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 RT65 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.
The mechanical keyboard features Flamingo Switches and Wisteria Switches, for the RT80, I reviewed the mechanical keyboard with Flamingo switches. With the RT65, I am reviewing the version with Wisteria switches.
The Wisteria switches are featured in pastel purple and pastel green. They are factory lubed and the switch has a feel of clicky blue switches and thocky sound. Definitely different from Flamingo switches but there are people who may find the Wisteria switches to be very smooth and quick typers may find this switch to be very pleasing.
With that being said, the EPOMAKER RT65 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 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.
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 RT65 is download the EPOMAKER software driver. This will give you the control to set up macros, FnSettings, the lighting and the touchscreen but also syncing to the LED screen which you will want to connect to the upper left area.
You need to remove the 2.4g USB receiver and the cover if you choose to use the LCD mini display. The software syncs to this mini display in order to download .gif files, and also to sync the time.
But possibly the two big things about this mechanical keyboard is that it comes with an LCD touch screen. But there are differences between the RT65 and the RT80.
The RT80 version has the LCD screen on the keyboard which allows you to do volume controls, print screen, go to Windows settings and more. The RT65 is more cosmetic. It’s a separate unit you plug into the USB-C port and you can see the time, date, battery power level and which of the tri-mode you are using and of course, you can download the .gif from the Epomaker driver.
Another difference between the RT65 and RT80 is that the RT65 uses a joystick type of knob, which was cool to see.
Now, if you were to choose between the RT65 and RT80, the other major difference is that the RT80 has 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. With the RT65, you do not have this issue. It’s much easier to type but it’s purely subjective.
Another thing is that when I tried to use an aviator cable for the RT80, it would not work. I had to use the proprietary cable it came with. But for the RT65, there was no problem whatsoever.
Overall, the EPOMAKER RT65 Wireless Gaming Keyboard is a wonderful keyboard and the addition of the LCD screen is also a pretty awesome! But it’s interesting to see the differences between the RT65 and the RT80 and in someways, I enjoyed the RT65 more.
But I have to say, this is a pretty awesome keyboard and another quality keyboard from EPOMAKER.
The EPOMAKER RT65 Wireless Gaming Keyboard is highly recommended!
