Software

Software support for the GamaKay TK75HE keyboard can be found on the downloads page here—there are specific Windows and macOS versions, which is nice to see. The latest version at the time of testing was 2.1.52, and it downloads as a ~67 MB executable. Running it triggers the installation that has absolutely no options for you—the same as the last time we reviewed a GamaKay keyboard—and once more I have to mention this is not transparent or user-friendly at all. The installer 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. GamaKay is clearly using a re-skinned driver that we've seen used before, so it needs to work on incorporating these basic features in addition to a more polished user experience, with the OEM provided.


The final install size is ~220 MB and I noticed my CPU utilization spiking upon start up to where clearly there are more optimizations left to be done. 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 at least it scales decently with OS scaling level and resolution to where it would have been better than a lot of equivalent efforts from many brands both new and established. The problem is GamaKay decided to go for a translucent galaxy-themed skin by default—you can change it—which lowers the contrast and makes it hard to distinguish the various elements on the home page. There are also many menu items on the top and bottom with further options popping up along with an on-screen render of the keyboard helping wherever possible, but it's still a very busy and distracting screen resulting in a generally poor user interface. There was a firmware update available for the keyboard which took ~2 min to go through.

Given how I was already familiar with these OEM drivers, 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. I also noticed GamaKay moved around a few things from the previous version, although there are obviously going to be some changes since this does not have an LED screen and instead has magnetic switches allowing you to customize (and test) the actuation distance as well as set up the so-called dynamic keystroke system (DKS). The virtual keyboard is not the most useful for the lighting effects, and further complicating things are the extremely generic/poorly translated names used for the lighting effects which you won't really understand until you look down at the keyboard itself.