Having an integrated display on a keyboard is not new or innovative in itself. In fact, we have such offerings from Epomaker itself that seems to use the exact same, if not very similar hardware inside—certainly the same software drivers with its own specific pros and cons as listed on page five. While the RT100 is a larger keyboard with a retro theme and a display that comes as a detachable "TV", the Shadow-X is a simpler keyboard which goes for a more unique form factor itself. Indeed, despite this being the first such 70% keyboard I've tried to date, I do feel people will have an easier time adjusting to this compared to most 65/75% keyboards. The Shadow-X looks and types like a TKL keyboard with the top row removed, as simple as that.

Epomaker then adds one of the best OLED screen implementations to sweeten the deal further. It provides real-time data about the current keyboard status, be it the OS mode it is on, the connection used—the keyboard supports Bluetooth and 2.4 GHz wireless too—or even the battery level. The indicator LED alongside is also helpful to quickly see which device the keyboard is connected to. So this is why I feel the rotary knob implementation here is not a good use of that space or the encoder underneath. All it does is swap between the different connections which you can also do on the Fn layer. Instead, you need to now use key combinations for volume control on a keyboard in 2023 that comes with a rotary knob. I can already see people saying what's the big deal here, and to them I'd say this is just the biggest example of Epomaker getting close but not quite executing things perfectly. The software drivers are another such example with no real changes done to improve the user experience since the last time I checked it earlier this year. Thankfully we do have a detailed user guide so people don't complain about how unintuitive some things are, and the poorly translated lighting effect names don't help either. I'd also like to see different keycap and switch options, with the former helping make better use of the LEDs onboard and the latter mostly to address the lack of clicky switch options. Still, for a hot-swap keyboard with good dampening throughout and a gasket mount with this feature set all for $86? This is darn good value for money!