Photos and Features
So I think that the Dezimator X is the largest keyboard we have ever tested and frankly there have been a few in the past that were big. This keyboard manages to be larger than the others due to a large bezel around the keyboard in addition to a wrist rest down on the bottom and the angled shape of the back of the keyboard. So if you are interested in minimalistic keyboards, this isn’t the board for you. The design of the board is interesting as well. Like the Corsair keyboards the Dezimator actually uses its keyswitch backplate as the main piece of the keyboard. They drop the plastic bezel that most keyboards have meaning the keys rise up above the keyboard slighting. It also means that when your keyboard gets dirty you don’t have ot fight to get the dirt out, it will blow right out the sides. It also allows Epicgear to make a large metal panel the main feature of the board. Sadly they countered that with a bit too much plastic on the rest.
They keyboard is a full size layout along with the five macro keys. The key layout is nearly standard but runs the 1.5u, 1u, 1u, 1.5u layout where the standard layout is four 1.25u keys. That means if you want to replace keycaps on the Dezimator X you will have to work around the bottom row, this is a problem on a lot of gaming keyboards though.
Being a gaming keyboard its no surprise that they ran a stack of macro keys over along the left side of the keyboard. You get a total of 5. What was odd to me is that these keys don’t actually line up with the five keyboard rows right next to it, they have shifted it up slightly.
In addition to the full keyboard layout and macro keys, the Dezimator X does also use a function key for few features around the keyboard. For starters up in the F keys you get media controls. You can also flip between the programmable profiles as well as flip between different lighting profiles. What is weird though is a lot of those profiles require special key profiles that you might need the manual for as they aren’t etched into the keys. Using the function key you can also switch the keyboard into NKRO mode or back to a standard setup to avoid issues during the boot and in the BIOS that sometimes come with NKRO.
Up in the top right corner above the number pad we have a few things going on. For starters we have the three LED status indicators for the number, caps, and scroll locks. Rather than a simple LED they used a line. There is a fourth line that is longer than the others. This one works in conjunction with the knob above the LED indicators. The knob is digital so you can only move it an inch or so each direction, depending on how far you push it you turn the volume up or down and the LED indicator fills up or drops.
As I mentioned before this is a very large keyboard. A lot of that space is taken up down along the bottom. Below the keys there is a full inch of space before the edge of the keyboard. In addition to that there is another inch and a half of wrist rest. The wrist rest has a metal plate at its base and a plastic piece for the rest itself. In between the wrist rest and the keyboard is also a silver metal panel with the Dezimator logo molded into it.
The aluminum plate that runs the length of the keyboard also bends down along the sides slightly. It has a few holes cut out on the side as well for additional styling although I’m not sure that this keyboard needs any more styling.
The back of the Dezimator is made of plastic and has a salmon colored red on the corners. There are two grey holes that look like vents, when you get a good look you can see that inside this is where Epicgear hid all of the connections. The port on the right side of the keyboard has a USB port as well as the microphone and headphone passthroughs, then over on the left side you get a second USB port. The ports are well hidden and are hard to get at without turning the keyboard all the way around.
The underside of the Dezimator X is as wild as the top, if not more. For starters we can see how the wrist rest attaches with its metal plate across the front with five screws holding it in place. In the center the USB cable comes out of the keyboard and runs around past the plastic portion of the keyboard at the back. Unlike most keyboards these days the cord doesn’t unplug, but because of that they were able to beef up the connection by a considerable amount, I doubt there will be issues there in the future. Next to the cord is a sticker with the required government logos as well as a serial and model number. What is most unusual about this keyboard on the bottom are the feet. The rear feet sit on a thick foot that already gives the keyboard a little tilt. Each of those has an inch wide and tall rubber foot that has stripes cut in it for additional traction. Then each rear foot has a flip out foot with rubber on the top for angling it up even more. Then near the bottom corners of the keyboard there are two feet that stick up about ¾ of an inch, these hold the keyboard up as well. Then the wrist rest is packed with rubber feet from one side to the other, there is no way this keyboard is going to slide around, especially considering its weight.
The Dezimator X’s cord is just under 7 feet in length and is extremely thick because they are running two USB and two audio cables through it. About a foot from the end the cable splits into the two USB cords and microphone and headphone jacks to get everything hooked up. Both the main cable and the smaller cables are all sleeved and have a black sleeving with a touch of the salmon red that Epicgear used as trim on the keyboard and in the documentation.
For the key switches Epicgear is selling the Dezimator X with three different switches grey, orange, and purple. Given the colors it was clear that they weren’t using Cherry MX switches so I pulled the caps to take a closer look. The switches have the Epicgear logo on them and are clearly knockoffs of the Cherry MX design. I tried to find something that would show us exactly who makes the switches like how the Razer switches have a small Kailh logo on them but I couldn’t find a similar logo. They do still look a LOT like the standard Kailh keyswitch, I think there is a good chance they are still the original OEM. SO what do the different color switches do? Well our purples are clicky similar to a blue switch, the orange are tactile like a brown, and the grey is similar to a red. Going off the information provided they all of the same 50g actuation force. They are listed with a 1.5±0.2mm actuation point, if that is true they activate higher than the Razer switch (1.9±0.4mm) and well above the Cherry (2.2±0.6mm).
Epicgear went with a Costar style stabilizer. This means if you need to pull the keycaps off to clean things up you will need to be careful with the longer keys because they have the metal stabilizer bar on them. They didn’t lubricate anything on them so there is a good chance that they have a little chatter to them as well.
The keycaps are in a standard OEM profile meaning the top two rows angle down and the bottom two rows angle up. The keycaps themselves have a cylindered top profile as well.
Beyond the weird legend font the keycaps on the Dezimator X are standard for a backlit keyboard. They are thin ABS keycaps in a semitransparent white and are painted black. The legend is then etched out of the paint so that it glows with the backlighting.
