you've seen me talk about a lot of keyboards you've seen me talk about a lot of displays but what about the EPO
maker rt100 as you can see here it's got the optional smart screen and our box is
checked off I swear to God if we open this thing and it doesn't have the
screen included I'm going to be so mad we've also got some switches from impo
maker they're Flamingo switches I've never tried these but they're pink and
they look cool so I'm excited and we've got a little card for Maple maker that
says they want to thank us for supporting their Community I haven't bought any EPO maker keyboards before
but you know I've never heard anything bad I've never heard anything particularly good so let's open the box
and give it a shot as we've got on the back actually I want to look first it's
got a customizable knob Wireless could driver I think that's supposed to be
Cloud gasket structure double sound
absorption built-in lithium battery so this thing is Wireless it's got a 5000
milliamp hour battery and Innovative smart screen on top of
full Keys hot swappable and I don't know what the refined stabilizer is I get
what they mean by refine to stabilizer but I don't really understand the
graphic that they've chosen it's like a little gear Cog and there's a switch and
there's a circle around it I don't get how that is a stabilizer but whatever
it's supposed to be a retro design and I can see that it's pretty apparent with
the like brown and gray the enter key is upside down for some reason we'll fix
that if you like an 1800 layout it's kind of like that with the navigation
cluster in the bottom here but like it's compressed so it's not a
full keyboard but you're really only saving like half an inch to an inch
compared to a tkl which can shave off like a couple inches of space well I
guess more than that actually user manual for the smart screen see this I
actually need to know click the sketch pad menu click adjust screen time and
then what else we got we got a cable okay it's got this like fake leather
cable tie so I guess it's just pleather oh it feels like kind of okay
um and then it's got the absolutely thickest USB cable I have ever had the
pleasure of handling we've also got our switch and keycap puller and then
there's something in this foam box it's the display oh my God
this is our little little mini TV thing
that we slip on to the end of the keyboard I'm guessing because it's got
like what looks to be a USBC connector it looks pretty cool it's like an old
CRT monitor it's not very big this is probably like an inch by one inch uh
well an inch by whatever three quarters of an inch is and then it looks like
it's just plugged in through USBC on the bottom here it normally houses the
dongle and it's actually kind of nicely labeled too 2.4 gigahertz RF transceiver
looks pretty good I actually like the labeling and this will house your dongle
however I don't want the dongle I don't
like how flimsy it kind of feels just seated through USBC I wish there was a
better like rail system or some kind of lock so it's a little Wiggly but to be
fair once it's on your desk and you're not moving like it's not going to move around anyway that's not like you're
constantly touching the monitor or something like that so whatever
it's a tri-mode keyboard so you can do Windows Mac I guess Linux probably too
and it'll basically go through oh there's a little on off switch it's got
south facing RGB for those of you who care and then it's also got you can go
between Mac or Windows which will probably just change your like Windows
key to a command key if you don't want to use the dongle but you also don't
want to keep it wired it does have Bluetooth 5.0 so you can connect through
Bluetooth I wouldn't necessarily recommend it but you know do whatever
you want it's got flip up feet adjustable
so two stage actually before I do I'm going to take this monitor off before I
start flipping the keyboard around because like I said it already felt kind of flimsy in there and I went to go move
it and it was leaning up against the table and yeah just not good
it's plastic construction so a lot of you out there who are like metal only
it's it might not be the keyboard for you however honestly I think it's pretty
tasteful especially with the Retro look it definitely looks and feels like like
old plastic from back then with a little bit of that like beige kind of tinge to
it and honestly because it's wireless if you do want to travel around with this
thing lighter is kind of better and so for a wireless keyboard I don't mind at
all that it's not metal personally speaking of weight let's see how much it
weighs under a kilo so it's just over two
pounds which means to travel with it yeah it's really not that bad if it was
a full metal keyboard CNC aluminum we're probably talking at least like three or
four or five pounds at least it doesn't feel like really cheap it is pretty
flexible but I don't know not in a bad way
and I personally really kind of dig it especially the
knob one kind of minor thing that I noticed right away though is it's a
separate housing on the bottom than it is on the top so this little play button
or whatever with the speakers and stuff that all stays perfectly still and it's
just the side that's rotating here which is a really small thing but I
actually really like that and I like the play buttons got RGB on it as for the
keycaps I actually think they're okay they're PBT
doesn't look like double shot or shine through or anything like that but I actually really like the typeface
they've chosen um it's kind of fun it's like a more industrial kind of feel to it with a
backspace press to backspace and like need more space and it's a big space bar
even the why are these little running men with
the minus and a plus arrow on them I'm going to try typing on it and take a
look at the little included screen turned on but not before a word from our
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get 30 off today before I plug it in I actually want to appreciate this USBC
cable a little bit I really like these connectors on the end this kind of looks
like one of those Slimline limo connectors but it's on the edge where the USBC is it's not like a like a plug
that you plug in and unplug it together and then the USB a is this really crazy
metal how housing it sounds like metal and it looks like you can actually take
it apart really easily with those triangle tip screwdrivers so I would
love to actually take this apart sometime and check it out because uh normally the construction on the ends of
these isn't nearly as good as this let's plug it in because what I really want to
carry what I really want to see is the screen wow
it's got a really satisfying like like slot in on a USB
and I've never experienced that in my life I got to figure out where they're
getting these connectors because I actually really want the housing for everything now to be honest it's such a
dumb point of the cable to like but I really really dig it is this working
if you're confused like I am just turn it off and then that's just the wireless
mode being turned on or off it's not the keyboard itself being turned on or off
because now it's detecting just fine device rt100 wire to set up and ready to
go I don't know why they went with rt 100 because it's 97 keys and then I
guess maybe they're adding the knob plus the rotation for another two and then
what's the third one the display I don't know if our display is borked but it's
