EpicGear Defiant Keyboard and Assassin Case Bundle Review

General Usage & Lighting
Our version of the keyboard comes with Epic Gear’s Purple mechanical switches. These switches offer tactile feedback and are clicky. They are very similar to Cherry’s MX Blue switches. Epic Gear also sent us their 24-pack of mechanical switches, which comes with 8 Grey switches, 8 Orange switches, and 8 Purple switches. I guess the whole idea behind this is to either try out the switches or to mix and match switches on the same keyboard. The grey switches are liner, while the organe ones have a tactile feel, and as I said the purple switches are tactile and clicky. These switches have a patented double-blade dual cross contact architecture with 30u gold plating, an actuation force of 50g, bottom travel of 4mm, and life-span of 70-million keystrokes.

Epic Gear Defiant Keyboard and Assassin Case Bundle Epic Gear Defiant Keyboard and Assassin Case Bundle
Switching out the switches on the keyboard is actually pretty easy. Epic Gear includes a 2-in-1 puller than works to remove the switches as well as just the keycaps. When you remove the switches you also have the ability to change out the light bars. The light bars allow you to change the backlighting color, although in the age of RGB backlighting this method to switch colors seems a little odd. I did change the light bars on my WASD keys though.

Epic Gear Defiant Keyboard and Assassin Case Bundle Epic Gear Defiant Keyboard and Assassin Case Bundle
As far as backlighting goes the Defiant is fully backlit with white LEDs. There are four different brightness settings which you can cycle through by using the brightness key on the keyboard itself. The backlighting is plenty bright enough and has good coverage.

Epic Gear Defiant Keyboard and Assassin Case Bundle

While the Defiant keyboard will work by itself without any drivers or software if you want to customize it you will need to download the software. With the software installed we can do our customization’s. Each key on the keyboard is completely re-programmable. Besides setting the key to a different key you can set it to a multimedia control, launch a program, macro, or even disable the key completely.

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On the main screen in the software you can also set the USB report rate and the LED AFK Settings. You can have the LEDs on the keyboard turn off after a certain amount of time. There are 4 different profiles you can configure as well. There is a Macro tab that allows you to easily record and save macros.

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