Software

There are software drivers for the i-Rocks K71M, and there is even a link to a zip archive on the product page which contains the installer in addition to a few other things, such as the keyboard manual. At the time of writing, however, it was an older version than you would find on the i-Rocks downloads page, but I found no functional differences between the two anyway. Good thing then that the installer does not even differentiate the two when it comes to their versions, but the latest version was 1.03n vs. 1.02n on the product page. The installer is 23 MB in size and asks for 53 MB for the installed version, with the actual installation quite trivial and the drivers quite lightweight on system resources given this is a device-specific program.


The compressed folder also had a firmware update tool and a quick guide in both English and Mandarin that describes the process. This too is very easy to use—just make sure you have the keyboard connected, run the executable file, and click on Start. It takes less than a minute and you get a notice about the process having finished to allow you to close the program without any trepidation.


You will need to have the keyboard connected to run the program, and by default, it opens up in Mandarin using traditional characters to clearly indicate the Taiwanese origin of the device and program. I looked around in the settings cog, which thankfully did not have many options, and found the drop-down menu to switch to English. Also, and unfortunately so, the program scales poorly with high DPI monitors in even Windows 10, so you best sit close to your monitor since even turning things down to 1080p did not help much.

There is no guide from i-Rocks for users wanting to make the most of the software experience, but using it is thankfully fairly straightforward. There are software profiles to create, edit, delete, and choose from with i-Rocks including three pre-made profiles by default. In addition to the language itself, you can also change the UI text color in the settings cog wheel. The Customize tab is all about key mapping, wherein you click on one of the keys on their virtual keyboard to then select from a list of options, including mouse actions, macro recordings, and some OS function shortcuts. The Gaming Mode tab has some expected toggle options and an otherwise blank screen, and the Macro tab has a fairly detailed recorder for the recording and further editing of keystroke positions and adding/deleting of keystrokes, mouse functions, and delays between strokes.

The Lighting tab is where you will probably spend more time if you bought this keyboard for its looks, and it is again fairly trivial. We see a large slider to turn lighting on/off altogether and a drop-down menu to select between a variety of preset options for back and side lighting, which i-Rocks calls "Rim." Unfortunately, the two are not linked, and there is no way to coordinate any dynamic lighting effects across the two. This does suck since it might trigger OCD when the lighting is seen in person. Note also that there are fewer light bar than backlighting effects, the latter of which also includes per-key custom lighting options. Common to both are static colors, which can be selected from the usual 16.8 M colors on offer (256 brightness steps per R/G/B channel).