currently just showing like a couple of uh garbage lines here on the outside
let's see if we can set that up with the driver this is pretty sick we've got our
driver installed it took a little while but now it's going through this little
like boot up kind of thing it's cycling through some dates Monday
Tuesday Saturday Wednesday I have no idea why it's doing that it's got a
little temperature gauge and a CPU usage which is pretty sweet I don't think
they're working at all um because my CPU is definitely in use
and the temp isn't zero degrees that's for sure you can change it in the sketch
pad kind of thing you can change it between RGB or black and white
and you can do a frame by frame picture if you want so you can actually make
your own animations or you can just upload images so say you want a static
image you can do that too how do I apply that's what I really want to know I've
made this really garbage you know circle plus some lines and I would love to
apply it save I'm finding the software a little bit confusing mostly just to
apply like I can't find a way to actually like take the image that I'm
setting and then get it to here I'm sure you can but you know don't expect to
just open this thing and start scribbling stuff down and then applying
it to your little extra display still super cool the display definitely works
the software seems to work just you know fire beware it's not as easy as click
click you're done let's try the actual keyboard itself here that's what I'm
really curious about because while the display is super cool and I kind of I
kind of like it and I kind of want one now uh the reality is if the typing
experience sucks then who cares you've
just wasted all of your money so we're gonna do a quick monkey type on the
switches that came with this let's check those actually really quick I think that
they are they look like just some kale yellows
with a clear housing and this is hot swap also now you can definitely see
that there we go one thing that they're promoting is that these are kale hot
swap sockets I don't know why they're calling them kale sockets more more
people than kale use five pin switches or sockets but yeah it's five pin which
is great so any switch is going to fit in there and then like I said before it's south facing RGB
which is preferable for a lot of people luckily that's not like just the case
was that your whole phone Andy so I'm not crazy about this switch I don't know
what it is it's just a linear with kind of like it feels almost mushy on the
very bottom and I'm just I'm not sold on simply the switches
alone and I don't have time to swap out for these uh flamingos that came with it
let's take a quick look at them before I actually do our typing test uh they look
pretty they're pink if you're into pink and
yeah these are much more my speed okay we looked it up and we're pretty sure
these are the sea salt silence that come with the board there's four different
options one of them I can't pronounce at all I'm not crazy about silent switches
because there's something about them to get them to be quiet! that feels like
almost mushy or like it's dampened in a way that I'm not fond of so overall I'm
probably going to be a little disappointed by the typing test but that
is I want to be very clear that that's definitely the switch this time and I
don't think it's the keyboard this thing seems relatively well constructed and
I'm actually pretty happy with the PCB itself so we'll do a little test and uh
yeah you'll hear right away you can't you can barely hear this thing and away we go
type pretty quick on them
ah no okay I screwed it up right at the end
there but I was actually going pretty quick I actually really like the
keyboard itself overall uh the switches and stuff there's something else and I'm
not fond of them but that's the style those are that's just kind of silence for you I've never tried a silent switch
that I'm a big fan of and I'm sure if I swapped it with these guys I'd like the
whole experience a lot more Honestly though the layout itself is something I'm a big fan of because I like
relatively full keyboards but I want to save that just a little bit of extra
space because I don't like giving up my numpad so um if you like a full keyboard
but you want something a little smaller and you can't give up the F keys in your
numpad maybe a layout like this is the layout for you it's definitely the
layout for me this is basically the same as my Odin that I have at home I think
that's a little bit bigger actually but not much
the keycaps themselves are PBT and they're an MDA profile
which isn't super pronounced but it's also not flat either and with something
that can have up to this much of an angle I'm actually pretty fond of that
but I like sa keycaps call me a heathen
if you want I just I like those big sculpted keycaps
so I'm actually pretty fond of these ones and I definitely like the style
Choice as well so I think what it comes down to at the end of the day is is this
thing worth any money and I've got to say it's actually really feature Rich
the keyboard itself goes from anywhere between 105 to 120 dollars depending on
which switch you want to have included with it and honestly for a 5 000
milliamp hour wireless keyboard with a
window and Mac switch so that you can actually just have a command key and it
just works like a command key both options for a dongle or Bluetooth
wireless and then a full keyboard with adjustable feet and like hot Swap and
apparently there's some yeah I can see some layer some there's some foam above
the switches here and there's probably a silicone pad on the very bottom or something like that honestly overall for
like 120 bucks at the top end that's pretty good and the only way that you're
going to beat it is by going with something that's gone a lot I mean I
forgot about the screen 120 bucks and you get an additional
screen like I don't know I'm pretty sold I also really like the quality of this
cable it's not something that I actually focus on too much because most of the
time like a cable is just a cable and I mean I'll be honest the USBC end could
be well no it's pretty good actually
um these connectors are just really impressive I'm having a really hard time
I I think that if you don't want the
silent switches and you want something more normal like these flamingos that we
have here that I unfortunately don't really have time to try I think you'd
actually get a pretty good experience out of this thing
because even with the silence I can kind of
I can kind of Judge how good it would be anyway I don't know what they've done to
the stabilizers but they're not bad honestly so I am
going to recommend this thing not to everyone there's definitely a subset of
people uh myself included that just don't really care about Wireless
personally I'm never taking my keyboards anywhere I don't mind the cable because
I like having like a nice coiled cable attached but frankly I think you're
getting something pretty decent but other than that I I think you're
actually getting quite a few features for 120 at the absolute top end for a
full keyboard because that's coming with switches and yeah I I just I can't think
of something else that I would recommend more than this if you want all of those
features or at least most of them thanks for watching it's the EPO maker rt100 if
you want to see another keyboard with a gimmick check out the 65 less that was
pretty cool