EpicGear Defiant Keyboard and Assassin Case Bundle Review

Final Thoughts
Now I am been using the Defiant as my main keyboard for the past few weeks and I do have to say it is rather enjoyable. Typically if I am not a fan of a keyboard once my review is done I instantly go back to my go-to keyboard, but I am still using the Defiant. It is very comfortable and I am a very big fan of the default Purple switches that come with the keyboard. They remind me a lot of Cherry MX Blue’s, which are some of my favorite as I do a lot of writing. The keyboard lighting is plenty bright and the light bars do give you the ability to change the color. The keyboard has a very solid design and seems to be quality-made.

The Assassin case and other accessories are a nice addition. Although all of the accessories come with an extra cost associated with them. If you are looking at just the keyboard itself you will just get the keyboard, no palm rest or anything. The palm rest is one of my favorite things about this keyboard, so having to pay extra for it is sort of a bummer. The Assassin carrying case is just awesome! This hard case allows you to easily carry your keyboard, mouse, headset and even cables quite easily. I can see this case getting a lot of use for LAN parties.

The real interesting thing about the Defiant keyboard is that it has a modular switch design, that means that you the user can swap out the switches for different ones. As I said by default the keyboard comes with EpicGear’s Purple switches, but they sent us their 24-pack of switches to try out the Grey’s and the Orange’s. The Grey switches are much like the Purple’s, but do not have the audible click, while the Orange’s sort of remind me of a Cherry MX Red switch. I am not sure how many people will really swap out their switches, the only real use case I could see is replacing certain keys with Grey’s for more quiet gaming, or vise-versa to have keys make an audible sound when they are pressed.

EpicGear also light bars in each switch. By default you have all white light bars for full white illumination of the keyboard. EpicGear supplied us with extra sets of light bars to change the colors of the backlighting. While this is a cool idea I don’t see that many people changing out their entire keyboard. And with so many RGB keyboards out there this method seems sort of primitive.

The software that EpicGear supplies for the Defiant works pretty well and allows you to completely reprogram the keyboard, set up macros and much more. While it is not the best keyboard software out there, it is definitely not the worst.

The Defiant keyboard itself sells for $89.99 at our favorite online retailer. That price seems very fair to us, but again you are not getting all of the accessories. Right now we could only find the price of the 24-pack of extra switches which is $14.99. Overall ThinkComputers gives the EpicGear Defiant Keyboard and Assassin Case Bundle an 8 out of 10 score.

Award 8 out of 10

Pros:
– Quality-made keyboard
– Modular switch design, you can swap them out
– Fully backlit
– Assassin carrying case
– Keyboard completely re-programmable

Cons:
– Not sure how many people will actually use the modular switch design
– Changing light bars to change illumination color seems primitive
– Accessories for the keyboard cost extra

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