The gaming keyboard market couldn’t be more saturated, yet newcomers Mountain have entered it with the aim to disrupt the current competition by first releasing the Makalu 67 gaming mouse, and now the Mountain Everest Max mechanical gaming keyboard. With Mountain being a newbie in this space, the company was clever enough to test the market by launching the Everest Max project on Kickstarter. Despite only having a goal of 20,000 EUR, Mountain managed to raise over 10x that amount. This alone would suggest that there is something special about the world’s “most innovative, customizable keyboard”.
The unique selling proposition for the Everest Max is that the entire keyboard is largely modular and therefore highly customizable. When purchasing, you can decide between five different Cherry MX switches (although these options may lessen depending on the region layout). However what makes it truly customizable is the modular aspect of the media dock and number keypad. These are completely removable and you can decide where those modules bolt onto the keyboard. The media dock lives on top of the keyboard, but you can decide whether you want to place it on the right or the left. Similarly, the numpad had an excellent mechanism for connecting it to the right or left of the keyboard. You can even use a separate USB-C cable that is provided to have the numpad sitting at a totally different angle to the keyboard. All of these modular aspects are also fully patented by Mountain in terms of the methods of connectivity and functionality.
Despite the modular aspect of the keyboard, the Everest Max still sits at just over £200 in the UK, and that makes it more expensive than some of the industry’s most reputable keyboards. Therefore, it really would take something special for a hardcore PC gamer to opt in for the Everest Max over a competitor product. Fortunately, Mountain has absolutely knocked it out of the park with the Everest Max, and you’ll notice this from the moment you receive the packaging.
Unboxing Experience
Only rarely do we talk about the unboxing experience of hardware. However, the Everest Max deserves a special mention. When paying £215 (as things stand) for a mechanical gaming keyboard, it needs to come in packaging that will blow you away. The Everest Max comes in an extremely large box, and that’s because Mountain has taken some serious care and attention in giving you the best possible experience. The box is essentially modeled after a chest of drawers.
The main compartment that lifts upwards will contain the actual base keyboard. Although we received the gunmetal grey option, there is a black variant and both colour options will give you an instant realization that the Everest Max is made of highly premium aluminium material. After all, the keyboard is made from two metal plates, so you’re guaranteed absolute sturdiness. Once you take the base keyboard out, the rest of the modules are individually compartmentalized in drawers at the bottom of the box, which slide out. Each module is separately boxed up. This packaging was purposefully designed for the Everest Max as opposed to being repurposed. The entire keyboard is so perfectly packaged that you’ll want to keep the box going forward. It’s simply too well designed to be thrown away.
Everest Keyboard Lineup
The Everest Max makes up the most premium version of Mountain’s offering, and is the option you should go for. However, if you’re looking for a barebones version, you can purchase the Everest Core which is significantly cheaper. The benefit is that the Everest Core Barebone is still the same keyboard as what you get with the Everest Max, but just without all of the modules. You can choose to buy the modules over time if you want to add to the experience.
Finally, you have the medium-entry keyboard which is the Everest Core [TKL]. Here, you can buy the main keyboard but with just one of the modules (either the numpad, the media dock or the palm rest). Again, you can choose to eventually purchase the other modules.
The Everest Max is what comes with everything, including the palm rest. Personally, I would not opt for anything other than the Everest Max. Whilst the other options are great, they are too similar to competitor keyboards. What makes Mountain’s keyboard so perfect is the modularity, which you can only appreciate with the Everest Max.
Everest Max Customization
Mountain’s entire philosophy on gaming products centers around four key pillars: innovation, performance, aesthetics and customization. All of these are perfectly summed up with the Everest Max primarily due to the modules available to you out of the box.
Most competitor gaming keyboards that have media options will feature them in the corner of the keyboard with a couple of buttons and at most, a dial for volume. However, the media dock that comes with the Everest Max is not only fully customizable, but also contains its own screen. You can choose whether to position it on the top left or the top right corner of the keyboard, and it even contains some LED indicator lights for instant feedback. The circular LCD contains a dial that you can turn to change the settings as you see fit. As far as media docks go, this is definitely one of the best I have ever used on a gaming keyboard, and since it’s programmable, you can use it for more than just media controls. By default it will give you options such as the clock, your keyboard profile, volume, etc. You can even program your own personal screensaver onto the screen, as well as remove any options you don’t want!
The Everest Max comes with the best modular numpad that I have ever come across for a keyboard. In fact, I’d go as far as stating that this is my favourite module of the Everest Max. The numpad can be attached to the right side or the left side of the keyboard via a slideable USB-C switch underneath the numpad. It also has magnets on each side so that it properly attaches itself to the keyboard. When on a table, it won’t move, however you can tell that it is detachable as it can move slightly if you pick up the keyboard. Mountain states that this is a purposeful design choice to ensure that you don’t end up bending the connector, which makes total sense. You can tell that the numpad wasn’t an afterthought since it looks like the perfect match when attached to your keyboard. It’s also made out of aluminium face plates and will be brushed the same colour as your keyboard.
If you don’t want the numpad attached directly to the keyboard, you can use the short USB-C cable that comes with the keyboard to connect the numpad to it but with some distance. This is a brilliant feature since a lot of gamers will want the numpad to be sitting at a different angle to the rest of the keyboard. This is likely to be the case if you’re a streamer.
