I am always on the lookout for new mechanical keyboards and lately I have been getting more and more interested in sub 70% keyboards as space on the top of my desk is at a premium. I previously had a tenkeyless low profile Keychron K1v1 connected to ZPM and a tenkeyless low profile Keychron K1v4 set up but they still take up too much room.
That brings in the Epomaker SK64. Nope, I had never heard of this brand until I found the keyboard on Amazon then watched some reviews on YouTube. This is one of the best value $90 mechanical RGB hot-swappable switch keyboards on the market. That’s right, my board has swappable Gateron brown switches that are also RGB.
I also picked the Panda edition because it had a couple contrasting bright green keycaps and an adorable Panda on the space bar. I also like that instead of the standard black legend on the white keycaps they used a green. I prefer that creativeness over the boring black. It also comes with a set of keys for the Mac and keycap and key switch pullers.
The outer case is plastic but it is incredibly rigid allowing no flex. This makes for a great typing platform. On the bottom of the case there is a sticker with “Skyloong” on it. I assume this is the OEM that Epomaker uses to build their keyboards. This is the only branding on the keyboard which is both nice and confusing. You would think Epomaker would have their own logo on the serial number sticker. The USB C connection is on the front left of the keyboard which I like.
The keys, while ABS, feel to be of decent quality though I do prefer double-shot PBT’s that allow the RGB lighting to shine through. The profile of the keys takes a bit of getting used to as they are essentially flat with the angle of the keyboard itself.
The layout is decent. They way this keyboard is made smaller is by removing the function keys and the extra keys to the right and above the arrow keys. They arrow keys are present here though and that is why I chose this keyboard. That said there are some sacrifices made. Since you have full arrow keys you lose your large right shift button but for me I tend to use the left shift button almost exclusively so I’ve never really had an issue with this. They were nice enough to give you a delete key to the right of the up arrow which I got used to fairly quickly and since it;s in that bright green it’s easily seen. The escape button takes the place of the “`~” key but since I never use this it’s not an issue. I am typing with the SK64 so as you can see you can still access that ky by using a combination of FN and ESC and FN SHIFT ESC.
The decently bright RGB is customise-able through functions on the keyboard itself or Epomaker’s software. I gotta say their software leave’s a lot to be desired and I hope that they can make some improvements in the future. You can also customise what the layers on the keyboard do through this software as well.
The keyboard is a great pleasure to type on. As I mentioned earlier it took some time to get used to typing on it due to the profile of the keys. But not too long. There is no adjustment for the angle of the keyboard so some people may like a wrist rest. I can’t stand those but even with it”s relatively high profile it’s easy enough for a guy with short fingers to type on.
For $90 CAD it is expensive but it also comes with a lot of features. There is also a wireless version of this keyboard too that’s a bit more money but I chose to go with the non-wireless since I don’t typically use that functionality anyways. If you want a keyboard that is really nice to type on I can’t not recommending this keyboard. I really like it a lot and I think a lot of that is due to the Gateron brown switches. They have just such a nice feel and sound it makes writing these reviews a lot of fun.
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