Software

Software support for the Epomaker RT100 keyboard can be found on the Epomaker Downloads tab—simply search for RT100 in the software section to find this page. The latest version at the time of testing was v1.2.65 and it downloads as a ~73 MB compressed archive that simply contains the installer file. Running it triggers the installation that has absolutely no options for you and I can't help but comment on how bad this is from a user point of view. It decides to add in a desktop shortcut and start menu folder for you without asking and there obviously wasn't any T&C to agree to here. Epomaker is clearly using a re-skinned driver that we've seen used before, so it needs to work on incorporating these basic features in addition to a more polished user experience, with the OEM provided.


The final install is ~240 MB in size and I noticed my CPU utilization spiking upon start up to where clearly there are more optimizations left to be done. Don't bother opening it without the keyboard detected as it will just give you a generic error message. Opening the software with the keyboard already connected will result in a more deliberate search, more CPU usage temporarily, and then after ~10 seconds it will recognize the keyboard and show you the device-specific menu. There is no maximize option and you are stuck to this one window size, but it scales decently with OS scaling level and resolution to where it's already better than a lot of equivalent efforts from many brands both new and established. There are menu items on the left and further options pop up to the right with an on-screen render of the keyboard helping wherever possible.

Given how I was already familiar with these OEM drivers, it did not take long to know the strengths and weaknesses either down to the short delay with anything you do here as seen in the video. The drivers end up automatically saving each configuration to the keyboard rather than waiting for you to finish everything and save in one go, so this gets annoying if you are planning to do a series of specific customizations, be it with key mapping, macro recording/editing/assignment, or customizing the RGB LEDs. The virtual keyboard is not the most useful for the latter and there are some generic names used for the lighting effects which you won't really understand until you look down at the keyboard itself. The sketchpad section here is tied to the OLED display in the smart screen accessory, allowing you to add in custom images or GIFs in either black-and-white or RGB mode. There is also a brush and eraser tool and it can take a short while to fully understand what all the various options do—I wish Epomaker made a detailed guide similar to what others have done. You can also run the drivers in administrator mode to provide access to the CPU activity and temperature in addition to the current date and time to be displayed on the screen. There was a firmware update available for the keyboard which the software walks you through and takes ~2 min to do in wired-only mode. In general the various menu items are logically placed and the overall user experience is on the better side of average, but there remains work to be done that now I know also falls down to the OEM that makes the hardware controllers and these software drivers.