Epomaker TH80 Pro V2

Verdict

The Epomaker TH80 Pro V2 is a decent wireless mechanical keyboard. It offers enthusiast-grade features and a smooth typing feel, as well as excellent connectivity options with interesting looks. However, its weak construction, short battery life and hit-and-miss software prevent it from becoming a real top contender.

Introduction

Epomaker is an enthusiast keyboard brand who have made great headway in the space in recent years by offering a range of attractive, well-priced and specced mechanical options.

One of its latest contenders, the TH80 Pro V2 is a successor to the wildly popular original TH80, and adds a few interesting new features and looks, while maintaining a sensible price point. To this end, the £109.99/$99.99 price tag is excellent for a wireless mechanical keyboard with hot-swappable functionality, especially when big-brand options such as the Asus ROG Azoth cost nearly three times the price.

This keyboard is pitted more against top-class options from more boutique brands such as the Keychron Q1 Pro though, and it undercuts them by half. On paper at least, the TH80 Pro V2 may well be one of the best mechanical keyboards you can buy.

Design

• Retro-inspired grey chassis
• Sensible 75 percent layout
• The small 1.14-inch screen is a novelty

The TH80 Pro V2 is available in two colourways, either an off-white with beige and burgundy accents, or a black and grey option with increasingly retro sensibilities. The latter is what I’ve got here, and it’s an excellent keyboard by way of looks.

The two-tone black and grey colourway is smart, and is sure to fit in well with a wide range of other peripherals out there, while its textured, thick ABS plastic casing almost looks metallic. At a glance, you may think this keyboard is worth a lot more than the $99.99 asking price.

However, pick it up, and you soon realise why. While the 700g weight for a 75 percent layout mechanical keyboard isn’t wholly unreasonable, the plastic case offers a fair amount of flex at the corners to the point where it feels similar to more budget mechanical options I’ve used from bargain bin brands such as Trust. The TH80 Pro V2 isn’t the best keyboard to go for if you want top-notch build quality at this price point.

The layout on offer is at least functional, offering a useful complement of keys with handy extras such as a single column nav cluster, arrow keys and a function row. It offers most of what you get in a TKL layout keyboard, while giving you a bit more in the way of desk space without a separate section for the nav cluster keys. The only thing UK buyers should watch out for is the lack of ISO key layouts, so you will be left to deal with a single height Enter key with an ANSI key layout and its appropriately labelled legends.

As with the likes of the larger Keychron Q5 Pro, Epomaker’s TH80 Pro V2 offers SA-style keycaps with a taller profile and a slight indent which helps along its retro sensibilities.

These keycaps offer large print legends with a font that wouldn’t be out of place on an old IBM 3101 beamspring keyboard. In taking a closer look, the keycaps look similar to old IBM beamsprings, even if the materials used are far from the same. The TH80 Pro V2 utilises doubleshot PBT keycaps, offering a durable plastic combined with a process which means the legends will never wear off, given they are part of the keycap itself. However, with a smooth finish, the keycaps here feel a lot more similar to more affordable ABS options, as opposed to PBT, which is puzzling.

The TH80 Pro V2 also comes with a small 1.14-inch screen which can be used to display things like the time to small GIFs and images.

Oddly, the default state of displaying the date and time isn’t correct, and it requires downloading a separate piece of software and plugging the keyboard in for it to work correctly. It isn’t as versatile or controllable as the OLED screen on the Asus ROG Azoth, but it’s a pleasant novelty to have, even if you want to display an image and nothing else.

As for its interface, this Epomaker keyboard offers a convenient and thoughtful one, with a USB-C port for wired operation, as well as a switch for choosing between connecting the keyboard via Bluetooth or the included 2.4GHz receiver. You also get a small slot in which to store the receiver, which is handy.

Performance

• Lubed linear switches offer smooth and responsive typing
• Hot-swappable, and gasket-mounted offers flexibility
• Excellent connectivity

Inside, my sample of the TH80 Pro V2 came with Epomaker’s own Mulan switches. These are pre-lubricated linear switches with a light 47g actuation force and a total 3.8mm of travel. With that lubrication and their linear feel, they are snappy switches to use for day-to-day working, and felt solid in my couple of weeks of testing writing articles and engaging in light CS:2 runs.

