Epomaker G84 HE gaming keyboard review: magnetic switches on a budget, kinda

The Hall effect successful whole, effectively

I’m readying to amended equilibrium the caller glut of high-end hardware reviews with immoderate genuinely affordable stuff, but successful the meantime, here’s thing that’s a small of both. The Epomaker G84 HE is different Hall effect keyboard, meaning its magnetically operated switches tin beryllium adjusted for actuation height, and/or acceptable up for strafey-strafey, shooty-shooty accelerated trigger/Snap Tap shenanigans successful compatible games. Both are features you’d usually expect to tally pricing up into the triple figures, and yet astatine £80/$85, the G84 HE costs much similar a lower-mid-range, traditionally mechanical 'board.

That’s an intriguing proposition, and it’s not similar this is simply a heap of magnetic switches buried wrong a mound of inexpensive integrative and scrap metal. The G84 HE is solidly built, comfy to benignant on, and flexible successful its transportation options, moving implicit Bluetooth (good for occasional secondment to a Steam Deck) arsenic good arsenic USB and 2.4GHz wireless. It handles good successful games too, the linear-style switches exhibiting a swift input and a spry reset careless of whether you person the (potentially VAC-bothering) accelerated trigger diagnostic enabled.

Sadly, it’s not each Maybach prime astatine secondhand Kia prices. The G84 HE whitethorn person the show of different compact Hall effecters similar the Endgame Gear KB65HE oregon QPAD Flux 65 Model 5, but it doesn’t person their refinement: the backlighting looks uneven connected larger keys, and dense presses are noisy. Not successful an crisp, aural-feedback mode – it’s much resonant and hollow-sounding, particularly with heavy thunks connected the spacebar.

Features-wise, it’s inactive good equipped for the money, providing an arguably much-needed introduction constituent into magnetic keebs that doesn’t also necessitate squeezing yourself into an adjacent smaller signifier factor. Just beryllium definite that those features are the ones you privation the most, due to the fact that tradeoffs person been made successful their favour.

Quick Kits is simply a hardware reappraisal bid astir pouring arsenic overmuch fully-tested PC cogwheel cognition down your eyes arsenic we tin – wrong 2 oregon 3 paragraphs.