have caps lock or windows lock, or are charging, there's a bright LED that definitely kind of bleeds into the other LEDs around them which can lessen the overall look, especially since I don't believe you can change those LEDs specifically. For what it is, it's a very solid board that I can definitely see myself potentially doing a little bit of light modding with over time as I get a little more into the custom keyboard hobby. Given my experience with it, it's feels like a very nice starting point to learn what I like in terms of feel and to be able to change and adapt it easily over time! It's definitely not perfect, but it's quite a huge value even over a board that's probably $20 cheaper, this is definitely worth it for the over all value proposition, unless you're gonna start looking at more around $100 boards. Read more
