Software

Software support for the Keydous NJ81 depends on whether you have the dual-mode or triple-mode version as well as whether you are on Windows or macOS. Simply head over to this page and download the appropriate installer which in this case was the triple-mode Windows version. The latest version at the time of testing was 1.2.62 which downloads as a ~68 MB compressed archive that simply contains the installer file. Running it triggers the installation that has absolutely no options for you and I can't help but comment on how bad this is from a user point of view. It decides to add in a desktop shortcut and start menu folder for you without asking and there wasn't any T&C to agree to here obviously. Keydous would do well in addressing these concerns sooner than later!


The final install is ~240 MB in size 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 message as seen above. 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 it scales decently with OS scaling level and resolution to where it's already better than a lot of equivalent efforts from many brands both new and established. There are menu items on the left and further options pop up to the right with an on-screen render of the keyboard helping wherever possible.

Keydous provides a handy guide on using the software drivers with the NJ81 but I was already familiar with this given it's a re-skinned version of the same OEM drivers that others have also customized, including Akko with its Cloud Driver we recently saw. This means the exact same strengths and weaknesses persist here, including with 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. The virtual keyboard is not the most useful for the latter and there are some generic names used for the lighting effects which you won't really understand until you look down at the keyboard itself. The biggest change here is for the specific menu tied to the OLED display allowing you to add in custom images or GIFs in either black-and-white or RGB mode. There is also a brush and eraser tool and it can take a short while to fully understand what all the various options do—another reason to go read that guide linked above. There was also a firmware update available for the keyboard so I decided to capture it in this recording so you could see the time it takes to apply as well as do a factory reset itself. In general the various menu items are logically placed and the overall user experience is on the better side of average, but there remains work to be done that now I know also falls down to the OEM that makes the hardware controllers and the associated software drivers.