I generally do not treat crowdfunding products as full retail units in that things can change, and they often are pre-production samples which are incomplete, which means I don't give them awards, though an exception was made with the Epomaker AK84S because it basically was a complete unit only missing the wrap over the product box. I am definitely not making this exception for the Epomaker B21, which I know has a few changes upcoming still with the accent colors for the keycaps and knobs, as well as the product box and accessories. This is ultimately in favor of the Epomaker B21 since it failed to impress in its current form.

A lot of this has to do with the asking price, especially if we go with the $149 MSRP. You can get two 65% keyboards at that price, or even something more custom in design. The features are polarizing too, be it the omission of hot-swap sockets Epomaker and its associated brands have used in recent releases or offering nothing but three Cherry MX switches. These alone will likely cause many to lose interest and look elsewhere, and this is before we even get to the design language of the Epomaker B21. I admittedly think it's quite cute and adds fun to an otherwise mundane peripheral market. But the fun can not come at the expense of functionality, and some things here should have been re-considered. The attempt to market the use of rubber pads and a fixed elevation angle as the best for ergonomics is laughable, and dedicating a knob just to LED brightness on a keyboard that has opaque keycaps also makes it seem like it was done to claim two matching knobs for marketing purposes.

The keycaps are quite different from the norm too, with the colors adding to it, but mostly owing to the SA profile. The rounded top surface adds to the rounded nature of the keyboard, and it is taken further at the corners with good attention to detail. This in combination with the form factor makes it harder to get replacement keycaps from a set you really like. A good chunk of the cost with this keyboard comes from the switches and keycaps, which may have been a bad use of funds as far as the Epomaker brand and its fan base are concerned. Yes, the crowdfunding campaign is still a success with over 500% of the goal met as of the time of this review, but Epomaker should have made it more clear that this product is targeting a different customer, one who likes the toy-ish design and is not interested in changing switches, with the Cherry brand carrying a lot of weight behind the sales pitch, which is not enough for me, especially at these asking prices. If the retail Epomaker B21 sees a price cut, things will be different, of course.