Skyloong is one of the top tier mechanical keyboard manufacturers from Shenzen, China. The company was a chip developer for two decades but after acquiring hundreds of patents, they invested in manufacturing keyboards and right now it’s big business.
Gone are the days where gamers were limited to expensive keyboards from big name companies, because now we are getting really solid quality of keyboards from Asia that are just as great but also sold at a much lower pricepoint.
For today’s review, I am checking out the SKYLOONG GK87 QMK/VIA USB Wired TKL Gaming Keyboard. The keyboard will definitely catch your attention with the double space bar keycaps and the three knobs on the upper right and of course, the SKYLOONG designed escape key.
Also, with its sleek red, white and gray PBT keycaps.
But there is much more to this keyboard than meets the eye.
The GK87 wired keyboard is a Thocky keyboard built-in multi-layers of foam rubber and utilizes soft-top gasket mounting. This helps reduce typing noise and vibration.
Now let’s talk about the spacebar. Why are there two? For some people, they love customizing their buttons and for some people, the right space bar is what is primarily used and the left side, not much at all. By pressing the space bar function (mode 1), it will act normally. Long press makes it a FN/CTRL/ALT/SHIFT button.
In fact, that is the main theme of this mechanical keyboard, the ability to customize. The keyboard is built with a bult-in ST MCU PCB mainboard that is VIA programmable, so you can easily remap the keys and create macros for Windows and Mac.
The keyboard utilizes SKYLOONG’s new VIA Optical Gaming Switches which are 10x faster than mechanical switches. No jitter noise delay and has a 100 million keystroke lifespan.
As for the knobs, the left knob is for volume (pressing it will mute the sound), the second knob is for brightness (pressing the knob will turn off the backlight or turn it back on) and the right knob is for zoom (or scrolling up and down websites, like a mouse wheel). The third wknob is convenient for pressing, so it goes to screen capture mode immediately.
It’s important to note that while I am reviewing the GK87, there is a GK87 Pro that comes with a 7200 mAh rechargeable battery and is tri-mode. The GK87 is a wired Thocky keyboard.
But while this is a high quality keyboard that is made well, that is low latency and works extremely well. There are two major problems that I found with it.
For a mechanical keyboard that is based on customizing, where is the software? One can prompt you to go to the SKYLOONG website and download either the GK87 v3 software or the GK87 Pro software, but for the former, it won’t detect your keyboard. The latter is fully in Chinese language and a Chinese MP4 video is included but that really won’t help those who can’t read Chinese.
The second problem which I have noticed is the double spacebar is some people might find themselves hitting their thumb right in the middle. Have no fear, but that is why SKYLOONG included a long space bar, for those who don’t want to use a double space bar.
But even then, after switching to that, I was registering unusual dual spacing which I didn’t want and that is where you pretty much have to get used to the space bar sensitivity by using short clicks, but everyone types differently and with each button strike, the last thing you want to do is work on a document that you spent so much typing, to find weird spaces. So, I had to go back to the dual space bar. If there was software to remedy that, I would use it, but unfortunately, not sure which software to use.
While the instructions does a good job of explaining things (English on one side, Chinese on the other), I still want to know more about the VIA software, so there is a QR code that takes you to a SKYLOONG blog which tells you about dragging a JSon file (the instructions say to click on the link, but they forgot to put the link). But that doesn’t answer my question, so what I learned is the following.
So, this is what you need to do. Go to github[dot]com which leads you to: /the-via/releases/releases and download the latest version (as of me writing this it’s, VIA 3.0.0).
And it should look like this. BARE IN MIND, this is for the GK61.
Well, I downloaded VIA and I get “Searching for devices” but yet, it will allow for the keyboard test (pressing buttons and watching it light up on the screen). A half hour and still “Searching for Devices”. It’s not detecting the GK87?
But what about the QMK GK87? SKYLOONG has it listed on their blog but nothing written underneath? Did they forget to put the instructions?
Overall, I know SKYLOONG quality and this is a solid quality keyboard. But the fact that this mechanical keyboard was designed for people to customize, the failure to add any software that works with the GK87 is bad.
For most consumers, when you get a keyboard, you get software or are directed to software for those to easily customize their keyboard. When suggesting github, this now takes things to a different skill level not for the average consumer but for those familiar with the website who are technically savvy. And even then, when the software fails to recognize your mechanical keyboard.
To make matters worse, is when the blog tells you to download the corresponding JSON file by clicking on the link and there is no link.
So, this is tough because this is such a cool keyboard with so much potential, but SKYLOONG failed its consumers who are expecting comprehensive software to go with this wonderful keyboard and that is a major component of this keyboard. It should be a 5/5 but I’m giving the SKYLOONG GK87 QMK/VIA USB Wired TKL Gaming Keyboard a score of 3.5 stars to be generous.
They can still fix the problem and I can easily update this review, but until then, 3.5 out of 5 stars.
