Introduction

Keydous is a recently launched keyboard brand that debuted seemingly in 2020 but you would be hard pressed to find out anything about it given the utter lack of details on its international website as well as the absence of any social media pages. Yet it has managed to generate plenty of hype thanks to interesting keyboards that tend to incorporate OLED displays for further customization as well as offering custom switches and even different stock keyboard plate options. As such, when Keydous reached out to gauge my interest in reviewing its latest keyboard, I was intrigued to see whether the OLED screens on keyboards are finally viable or just another gimmick. Given also that Keydous is a relatively new brand, I wanted to help get more eyes on it and its products too. Thanks then to Keydous for providing a review samples of its NJ81 keyboard to TechPowerUp!


The Keydous NJ81 is an update to its NJ80 75% form factor keyboard that wasn't easily available outside of China. With the newer model, Keydous claims to have taken feedback from community members and reviewers alike who received early prototypes and the final retail units have had a few changes to them from the prototype stage including a departure from south-facing LEDs to north-facing ones that could potentially irk Cherry keycap profile users. At the same time, we now have a keyboard that comes in a plethora of options including different switches, connectivity modes, stock keycap sets, and much more. Common to all of them is that OLED screen at the top right corner, and we will dig deeper into it in our review of the triple mode NJ81 today, which begins with a look at the product specifications in the table below.

Specifications

Packaging and Accessories

Packaging for the Keydous NJ81 is fairly generic with the use of a white-colored thick cardboard box that simply has the company logo on the front. On the back is a simplified render of the keyboard alongside some product specs on a darker background that isn't even aligned correctly. This doesn't make for the strongest of first impressions but thankfully there isn't much to devote time on here as we then observe a double flap on the side with the product name itself. Open the box to reveal the keyboard snugly packed between cardboard on all sides and inside a wax paper wrap to where it's not the easiest task to remove the keyboard out of the box!


Various accessories are found below the keyboard including paperwork in the form of what I presume is a QC card as well as a short user manual (online copy on this page) which is worth going over to learn more about the various pre-programmed functions and onboard customization options. There's the expected removable USB Type-A to Type-C cable for wired connectivity and this triple-mode version also ships with a low-profile USB dongle for a 2.4 GHz wireless connection on top of the integrated Bluetooth support. We also get a handy combination metal wire-style keycap puller and metal prong-style switch remover tool to indicate the hot-swappable switches used here. Rounding off the unboxing experience is a set of 11 replacement keycaps that are dye sublimed PBT in nature and use simple black-on-white colors. These also include macOS-specific keycaps as seen above and are opaque to any backlighting owing to the dye sublimation chosen for the legends.