Epomaker TH40 hands-on review: Affordable 40% mechanical keyboard with big sound

Unlike the Wooting 80HE, which we recently reviewed, the Epomaker TH40 comes in a fairly conventional cardboard box that has a neat design printed on it but is otherwise uninspiring. At under $100, though, that's not unexpected for a mechanical keyboard. Protecting the keyboard in the box is some cheap polystyrene foam and a thin plastic bag — again adequate, but nothing to write home about.

Alongside the keyboard are the printed quick-start guide and another small cardboard box containing a keycap and switch puller, the compact 2.4 GHz receiver, and a 1.8 m long white braided USB type-C cable. Epomaker also included four extra Flamingo switches, in case issues arise with any of the switches pre-installed in the keyboard. Unlike Epomaker's other keyboards, there is no included allen key, which is indicative of the TH40's intended use case and assembly method, which will come up again later.

The included keycap and switch puller works fine, especially the wire keycap side, however, the switch puller feels a little flimsy, and the prongs were somewhat prone to bending if used a little too vigorously or on keyboards with switches that are a little more firmly held by the switch plate. Fortunately, the TH40's plastic plate doesn't hold the switches in place particularly firmly, so this isn't an issue. 

In terms of aesthetics, the TH40 is available in either the light greyish-lavender and purple colourway we were sent, simply called Purple on the Epomaker store, and Black Gold, which features a black case and mustard-yellow accent keycaps. Both Purple and Black Gold are likely to be somewhat divisive, although to different people and for different reasons. The TH40 in Purple is just begging to find a home in a cosy setup, but the black and yellow colourway will seem more at home in a more typical gamer setup or a study with a more serious aesthetic. 

The keycaps on the TH40 are dye-sublimated PBT in a Cherry profile — although the change in key height is almost imperceptible, thanks to the small form factor — and, while the colour isn't too far off, the caps aren't perfectly colour-matched to the case, at least in the case of the purple colourway.

The darker purple accent keys aren't too loud, but they still give the TH40 an aesthetic flair it otherwise wouldn't have. The legend on the lavender keycaps in our review sample is a large, semibold, black script, and the dark purple keycaps have white lettering with a narrower script. 

While the black lettering is crisp, there are faint fringes on the purple keycaps, although this is only noticeable on very close inspection and doesn't significantly affect the legibility or quality of the keycaps. The keycaps have a very fine matte texture on the top, which is, again, slightly different to the texture of the keyboard's case. All-in-all, the keyboard's keycaps and case complement each other well, aesthetically, even if the colour choices in our unit are somewhat unorthodox.

One feature that may be disappointing to some is that the TH40 features per-key RGB illumination, but the included keycaps are not shine-through, meaning RGB offers very little benefit, aside from the obvious aesthetic customisation. This can be remedied by enhancing the RGB with a set of shine-through keycaps, like this translucent Jade set for $36.99 or this set of smokey translucent Akko keycaps for $36.99.

Side-printed legends are the best fit because of the south-facing RGB configuration, although keycap sets that include a 2.25u and 2.5u split space bar configuration are not easy to find, so you may have to make a compromise and only change out the alpha keys. If you do buy the TH40 with the intention of swapping out the stock keycaps, an Alice layout keycap set should have all the necessary caps to fit the board. 

While ABS plastic may not sound like the stuff of premium mechanical keyboards, it does provide for an overall positive typing experience. The PC plate, flex-cut PCB, gasket mount, and ABS case soften the typing feel, although the effect of the gasket mount is almost imperceptible, likely helping more to isolate the PCB and plate from the case to dampen the sound. Depending on the switches you go with, the sound profile can be somewhat muted and on the lower end of the spectrum — somewhere between poppy and thocky.   

The typing experience of the TH40 is also somewhat hampered by the default layout. Obviously, being a 40% keyboard, the TH40 is missing the F row, number row, and even a lot of essential punctuation. While the accommodations made by moving the [/?] key to the left side of the alpha section makes sense to maintain a standard QWERTY layout, and the split space bars and central Fn key make layering far more accessible and intuitive, the default layers seem more concerned with RGB configurations than anything else. By default, there is no way to add an apostrophe or quotation marks, and the F-row isn't bound to a layer, either. 

