CheckMag | Iqunix Hall effect gaming keyboards finally surpass Wooting: New firmware update adds macros to EZ63
When I reviewed the Iqunix EZ63 earlier this year, I praised it for its build quality, solid typing feel and sound, and near-feature-complete software experience. Its software UI was the only real drawback compared to the Wooting 80HE, and it still falls somewhat short in that regard, but a recent firmware update has added a feature that has always been the Achilles heel of Wooting's keyboards when it comes to every-day usability — on-board macros. Wooting has a solution called Wootomation, which runs in the background and intercepts keyboard inputs to translate them into macros, but that has its limitations, including being particularly finicky on Linux.
With Iqunix's latest firmware update, which is available for both the EZ and EV series Hall effect keyboards, you can create macros that are saved to the keyboard's on-board memory right from the Iqunix web driver, which eliminates the need to install anything or have background services gobbling up valuable RAM and CPU cycles. This also makes it easy to keep a consistent experience when you use more than one operating system or computer, and it works perfectly on Linux, as long as you use it through a Chromium browser.
This is the second major feature Iqunix has introduced via a firmware update in recent months, with the first being on-board profile switching, which also made a big difference when it comes to using the EZ63 (curr. $179.99 on Amazon) as a daily driver keyboard.
Iqunix macro recording makes the EZ63 even better, but there are still shortcomings
Recording a macro in the EZ Software is self-explanatory, and it has its own separate tab, both of which make it quite convenient to use. There are 16 macro slots in total, and in our testing, the macros seem to work well, although if you try to get away with creating macros without first updating the firmware — the tab is still there in the software even without the update — there are issues with keys getting stuck.
Effectively, the EZ63 is now an 8 kHz Hall effect gaming keyboard that can also adequately do macro-dependent productivity workloads, but there is still at least one feature missing that's crucial to the keyboard becoming a go-to recommendation — exporting macros and key maps. This is one area where Keychron still surpasses Iqunix, even if its keyboards don't have the blazing-fast performance of the EZ63. In Keychron Launcher, you can easily export macros and key maps, which comes in handy when a firmware update wipes all of your configured settings.
On the EZ63, you cannot export any settings, which have likely cost you more than a little time to set up. This is even more important for Iqunix to add now, because if you fill all 16 macro slots, it will take some time to reconfigure all of that every time there is a firmware update.