I would normally prefer a soft tactile switch, but the Mulan switches were perfectly usable, and the TH80 Pro V2 was a comfortable keyboard to type on, with the combination of those switches, the fact this is a gasket-mounted board, and its slightly inset keycaps. The gasket mounting certainly helps offer a responsive typing feel by it being slightly bouncy compared to keyboards that are a lot more solid.

Alongside offering a responsive typing feel, the TH80 Pro V2 is also in keeping with the optimum creamy acoustics afforded by the combination of its internals with several layers of foam and lubricated switches. There isn’t any case rattle or ping either, and it sounds fantastic. The only thing to note is that in this configuration, it is quite loud, so you may want to opt for something quieter if you’re intending to use a mechanical keyboard in an open office.

However, if you’re not a fan of the Mulan switches in the TH80 Pro V2 for whatever reason, it’s handy to know that Epomaker also offers this keyboard with other linear options with varying forces. If none of them tickle your fancy, then you’ll also be happy to learn the TH80 Pro V2 is a hot-swappable keyboard. This means you can chuck in any switches you like, whether they’re tactile, linear or clicky, and also conform to the MX standard of 3 or 5 pin mounting.

To test this, I swapped out the bundled switches with some Cherry MX Ergo Clear soft-tactile switches, and the process was simple, especially with the bundled keycap and switch puller. You do have to be careful when putting new switches back in, however, just because of the potential for bent pins. If that happens, pull the switch out, lightly push the pins to be back straight and try slotting it into the slot on the keyboard again, ensuring you push down enough to hear it click into place.

The TH80 Pro V2 offers fantastic wireless connectivity with both three-channel Bluetooth and a 2.4GHz wireless connection over its bundled USB-A receiver on offer.

Pairing with either is easy, with the keyboard’s Bluetooth pairing operating by a key combo of Fn+ Q, Fn+W or Fn+E depending on which Bluetooth channel you’d like, while for the USB receiver, it’s plug-and-play with the device you want the keyboard to work with. A wired connection over USB-C is also offered by putting the keyboard into the USB mode and plugging it in with a good old-fashioned cable.

As for battery life, the TH80 Pro V2 comes with a 3000mAh battery inside, which Epomaker rates the keyboard to last for up to 8 hours with RGB lighting on, and up to 80 hours with no lighting.

My testing revealed it to last for a full working day, around 8 hours, with that lighting on, before it conked out. Even for a keyboard at a lower price point, this feels particularly weak, considering rivals from Keychron will last for up to 100 hours with RGB lighting enabled. Even then, low profile choices such as the NuPhy Air75 V2 provide a much longer run-time, and that isn’t much more in terms of cost than this option from Epomaker. Turning the backlighting off yields much stronger performance, although it still sits behind key competitors from Keychron and NuPhy.

Software and Lighting

• Vivid underglow style RGB lighting
• VIA integration is useful, although hit-and-miss
• Epomaker Custom Image Tool is simple

The TH80 Pro V2 features a full assortment of RGB lighting thanks to its south-facing LEDs contained underneath the keycaps and beside the switches. As the keycaps on the keyboard are not shine-through, the lighting operates as more of an underglow than by lighting up individual keys. It is nonetheless vivid, and can be changed by key combinations to change the speed at which the lights cycle between colours, as well as the brightness and overall shade.

Software compatibility is where things get a bit more fiddly. Epomaker says the TH80 Pro V2 is compatible with the open-source VIA software, which I’ve encountered previously in a wide range of enthusiast-grade keyboards. With those, it has worked flawlessly immediately, where it hasn’t with the TH80 Pro V2.

Be it over a wired connection or the 2.4GHz receiver, this keyboard will not be seen by the software, therefore limiting its potential for remapping keys. Moreover, the JSON files required to flash the keyboard into the software can’t be added because the keyboard won’t be found by the software initially. I’ve cross-referenced this with other users who appear to be having the same issue, and attempted to reinstall the software, and it’s to no avail.

However, there is a saving grace with the Epomaker Custom Image Tool, which is a piece of Windows-only software that’s required if you want to change the default image on the TH80 Pro V2’s screen. It fixes the incorrect time and date from being shown on the clock, although you can also upload images and GIFs for it to display. For mine, I chose some black Trusted Reviews desktop wallpaper, which matched well with the black, grey and white keycaps and looked good.

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