Software

Software support for the Epomaker Shadow-X keyboard can be found on the Epomaker Downloads tab—simply search for Shadow-X in the software section to find this page. The latest version at the time of testing was v1.2.69 and it downloads as a ~75 MB compressed archive that simply contains the installer file. Running it triggers the installation that has absolutely no options for you and I can't help but comment on how bad this is from a user point of view. It decides to add in a desktop shortcut and start menu folder for you without asking and there obviously wasn't any T&C to agree to here. Epomaker is clearly using a re-skinned driver that we have seen used before on multiple occasions, so it really needs to work with the OEM to incorporate these basic features, in addition to a more polished user experience.


The final install is ~245 MB in size and I once again noticed my CPU utilization spiking upon start up to where clearly there are more optimizations left to be done. Clearly nothing much has changed since the last time we saw this program, except of course with support for the Shadow-X. Don't bother opening it without the keyboard detected as it will just give you a generic error message. Opening the software with the keyboard already connected will result in a more deliberate search, more CPU usage temporarily, and then after ~10 seconds it will recognize the keyboard and show you the device-specific menu. There is no maximize option and you are stuck to this one window size, but it scales decently with OS scaling level and resolution to where it's already better than a lot of equivalent efforts from many brands both new and established. There are menu items on the left and further options pop up to the right with an on-screen render of the keyboard helping further.

Given how I was already familiar with these drivers, especially having recently tested the Epomaker RT100, it did not take long to know the strengths and weaknesses either down to the short delay with anything you do here as seen in the video. The drivers end up automatically saving each configuration to the keyboard rather than waiting for you to finish everything and save in one go, so this gets annoying if you are planning to do a series of specific customizations, be it with key mapping, macro recording/editing/assignment, or customizing the RGB LEDs. The virtual keyboard is not the most useful for the latter and there are some generic names used for the lighting effects which you won't really understand until you look down at the keyboard itself. The sketchpad section here is tied to the OLED display in the smart screen accessory, allowing you to add in custom images or GIFs in either black-and-white or RGB mode. There is also a brush and eraser tool and it can take a short while to fully understand what all the various options do—the good news is Epomaker seems to have seen my complaint from last time and there is a handy guide on how to do all this, and more, online here. Also, unlike on the RT100 where it tried and failed to get CPU activity and temperature, the LED display elements are quite different and heavily customized to the Shadow-X as we will see on the next page. In general the various menu items are logically placed and the overall user experience is on the better side of average, but there remains work to be done that now I know also falls down to the OEM that makes the hardware controllers and these software drivers.