Numbers are easily accessible with keys Q through P while holding the Fn key between the space bars, and the arrow cluster is bound to Fn + [>.]/[App]/[L Alt]/[L Ctrl] (for up, down, left, and right), but the second layer isn't set up for other functionality, like a navigation cluster or even delete. After we configured our layers, though, the TH40's split space bar layout quickly became comfortable to use and even made using a regular single space bar again somewhat challenging.  

Notebookcheck has an upcoming article about how we set up the Epomaker TH40, and although this will also depend on preference, we found our configuration to make the 40% layout far more accessible and less intimidating for beginners. 

The Epomaker TH40 comes equipped with a 3,000 mAh battery, and while that might not sound like much, coming from the world of laptops and smartphones, it has proven itself to be plenty during our review period. In our three-week testing period with the TH40, it has only been charged to 100% once, and that was to top it off to test the battery drain.

While precise battery life testing with a complete drain from 100% to 0% is outside the scope of this review, we were able to test battery drain in terms of percentage drain per hour, which we can extrapolate into an estimated battery life figure. 

We tested the TH40 in a number of configurations, resulting in these estimates:

• Bluetooth connection with RGB at around 50%: 2.5% battery drain per hour, or around 40 hours of usable battery life. 
• 2.4 GHz connection with RGB at 100%: around 5% battery drain per hour, or about 20 hours of continuous use. 
• 2.4 GHz with RGB off: around 1.5% battery drain per hour, or an estimated 67 hours of use. 

While Epomaker claims the TH40 is VIA compatible, thanks to QMK firmware, it's not a flawless experience, unfortunately. In order to use VIA, you need to enable V2 definitions in VIA, which is technically a compatibility mode, and upload a JSON layout file available from the Epomaker website. After that, VIA should be able to recognise the TH40, and you should be able to remap the keys and configure layers. 

Speaking of customisation, the single biggest issue with the Epomaker TH40 is that is it very difficult to use as a daily driver straight out of the box, thanks to its stock key bindings and layer configuration, as highlighted in the typing section above. However, it only took about an afternoon of customising the TH40 with VIA to regain all the functionality of a full-size keyboard. Learning to type with the altered layout, though, took some getting used to, but after about two days it was easy enough to remember where different keys were on the other layers, but by the end of the first week, it became fairly easy to match or even surpass typing speed from past keyboards.

This has more to do with the 40% layout than the TH40 itself, but subjectively, the TH40 does feel more efficient than typing on a full-size or TKL keyboard, especially if you are prone to "getting lost" on bigger keyboards or misplacing your hands on the home row. With the TH40, there's just not enough space for your hands to get lost, and the compact nature of the keyboard makes it very easy to index using a keyboard edge or bezel. 

While software customisation is possible, and even necessary for the Epomaker TH40, it's clear that Epomaker intends its customers to use the TH40 in its default hardware configuration, which is actually not a terrible prospect in this case. Unlike many other Epomaker mechanical keyboards, and others still from other manufacturers, there is not a screw to be seen on the Epomaker TH40.

Everything here is held together with clips, and the case is rigid enough that you'll need a spudger tool or sacrificial credit card to open the keyboard. Even then, during our second disassembly of the TH40, one of the clips bit the dust. Fortunately, the case still closes rather firmly, even with one less clip. 

While clips are annoying, and the majority of keyboard fanatics would rather they be avoided completely, the relatively low price of the TH40 justifies their use here, since screws would add extra length to the assembly time, increasing the production cost. Clips also help keep the weight low, which also seems to have been one of Epomaker's goals, likely in the name of portability. 

Once inside the TH40's case, you can see the PCB foam, plate foam, foam gasket mounting system, and not very much else. Another problem arises when trying to modify the TH40. Almost any attempt at removing the PCB foam from the back of the PCB results in tearing, and it takes an inordinate amount of patience and dexterity to ultimately remove the PCB foam. 

If you do get as far as to remove the PCB foam, though, you'll notice that it doesn't actually change the sound profile all that much, only marginally increasing the volume of bottoming out key strokes. We didn't go so far as to test this, at least not yet, but you can likely mute the TH40's already rather quiet sound profile further by adding more sound-damping materials to the empty space in the bottom case.