I’m planning to better balance the recent glut of high-end hardware reviews with some genuinely affordable stuff, but in the meantime, here’s something that’s a little of both. The Epomaker G84 HE is another Hall effect keyboard, meaning its magnetically operated switches can be adjusted for actuation height, and/or set up for strafey-strafey, shooty-shooty rapid trigger/Snap Tap shenanigans in compatible games. Both are features you’d normally expect to run pricing up into the triple figures, and yet at £80/$85, the G84 HE costs more like a lower-mid-range, traditionally mechanical ‘board.

That’s an intriguing proposition, and it’s not like this is a pile of magnetic switches buried inside a mound of cheap plastic and scrap metal. The G84 HE is solidly built, comfortable to type on, and flexible in its connection options, working over Bluetooth (good for occasional secondment to a Steam Deck) as well as USB and 2.4GHz wireless. It handles well in games too, the linear-style switches exhibiting a swift input and a spry reset regardless of whether you have the (potentially VAC-bothering) rapid trigger feature enabled.

Sadly, it’s not all Maybach quality at secondhand Kia prices. The G84 HE may have the performance of other compact Hall effecters like the Endgame Gear KB65HE or QPAD Flux 65 Model 5, but it doesn’t have their refinement: the backlighting looks uneven on larger keys, and heavy presses are noisy. Not in an crisp, aural-feedback way – it’s more resonant and hollow-sounding, especially with deep thunks on the spacebar.

Features-wise, it’s still well equipped for the money, providing an arguably much-needed entry point into magnetic keebs that doesn’t also require squeezing yourself into an even smaller form factor. Just be sure that those features are the ones you want the most, because tradeoffs have been made in their favour.

Quick Kits is a hardware review series about pouring as much fully-tested PC gear knowledge down your eyes as we can – within two or three paragraphs.