Epomaker Magcore 87

The Epomaker Magcore 87 is the type of keyboard that makes you raise an eyebrow when you first pick it up. It’s weighty, solid, futuristic-looking, and fully loaded with a few bleeding-edge features you don’t typically see at this price. But the million-dollar question is: Is it actually worth $199? Let’s dive in.

What’s in the Box?

Opening the package, you can tell Epomaker was going for a “premium unboxing” experience. Inside, you’ll find:

The keyboard itself (it’s a TKL layout – no number pad but all the useful keys).

A detachable braided USB-C cable.

Some extra inductive switches (A lot very useful if you want to experiment, or replace a defective one).

A few extra keycaps, with some of them being translucent accents.

A keycap/switch puller.

User guide, as well as a small hex wrench in some bundles.

No wireless dongles or anything flash like that here—this baby supports wired, and wired only.

Design & Build Quality

The first thing you will notice: this is a tank. At about two kilograms, it’s not going to be moving anywhere once you’ve put it on your desk. The aluminum case is very well made and strong, and a sandwiched gasket-mount construction with several layers of foam offers a slightly muted typing sound.

The PBT keycaps are sturdy and won’t shine anytime soon, but the translucent accent caps are a bit of a hit-or-miss. They look nice in RGB but the legends can be a little less-readable in some lighting.

The construction is all-around solid — it feels like a premium custom keyboard on day one.

Features That Stand Out

Kailh Box Inductive Switches – Not your average mechanical key switch. They're using a pair of inductive sensors in there, so you won't experience the kind of wear that metal contact switches have, and they offer on-the-fly actuation point tuning. You can tune them to be extra-sensitive for gaming or slightly less so for typing.

Polling Rate & Latency – An incredible 8000 Hz polling rate and ~0.125 ms response time. Translation: this thing is fast. Perfect for competitive gaming.

Sound & Feel – Keystrokes sound damped and “thocky” due to the dampening layers of the gasket mount, without any annoying rattles. Not as deep as some custom builds tend to go, but still very nice.

RGB& Aesthetics – per-key south-facing RGB, and some underglow on the front side. It’s flashy without being overwhelming.

Software – Can customize (macros, lighting, actuation…), but the software isn’t great. Expect a bit of tinkering.

Pros & Cons

✅ Pros

Aluminium build – rock solid feel.

Actuation switches are adjustable (pefect for gamers).

High, two-digit thousand DPI range for twitchy pixel aiming. Very low latency; high polling rate.

Extra switches and keycaps included.

Gasket mount & foam layers for better acoustics.

❌ Cons

Pricey at $199.

No wireless option.

Heavy (not portable at all).

It is not so great sometimes with the see-through accent caps.

Only compatible with inductive switches—not as versatile as regular hot-swap boards.

Software feels a little unfinished.

Is It Worth the Price?

Here’s the deal: if you’re a serious gamer or an enthusiast who’s super concerned about build quality and bleeding edge switch technology, then yes—it’s worth every penny to own this keyboard. And the adjustable actuation and minimal input lag are attributes you’ll really appreciate in fast-paced games.

But if all you need is a daily typing board or something portable, this might seem like overkill. There are some less expensive alternatives which also do the job and don’t run close to $200. And the absence of wireless could be a dealbreaker for some.

Final Verdict

The Epomaker Magcore 87 is a bold new venture from Epomaker, boasting inductive switches, premium materials, and top-shelf performance to the mainstream. It’s not ideal by any means, but for the right user I’d say it’s fantastic.

👍 Worth it if: You’re looking for a desk-bound, high-end, performance-first keyboard.

I have been using the Epomaker Magcore 87 for almost two months now, and I’m very satisfied with it. The build quality feels solid and premium, the switches are smooth, and the typing experience is really comfortable. The design is compact and looks very stylish on my desk. I also like the RGB lighting options which make it more customizable. Overall, it’s a great keyboard for both work and gaming, and I highly recommend it.

The keyboard is excellent, and the build quality is great.
But I have an issue with its weight—it’s very heavy. Also, if the design were more attractive, had additional features, and was wireless, it would be an amazing product for its price. In its current state, however, I feel it looks somewhat unattractive, and its heavy weight may cause people not to enjoy using it much.
Therefore, I hope that in the future you release an upgraded version that is lighter, wireless, and with a more appealing design.
Wishing you the best of luck!

he title pretty much says it all. Unfortunately, aside from the fact that you cannot change the accent light on the front to something other than rotating rainbow, the hardware is some of the best I've seen in the HE space recently. (there's also that super thin foam at the bottom of the case, LOL, what is that?!)

But where this really falls down is the software. Starting right out of the gate with the fact that you have to use elevated permissions to even run the software. That should be enough to have people returning this right there. Since that exposes your machine in a bad way. But then once you get into the machine, then you have the fact that you cannot make changes to the Funtion Layer or any layer, except layer zero. That's lame and something you would see out of keyboards that are 5 years old. Then there's no options for other profiles, which if you have an inductive keyboard that is a TKL, you are more than likely using it for multiple purposes, i.e. work/gaming and not being able to hot swap between profiles is not great. Finally, and this is a Quality of Life improvement, and for mostly the same reason as the need for multiple profiles, you should have it so that you can select different polling rates. This is something that EVGA figured out for the Z15, again, like 5 years ago when I started the hobby. High polling rates require more CPU overhead, by allowing this to be dropped down to, like, 1000Hz when we're do non-demanding tasks, we can really save the CPU cycles and make out machines perform better.

I am hoping that you're able to pass this along and I hope that everyone else finds it informative because if you could get the software dialed in now, then you could really dominate the emerging inductive market, I think.

great