Driver

The driver for Bloody keyboards, including the B840, is called KeyDominator, and the current version of KeyDominator can be downloaded here. Note that you download a self-extracting archive file that needs to be run to get the actual installer operating, which is a fairly straightforward procedure:


The driver, when opened for the first time, opens itself and a widget that can be placed on the desktop:


This does seem straight out of 2007, but the widget can be closed easily. What is not easy, however, is actually using the software on a high resolution screen. You see, not only is there no scaling at all, the program does not even have a full-screen mode. So, it ended up being super small on my 4K monitor and forced me to go to 1080p to even see it properly. If you end up using Windows' scaling options, things look bigger but act worse as the menus and lists appear all over the place as opposed to where they should be. On 1440p, things were okay, but you may still have to get close to your screen in some places. UX design is definitely lacking here.


The default screen is Ultra Core. It does nothing but display the message you see above. The RGB Lighting menu opens but does nothing except for displaying an error message if you attempt to apply anything, stating that the connected keyboard is not an RGB keyboard. We are, as such, left with the keyboard's default lighting:


As we saw on the previous page, there are fairly bright red LEDs assigned to each individual key. Fn + UP/DOWN gives you 4-step brightness control with a range of 0/33/66/100 %, so it is possible to turn the backlighting off if you so desire. The keycaps also have a lower transmittance of light on average, and the light passed through has an orange hue to it. Note here that the brightness control legends on the UP/DOWN arrow keys are ironically not lit up at all owing to their placement on their keycap. The numbers row has all its secondary legends lit up well, and we see the side plates are lit up also. There is some light bleed as a result of the floating key design, which does get mitigated by the addition of the aluminum alloy cover on top of the plastic body.


The Button menu is fairly extensive and has lots of options. You can re-assign any primary key (no arrow, numpad, etc.) to an other key, a mouse button, an action, or text, or can execute a macro or combo. Bloody has some pre-configured macro and combo actions, although you may want to create your own, and that is where the other two menus come in.


The macro menu is called Oscar Macro for some reason, but is, again, one of the most extensive programs I have seen. You can edit existing macros, but it is easier to start with a new file to create the macro you want. You can control the keystrokes and have the mouse move a few coordinates, which can potentially be very powerful in some situations. Say you are playing a game that requires more mouse and keyboard movement. Here, you can not only execute a combo move via keystrokes, but could also have your cursor move automatically between or after such combos.


Finally, we have a Super Combo menu, which is a combination of everything seen so far. You can create a combo that does a certain action once, as with a macro, or cycle through a combination of actions. Each has the option to press keys on a keyboard or mouse (or both) with controlled delays, and there's an option to record macros on the fly that get saved into this bigger combo action. Again, this is a powerful tool for work or leisure if you spend the time to properly configure everything. But it can also be intimidating to users, and to the point where many may shy away from exploring these options to stick to the default keyboard by itself.


Once you have created a macro (or combo), you will see it in the drop-down list when assigning keys in the Button menu. There is no useful global manual that can help you understand what is going on here, and the quick-start guide provided simply helps trigger profiles that help deactivate the Windows key or similar. There is a help section in the Super Combo menu which does describe its functionality somewhat, and it was the only way I could even figure out what to do. User experience can make or break a software program, and the Bloody KeyDominator's user experience does need polishing.