Epomaker Mini Cat 64 Kit: Packaging and Closer Examination

Epomaker sent over an early production run sample of the Mini Cat 64 kit, explaining why the product box is bare cardboard without any aesthetic wrap over it. Expect the final retail version to have a cat theme. Opening the box, we see the kit placed between ample bubble wrap, protecting it on the way to you. The only accessory here was the keyboard cable itself, although there may well be paperwork included with retail units. The cable here is fairly plain in white and goes from USB Type-C to Type-A for connectivity.


The Epomaker Mini Cat 64 keyboard kit may surprise you if you are new to acrylic kits, especially with its lower profile and weight. This is, at its core, a 60% kit with 64 keys supported similar to the Ajazz AC064 we saw before. The review unit is extremely hard to photograph against a white background, considering the entire chassis is white in color, so I pulled out the black sheet for contrast, to help show you the aesthetic features in the form of the bongo cat face at the top right corner. These are laser-cut acrylic sheets which come stacked and screwed together. This does mean there are four screws on the side that will always be present, I wish Epomaker selected white-painted screws instead, to blend them with the chassis. The exact design is identical to other DIY designs used for this specific theme, including the bottom side angled further as you go left to right. The finish is quite good otherwise, with a smooth finish given to the acrylic panels, that also get rounded corners.


Flipping the kit around, we see more of the translucent acrylic in play. This will no doubt make for a bright light show, especially with what appear to be several additional bottom-mounted RGB LEDs. There is a raised section at the top to add a single keyboard elevation profile here, and we also see two circular rubber pads at the top corners to prevent the acrylic from being scratched as well as to minimize the assembled keyboard from sliding around on your desk. The kit by itself comes in at 327 x 170 x 30 mm in size, and weighs under 500 g empty. I also appreciate the lack of any branding on the top with Epomaker printed on the back panel instead.


A look from the side reveals the eight acrylic panels making up the stack, these are paired with an opaque white plate, making the entire stack translucent to diffuse the LEDs for side lighting. We also see the fixed elevation step here making this a medium profile case, as well as various screws holding the kit together. A cutout on the front, facing away from the user, provides access to the Type-C port on the keyboard PCB itself. A closer look at the kit confirms the use of 5-pin hot-swap switch sockets so you don't have to clip plastic pins off 5-pin mechanical switches. There is an SMD RGB LED for backlighting in each switch socket as well. The kit also uses plate-mounted stabilizers with salmon-colored stems and the bar itself is lubed manually to assist with the up and down movement. The front plate is textured and there is foam underneath to help dampen and support keystrokes.


Further inspection is best done by disassembling the kit, achieved by removing the Phillips screws on the front and back. After, you can easily completely disassemble the kit layer by layer. I only chose to remove the four on the back beginning with the top two that remove the two smaller panels and then the bottom two screws to allow a better examination of the brass threads used here. The PCB is also white, and chock-full of components. It comes marked "Nz64 RGB Rev 1.0" for which I couldn't find any useful information with a cursory Google search, and there is no way of directly telling whether this PCB is made for the Mini Cat 64 only or not. Solder quality is exceptional; this is clearly a machine-assembled product including on the Kailh hot-swap sockets employed here. Powering the functionality of the PCB is an STM32F401CC 32-bit Arm Cortex-M4 USB microcontroller with 256 KB of onboard flash memory. There is no wireless functionality here, and the absence of dedicated LED controllers initially suggests the Mini Cat 64 is not going to be the most powerful keyboard when it comes to customization. But then we find out this kit supports VIA open-source firmware and customization, so all bets are off! As usual, all the soldered components are on a multi-layer PCB.