Software

Software drivers for the Mountain Everest 60 come in the form of the aptly-named Base Camp program, whose installer is on this page. As the Everest 60 had not been announced at the time of testing, Mountain provided me with the beta release version 1.1.6, and a public release v1.1.7 is scheduled for release when the product is announced. This beta release also came with the means to check for firmware updates, of which there were several over the course of testing. The installer downloads as a compressed archive, with the actual file ~161 MB. The install process is self-explanatory, and I will give props to Mountain for giving more options than most, including the preferred language for the program and an option to run it with system boot-up. It does not tell you how much storage space it needs, but mine took up 345 MB once done, which is reasonable considering it is otherwise light on system resources.


As shown by its support of Mountain mice and the Everest Max, Base Camp is a universal driver for Mountain products. For a new brand, the user experience is much better than you would think. All compatible products would be listed with thumbnails and names, with the option to go to the device-specific page either by hitting customize underneath or clicking on the product name on top, next to the logo in the left corner. This includes a thumbnail of the Everest 60 by itself or with the numpad attached on either side, which is also reflected in the driver. Unfortunately, there was a bug at the time of testing whereby the numpad had connection issues on the left of the keyboard, but worked fine on the right. For some reason, Base Camp still thought it was on the left! Mountain says they have not seen this issue on their end just yet, but are working to find a fix once they can reproduce it. At the bottom are more generic links, including for customer support, a survey, and, of course, the shop followed by even more links underneath.

The device-specific page for the Everest 60 will look slightly different depending on whether you just have the the keyboard or set with the numpad, although the general user interface does not change with the menus laid out on the left in a single column. The UI scales nicely with display resolution and OS scaling, and the text is a good balance of colors, fonts, and font sizes. The default menu covers profiles, and a pop-up tells you which profile is active. You can create, edit, and associate profiles with programs as well, to, say, have a game-specific profile with key bindings and lighting effects come up when the game launches. Lighting is the next menu, and we see a reasonable number of static, dynamic, and reactive typing effects to choose from. But I would have liked some more options for these effects, which are weirdly enough not even set to maximum brightness by default. There are also fewer discrete steps for speed and brightness control, although you do have the full 16.8 M colors to choose from.

A custom effect allows per-key lighting as well, though static only. I did like that the custom effect option removes the numpad from the virtual keyboard, so the side lighting is accessible on both units. The virtual keyboard also at times struggles to reflect the chosen lighting effect, especially with the highest speed setting, where it seems like a frame drop, but otherwise works fine, complementing the actual change on your physical keyboard. Key binding takes advantage of the same virtual keyboard and allows you to choose between preset options, including OS shortcuts, media controls, volume control, macros, etc. There is a macro recorder and editor that works nicely, and you may record mouse strokes. OBS Studio integration is present, but I will refer you to the equivalent page here for more on that if interested. For now, I want to see Mountain resolve the bug I have been having sooner rather than later since it can cause lighting effects to play poorly.