Honestly, I've had no issues with this one yet. It's easy to take apart so you can mod it a little bit if you want. Overall, it is exactly what it was advertised as so it gets a 5 stars from me.
Receiving this numpad was a delight. It comes already assembled and all you have to do is add your switches and caps. The downside however is that you'll need to snip the 2 nubs at the bottom of your switches since the PCB won't have slots for them. What this means is that the switches won't be perfectly stable when inserted. The 1U caps, no problem, since the acrylic frame wraps around the switch nice and tight, but the 2U switches....not so much.
Another plus is that the numpad comes with stabs for the 2U so all you need to think about are switches and caps, which means this is a very customizable kit to get, especially for beginners who want to experiment with parts. But again, due to the lack of a tight fit on switches in the 2U slots means that even with stabs, your 0, Enter and + keys will rattle a little bit.
All in all, great purchase, happy with it, but so close to being perfect out of the box.
Side note: fun RGB options, easy to toggle through, but I keep mine nice and simple.
PROS:
Quick startup - keyboard is active right away upon booting pc up
Easy setup - Simple plug and play
Looks good and solid feel - looks will match most keyboards as it is frosted acrylic and the product feels decently solid.
CONS:
No App for customization - it has limited support for customizing keys and RGB settings it would be much easier of there was an app to customize these settings
Light- this could be a pro or con depending on your use case but I'd prefer something a little heavier since this is sitting on my desk and not traveling with me.
OVERALL- This is a great number pad to add to any 60 or 65 percent keyboard. It's easy to setup and supports hotswap keys. I would recommend this product to anyone looking for a cheap number pad.
Top row keys are supposed to be: Fn, Volume down, Mute, Volume up
Fn combos and Mute never worked for me on Windows 11. Vol up and down did though.
Build quality is fine, but there is no mention of drivers or software for the K21 in the included manual. The site the manual references doesn't host software for the K21, and I got a virus warning when I tried to download software for one of their other keyboards.
Tried downloading the software other folks have mentioned in the Q&A section - The software is extremely sketchy, none of the shortcuts the installer added worked properly, and I had to jump through hoops just to get it to run.
The software does seem to work for the LED patterns somewhat, but I was never able to get the macros working.
Nice build quality but make sure you like the layout first, top row is FN - Vol Down - Mute - Vol Up, it's not Via or QMK compatible. There's no software so you either like the preset RGB modes or you don't.
Reasonable product for the price. But note that it uses 3-pin keys, so Drop's "frequently bought together" listing Holy Panda X is wrong - they cannot be use in this product. I used Cherry reds.
I personally detest the gaudy rainbow wave LED pattern, and there appears to be no software to control it. And no software to create macros. I've ordered a different keypad from a different seller and will be dumping this one into my bin of "stuff that can be used in an emergency"
If you are looking for an affordable hotswappable numpad then this is an alright option. The RGB is pretty cool and adds a cool colorful flair to your set up. However, 3 pin hotswap is disappointing, but understandable for the price. Furthermore the configuration software is disappointing, and doesn't allow for enough customization as you can't configure the top rows. VIA/QMK would make this keypad much better in my opinion. However, if you like the RGB and are fine with using this mainly as a numpad it is an alright option for the price with hotswap
Puting this together was easy and I like the overalls design with the acrylic body. The only annoyance was finding the proper software which only works when I click UNINSTALL? Well, the numpad works and I like how it looks :)