Closer Examination

At its heart, the Epomaker SK61 is a typical 60% keyboard. If you have missed the seemingly hundreds of 60% keyboards we have covered on TechPowerUp this year, what this means is that this keyboard takes up just the alphanumeric section of the typical full-size or TKL keyboard and omits the Fn key row, arrow key column, and, of course, numpad. The tilde (~) key is usually replaced by the more useful Esc key, and then there are layers to add the missing functions and then some. This 61-key unit has all these extra functions associated with the Fn layer, and the respective legends are seen underneath the primary ones. It would be a fair assumption then that we will see north-facing LEDs, and the backlighting will be more uniform at the top as well. Bezels are smaller than average and feel even smaller owing to the rounded corners. There is zero visible branding on the keyboard in use.

The issue is that the Red Wine color theme is not the best for visibility, especially on the red keycaps. It is a darker red, which certainly does fit the theme, but the legends needed to be brighter for more contrast. The black keycaps on either side work just fine, but you are not buying this keyboard just for black keycaps. We see primary legends on the top left of the keycaps, with the general secondary legends alongside, but both are centrally placed. This inconsistency is not very nice, and I would rather the red keycap set get tweaked more for functionality. The layered functions are seen diagonally opposite in a smaller font and are brighter owing to these being laser etched rather than the doubleshot-in-white injection for the others.


Flipping the keyboard around, we see the usual certification sticker in the middle, and this time around, it is indeed accurate as it states that this is the SK61. The trapezoidal case design makes a return here, and we see four rectangular rubber pads on the corners to add friction against the resting surface, which minimizes any slippage of the keyboard when typed on.


There is a slightly inset USB Type-C connector on the left corner facing away from the user, and it should be compatible with aftermarket cables, too. The provided cable itself is the usual 6' long and black to match the keyboard, with durable braided sleeving applied. It takes an available USB Type-A port on your computer, and USB 2.0 will suffice for power and data alike. The connectors are gold-plated for oxidation resistance.


Here are the two units together, which makes the difference in the red keycaps even more obvious. The side profile is identical at least, so you won't need to worry about an elevation differential. Note also that both the SK61 and SK21 are wired keyboards, so there will be two wires with this combination.


The side view again confirms the relatively high keyboard profile, which matches the numpad. The keycaps use the OEM profile, and the five rows are sculpted accordingly. They are the non-floating type owing to the case design, and the included keycap puller works fine as there is sufficient spacing between keycaps. I still maintain that Epomaker should have included better keycap puller and switch remover tools, ideally even the combination tool we saw come with a few other Epomaker keyboards. The stock keycaps are really good, using very thick PBT plastic (average wall thickness 1.35 mm) with seamless doubleshot injected primary and secondary legends that are associated with the US ANSI layout. The PBT is fairly smooth too, which addresses one of the issues people have with PBT vs. ABS for the keycap. The doubleshot injected legends are backlighting compatible, but here too do we see a mix of doubleshot injected and laser etched legends on the red keycaps (first red from the SK61, last two from the SK21) wherein the laser etched legends are opaque and the keycaps themselves let different amounts of light through.


The Epomaker SK61 and SK21 are so new, there is no way to exactly tell which switches they will come with, but if the SK68 is anything to go by, it is safe to presume that you will be able to choose between Gateron Optical Red, Brown, Blue, and Black switches, and perhaps the Epomaker Chocolate optical switches, such as the one we saw with our AK84 sample. I have the Gateron Optical Brown switches on these samples, and it is similar in function to the mechanical Gateron Brown switch in that both are tactile switches looking to reproduce the typing feel of the Cherry MX Brown down to the use of the brown-colored cross-point stem. The larger keycaps use plate-mounted Cherry-style stabilizers which are lubed fairly well, too. The lubrication combined with the thicker PBT keycaps should mitigate some of that mushiness typically associated with stabilizers of this style.


The optical nature of these switches means these are hot-swappable by default, which the provided switch remover points towards as well. We can now get a closer look at the switch socket on the PCB, including the associated RGB LED and actuation mechanism that has a light signal going between the two diodes that gets interrupted by the switch slider, which is also brown.