Epomaker Sailing Keycaps Examination

Akko suggests the Red & Blue Samurai 226-keycap set for the Ocean Blue MOD 004 kit. It sells for $60 and uses the Akko ASA profile. This is a take on an existing colorway, and Akko isn't the only one adopting it. I have it here too and was going to use it originally, but then realized I had another set that might work better not only with the kit but also the switches themselves which I know come in white and a light blue color. As such, I opted to go for the Epomaker Sailing keycap set instead. It has fewer keys and comes in unambiguously worse packaging without any extras but costs less, while also using the lower-height Cherry profile many prefer over taller profiles such as Akko's ASA. This also means the keyboard when fully assembled would not be super tall and thus may well be usable without a wrist/palm rest. Packaging consists of a cardboard box that has a plastic window in the middle teasing the keycaps inside. Side flaps keep the contents in place during transit, and three separate plastic clamshell layers are stacked one above the other. I did appreciate that the layers were carefully taped together on the sides to prevent the keycaps from working themselves loose during transit.


The Epomaker Sailing is a 173-keycap set that supports any keyboard form factor on the market, especially with modifier keys in various sizes. The first layer itself contains all the keycaps necessary for a typical 60% keyboard while also providing the entirety of the Fn key row. The second layer has the other keys needed for a full-size layout in addition to modifiers for non-standard layouts such as the 96% kit we are using today. Interestingly, we even get ISO support in the same kit, which really goes to show the one-size-fits-all approach employed by Epomaker here as opposed to the piece-meal nature of most keycap group buys. The bottom layer has a whole new color scheme in white to contrast from the two shades of blue we saw on the previous two layers and Epomaker also throws in a few novelty keycaps and different space bar sizes too in addition to the rarely seen split space bar. The design of the keycap set comes from sailing itself whereby the dark blue is supposed to represent the "tone of the oceans" whereas the light blue and white keycaps are supposed to be the shallower waters and the foam generated in the wake. It's a stretch, but ultimately the goal is to appease your sense of aesthetics and match the rest of your keyboard build.


There is no keycap puller provided with this set and the absence of the same with the keyboard kit means that you will have to procure a separate keycap puller as well as switch remover tool. The keycaps themselves are composed of thick ABS plastic rather than the usual PBT. This means the keycaps are more likely to develop a shine over time from finger oils but the colors themselves are more vibrant and some people prefer the smoother ABS texture over PBT. I personally go the PBT route for my own keyboards though and there is certainly a cost aspect here too since this set does cost less than equivalent PBT ones would. The average wall thickness is 1.3 mm so these are not your cheap mainstream keycaps that are under 1 mm thick. The legends are double-shot injected in white for the blue base keycaps and in blue for the white keycaps as seen above. This helps with visibility although note that the keycaps are opaque as a deliberate design choice so any backlighting support via the keyboard kit will be left unused. The injection itself is fine on the shorter keycaps although we see it could certainly have been done better on the longer ones. Not that it matters though since the actual relevant part is at the very top and the injection marks are all underneath to be hidden in use.