EPOMAKER HE108 Keyboard (Hardware) – Review

The EPOMAKER HE108, a full-sized Hall Effect keyboard with rapid triggering, custom drivers, backlit RGB, PBT keycaps and a massive battery, sounds like it has everything from the description on the website, so let’s put it through its paces and see how it performs.

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When you open the box, you’ll find the keyboard, a USB-A to USB-C cable, a key puller, and spare keycaps. I received the black version to test for this review. The EPOMAKER HE108 is a full-size keyboard with 108 keys and a massive 1000 mAh battery, which gives you around 500 hours with the LEDs off and 32 hours with the LEDs on. The dimensions are 44.5 x 14.1 x 4.8 cm, and it weighs 1.2kg, a solid weight that keeps it in place on your desk.

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As a hall effect keyboard, it uses magnetic switches and sensors to register keystrokes contactlessly, enabling adjustable actuation, rapid trigger, and the smooth, creamy thock EPOMAKER is renowned for.

The keys are your standard PBT keys, but double-shot for a lower pitch, and they are Cherry profile keycaps, which have a slight curve on them that feels nice on your fingers when you are typing- not so pronounced that your finger gets caught in them, but also not so shallow that your finger slips off either, just perfect.

The keys feel polished and smooth, with no texture or grip at all. The letters are dye-sublimated, so you never have to worry about them fading. In a dark room, they can be hard to see at night if you are running multi-coloured LEDs, but you can adjust them to your preference to compensate with a lighter pattern.
Now that’s the main selling point of keyboards these days. With dense, double-shot PBT keys, they produce a deeper bottom-out tone, combined with five layers of sound dampening in the keyboard.

You have the PORON sandwich foam (microcellular foam engineering for sound damping and energy absorption), IXPE switch pad (pads designed to absorb vibration), sound-enhancing PET (recycled plastics processed into dense woven fibre), PORON switch socket foam and finally the bottom silicone pad.

The gas-mounted plates absorb the keystrokes into the silicone, not the keyboard case. I actually prefer the sound over the TH108 v2 Pro I tested last month; it is nice, creamy and not too loud. The EPOMAKER HE108 also has anti-ghosting and N-key rollover technology.

The switches underneath are factory-lubricated linear switches. The EPOMAKER HE108 has a hot-swappable PCB (a circuit board you can swap without soldering) and supports five-pin switches if you want to change your keys.

The EPOMAKER HE108 supports tri-band connection: 2.4 GHz wireless (with the USB receiver neatly under the feet on the keyboard), Bluetooth and USB. Polling rates are 1000Hz in USB and 2.4GHz mode and 125Hz in Bluetooth mode.

These give you latency figures of 2ms (USB), 5ms (2,4Ghz wireless), and 11ms (Bluetooth), solid numbers and nothing to sneeze at there. You can pair up to five devices and switch between them as needed, which is another great feature for the multi-device world we live in these days.

The EPOMAKER HE108 has its own dedicated software, EPOMAKER Driver v4, unlike the other EPOMAKER keyboards I have tested with web-based software. From here, you can adjust all your standard settings, including LEDs, macros, button remapping, key-press calibration, and multi-function controls.

The Community Shares section also lets you download other users’ LED and key configurations, which is a great way to engage your community as a manufacturer. Speaking of LEDs, they are south-facing per key; there are none on the sides with this keyboard. The feet underneath the keyboard give you three different angles: 6, 8, and 10.5.

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Once again, EPOMAKER’s technology and price point are hard to beat. On their website, they have advertising slogans such as “Type all day without the rattle” and “Built for those long sessions”, and you know what, I have to agree. This keyboard has become my daily use; it’s perfect for when I start work early in the morning, and the rest of the house is still asleep.

The double-shot PBT keys feel just perfect underneath your fingers, and tri-mode connectivity and support for five connected devices make working with this keyboard a breeze.

Topped off with a massive battery and low-latency gaming performance when I switch it off for work, there isn’t much not to love about this keyboard. If you haven’t tried a hall effect keyboard before, the EPOMAKER HE108 should be the top pick for its features, price point, and technology.