Driver

Havit does not have a unified driver for their peripherals and instead goes with a dedicated drivers for each device. This can get really annoying if you have more than a HAVIT product that is software-supported, but also means that you have an extremely lightweight program if you just have one as was the case here. You can download this specific driver from this page, and the installer downloads as an executable file that is a meager 5.15 MB in size. Installation is very straightforward, and the installed driver only occupies 12.5 MB. It barely registers in the Windows 10 task manager when sorting based on system resources taken, so there is nothing to worry about in regards to that either.


Once installed, you get prompted to run the driver, and it opens up as seen above. There is no maximize window option here, so it occupies part of my display on a 4K monitor, though it scales well with native OS scaling, right to where I had no issues using or seeing any of the options here. The driver is very simple with no real menu pages or tabs, and this is not necessarily a bad thing.

As with any new device and software support, I first went over the global settings, wherein I saw an option to check and update the firmware if need be. A spelling error aside, the built-in Holtek firmware updater worked fine and updated the device from V1.4 to V1.5.

The first options set available here is under the aptly named "Light" drop-down bar, which in turn leads to the driver's section for backlighting control. The keyboard has a Wave effect out of the box, and there are eighteen different lighting effects to choose from. Where applicable, you also have effect-specific settings, including brightness (in 50 steps of 2% from 0% to 100%), speed (10 steps), and direction of travel. There is also a static lighting mode that can be customized, so you can light up specific keys only, though five custom static lighting versions are part of the eighteen pre-programmed available variants, which does seem like an inflation to build up the numbers.

The macro manager is right below it, and here, we can create new macros or edit existing ones. There is no onboard macro recording, so this is an exclusive feature available via the driver alone, and it works fairly well with the option to add delay, edit the delay, move around the keystrokes, and even choose to loop the recordings. Next up are some keyboard-specific settings, though I am not sure why the keyboard's input time and polling rate were not kept to the best values available by default here. Finally, you can create software profiles to save a set of changes, which allows for even more customization.

The virtual keyboard you see is also where key assignment/re-assignment take place. Click on a key to bring up a new window with more options to choose from; single assignment, combined assignment (up to three keystrokes), macros (this is where the created macros come in), basic shortcuts, and more advanced options, including opening files and folders are available. You can also disable specific keys if need be.

The driver was a pleasant surprise as there is really no mention of it in the included guide, and I only learnt of it via the product page where they do mention it. It adds positively to the user experience, and although the driver is fairly bare bones, it is stable enough and simple enough to where it remains an overall positive.