When it comes to keyboard brands, EPOMAKER has become one of the kings of mechanical keyboards and quality.
Founded upon the principles of customizability, affordability and high standards, EPOMAKER is right on top (not including the more well-known gaming companies).
For today’s keyboard review, I am reviewing of what may be one of the interesting and creative EPOMAKER mechanical keyboards and its the EPOMAKER RT80 Wireless Gaming Keyboard.
It’s first important for people to know that this keyboard is offered in all black or retro grey. And for switches, they offer Flamingo or Wisteria Linear Switches.
Personally, I chose retro grey *which features a cream colored keyboard with light grey, white and burned red/brownish colored keycaps) because all black kind of reminds me of the stock keyboards that come with a company’s PC desktop purchase. So, I wanted something with color.
As for the Flamingo switch, I will be reviewing another with the Wisteria Linear Switch but the Flamingo Switch are factory lubed switches that are pink with purple housing. If I have to compare, I guess you can say it’s almost like brown switches but has a distinct sound that I think many will find pleasing.
For the most part, I like the feel and touch of these Flamingo switches.
With that being said, the EPOMAKER RT80 Wireless Gaming Keyboard is trimode, comes with a thick cable and the 2.4 receiver is up on the top right and you can also connect via Bluetooth.
It’s also important to note that the keyboard comes with a 5000mAh rechargeable battery which is more than most companies tend to do, which is awesome.
The mechanical keyboard is gasket-mounted, which is now becoming standard with five layers of foam to lessen the sound of keyboard typing noise. The mechanical keyboard is also hot swappable.
One of the things you will want to do, if you want to customize the RT80 is download the EPOMAKER software driver. This will give you the control to set up macros, FnSettings, the lighting and the touchscreen.
The mechanical keyboard offers NKRO (N-key rollover) so you will get accurate registration of key presses. And the mechanical keyboard comes with RGB LED’s and has 16 default lighting patterns and can be customized with the EPOMAKER driver.
But possibly the two big things about this mechanical keyboard is that it comes with an LCD touch screen. So, you can do volume controls, print screen, go to Windows settings and more. It’s a pretty cool addition that you don’t really see on mechanical keyboards but it’s a nice touch.
You can customize the LCD screen to also include .gif files.
It’s important to note that you’ll need to click on about to upgrade the firmware of your mechanical keyboard.
Now the second is something that will either be a win or fail for some users and that is that the shift button is now smaller and placed slightly to the left of the Enter screen (below) in order to fit the arrow keys.
I have to admit when I first started using this keyboard, I kept pressing on the up arrow key but I slowly got used to using the smaller shift button and have no problem using it now.
Overall, the EPOMAKER RT80 Wireless Gaming Keyboard is a wonderful keyboard and the addition of the LCD screen is also a nice touch! But for some people, especially those who type a lot, not having the regular sized shift button may be difficult for some. For me, I got used to it within 5-10 minutes and I type a lot.
The other thing I noticed is that I couldn’t use my aviator USB Type-C cable with this mechanical keyboard. It wouldn’t stay on and kept disconnecting. Whereas the cable supplied did work. And interesting to note, there is a blue LED light at the end of the USB-C cable supplied by EPOMAKER.
But I have to say, this is a pretty awesome keyboard and another quality keyboard from EPOMAKER.
The EPOMAKER RT80 Wireless Gaming Keyboard is highly recommended!
