Software

There is software support for the Monstargear NINJA87BT, which is not to be confused with the other, older NINJA87 keyboards with their own drivers. The installer for the latest version at the time of testing, v1.03n, can be found on this page and downloads as a 22 MB executable. Installing it is trivial, although it automatically adds a desktop icon and start menu shortcut without asking, which I did not appreciate. It takes up ~51.2 MB installed and is low on system resources owing to support for a single device only.


Display scaling needs to be improved sooner rather than later as the drivers show up as a tiny window on a high DPI display with OS scaling on. I do like that the render is the keyboard with the BoW keycaps itself, which has me feel extra special using this review sample. For a device-specific software program from a company many have not heard of, this is a pretty good job overall. The UI is clean, with individual items listed under menus at the top. There isn't really a language barrier either, which was my biggest worry.

Using the software is fairly easy, and again betters the average small keyboard company offering since it isn't just another re-skin of an MCU firmware and control tool. The default page allows key assignment, where you click on the key of choice and choose from the list of options below. There is a macro recorder with detailed options, and you can assign, edit, and create new software profiles as well. There is also a "Game Mode" tab with a few options, and I wasn't quite sure why the UI changed with Game Mode or Macro. Being able to change the language will no doubt interest many, and I did like the option to change the UI text color too. Note that there are no lighting options in the software, which we will examine in more detail on the next page.