Driver

The driver for the Aukey KM-G4 can be downloaded from their downloads page. Installation is fairly straightforward and takes up approximately 115 MB for the entire package. I recommend getting the latest version online rather than the on-disk version that came with the keyboard, even assuming you have an optical disc drive.


The first version I tried was 4.2.0.5, and it had a massive bug that resulted in a smaller screen appearing in the top left which blocked most of the onboard controls. A few emails with Aukey later and they uploaded version 4.2.0.7, which solved that issue and allowed me to test it out fully.


If you have a 4K monitor, be aware that the driver does not support scaling well, and you will end up with a tiny window even if you have OS level scaling at 250-300%. Aukey is aware of this; however, they do not have a date by which they plan to resolve this.

When the keyboard is connected and the driver opened, the home page as seen in the video above is what greets you. Aukey also provides a PDF manual with the driver installer, which explains a lot of things, and the user interface is easy enough to understand, but fairly basic. Some of the things that can be done here include changing the skin of the driver interface with six possible options, checking for software and keyboard firmware updates, and restoring everything to default settings, and there is key assignment, of course, available through the default "Custom" tab.

There are several options to choose from for each key, as seen above, including program shortcuts, macros, mouse actions, etc. Key assignment also means programmabilty of the keyboard, so if you do not like QWERTY and wanted to try out Dvorak or Colemak, you can most definitely do so. Just note that the OEM profile of the keycaps means that the sculpting of the keycaps will differ if the rows are different, and you will need a second keyboard to finish the job.


The second tab is "Light Effect", and by now, you should know there is broken English all over the place. That said, this is where you control the backlighting on the keyboard. There a lot of options to choose from as can be seen in the video above, and the individual effects have brightness control, with some even having speed control sliders. Unfortunately, there is no per-key lighting control, and neither is there support for R/G/B channel input, so you are forced to use the mouse to control everything in hopes of hitting the exact color/brightness you want. There are also three custom lighting effects, which I thought meant more control, but they only applied some very specific static lighting effects on specific keys - there's nothing custom about these! Oh, and the notification for successful application does get annoying over time as it also blocks off the drop down menu and some sliders.


The third tab is "Macro", and it is straightforward and comprehensive. You create a macro action here; name it and record said macro and it gets saved to where you can then select it in the key assignment Custom tab. I would have preferred more control over the delay time between keystrokes, but it has never been a real issue for me thus far.


The final tab is "Statistics". Turn the statistics option on and you will see which keystrokes are performed and how often. This is a neat little tool to illustrate how poorly optimized QWERTY really is, and can also help tell you if you even need a Num Pad or not. Note that it only records keystrokes from the KM-G4 keyboard itself, as I did try with my main keyboard which was also connected, and it gave an empty recording as seen from the previous file in that video. For those concerned, there is no outgoing traffic from the driver so all these are local and for your eyes only.


All the tabs also have the configuration section in common, which is what Aukey uses to call profiles. You can create new profiles, assign them to be activated when a certain other application opens up, and all the other functions we saw above can be created for each configuration. Note that only the default one is saved on the keyboard, and the Custom tab functionality requires the driver be open, so only lighting effects are really saved onboard here.

Overall, this is a good first start from Aukey considering the KM-G3 from last year had no driver support at all. There were bugs still, but the latest version I tested was stable and fairly user friendly thanks to the included guide. That said, there is still a lot more work that needs to be done before this comes anywhere near the more established driver support from such companies as Corsair, Razer, Logitech, etc.