Speaking of casting, the numpad’s best feature is that it contains four dedicated OBS buttons that are completely programmable. Mountain recently integrated OBS Studio functions into their Base Camp software so that streamers can take advantage of these quick shortcuts without the need of a dedicated OBS deck. Of course, if you’re a professional streamer, you may still need an OBS deck that has a lot more buttons. There are a lot of default button icons in the Base Camp software for the most common streaming options. What’s brilliant is that each button is actually a small screen, and you can therefore customize them by uploading your own image in case any of the stock images provided aren’t good enough.
The keyboard comes with a magnetic palm rest which does the job well enough. It’s not the most padded or most comfortable palm rest I have used, and some gamers may not even want to use it. However, it has some cushion to it (as opposed to some of those palm rests that are completely hard) and therefore will provide more comfort than resting on a flat surface.
The cable management system is also second to none. Underneath the keyboard is a sophisticated cable routing system that takes into consideration the fact that you might want your cables routing from one side over the other. What makes it more special is that these routing channels sync up with your numpad and even the palm rest in case you want to route cables through them.
All of the switches on both the keyboard and numpad are hot-swappable. Essentially, this lets you easily take off the existing switches and replace them with other ones if you prefer. This is often useful if gamers want to change the look of their keyboards or even the way their keystrokes feel. The entire keyboard can be stripped and replaced with new keys if you prefer. You will not need to have any soldering equipment to swap the keys.
The riser feet are also superbly designed and is a prime example of how Mountain wants to innovate. Instead of a generic flap that lifts the keyboard, Mountain has come up with a genius way to let you modulate the height over various levels. They have included some very powerful magnets that you can stack on top of each other depending on how high you want they keyboard to be angled towards you. I cannot stress how strong these magnets are – you will not accidentally slip them off. They are a much better implementation than the plastic feet we are used to in modern keyboards. Magnetic feet are the future.
Other notable features include a high speed USB port that sits in the back of your keyboard if you want to plug a device into your computer without having to actually plug it into your computer. However, unlike other keyboards that treats this as just a standard passthrough port, this USB port actually acts as a USB 3.0 hub.
Finally, a huge pro for keyboard enthusiasts is that the keyboard cable is fully detachable. There is a community of gamers who love using their own USB cables and many gaming keyboards don’t provide this as an option. The Everest Max however can power with your own USB-C cable, although the one provided by Mountain is very well braided and of a good length.
Software Customization
What makes the Everest Max such a customizable beast is the software that programs it, which is Mountain’s very own Base Camp. This software is used to program any of the company’s peripherals.
For the Everest Max, this is where you can create hot keys, which are essentially shortcuts or macros to change the state of the keyboard. If you want to easily change from a gaming profile to a video editing profile, this can be entirely customized from Base Camp. The software lets you change profiles, change the RGB lighting on the keyboard and even take control of how the media dock works. You can have up to 5 profiles saved onto the keyboard, which will be enough. If you’re a streamer, you will also use Base Camp to fully configure the OBS controls. Finally, Mountain has joined the Razer Chroma Connect Program, which means you will get synchronized RGB lighting across various Mountain products that also work alongside specific games. I absolutely love that Mountain recognized the power of Razer Chroma and went down this route instead of trying to reinvent a wheel that didn’t need reinventing.
As things stand, Base Camp is still relatively nascent, but Mountain are doing incredible things and have already made major improvements especially with the introduction of OBS programmability. I am convinced that over time, Mountain will add even more features to allow us to get the most out of the various modules. Perhaps they might even introduce brand new modules!
Everest Max Performance
As far as customization and looks go, the Everest Max has it all. However, none of it means much if the keyboard doesn’t perform well, and this comes largely down to quality of the key switches. Mountain realizes the importance of high quality mechanical switches and therefore promise that every single Everest Max is given a manual touch before it leaves the factory. Every single stabilizer is manually lubricated to reduce rattling. The space bar is also manually clipped for added stability. Finally, there is dampening foam between the Everest PCB and the actual case to completely reduce noise. I cannot stress how much of a difference this makes.
The end result is that you’ll end up with a mechanical keyboard that performs at the highest level. The RGB lighting isn’t as strong as some other keyboards, but they still look great. The Everest also has a 1000Hz polling rate, which essentially means that each key press is reported 1000 times per second. It doesn’t matter how many keys you press; each key press will also be registered without any ghosting. Considering this is Mountain’s first attempt at a gaming keyboard, that’s pretty phenomenal!
We received the keyboard with the red MX switches, which aren’t as loud or as heavy as some other switches. They are smooth to press and therefore perfect for gaming. Since this is a mechanical gaming keyboard, it will have a clicky sound as you press each key (perhaps enough to wake up your other half if they’re asleep!), however these aren’t any louder than other keyboards with the same switches. The stabilizers definitely help dampen the sound.
As far as my experience goes when gaming, the Everest Max performs just as well as some of the major players in the market, and that’s perhaps the best compliment it can get considering it’s just Mountain’s first attempt. Where Mountain can make some improvements is to upgrade their keycaps from doubleshot ABS to PBT, which will maximize the lifespan of the keys. It’s hardly an issue since you can swap the keys out. However, the fact that it performs as well as some of the heavyweights of the industry suggests that your decision to purchase the Everest Max will entirely be down to the other features that the keyboard provides, as well as its aesthetics. Whilst the aesthetics are purely subjective, there is no doubt that the Everest Max provides a huge amount of features above and beyond what others in this space provide. You pay a premium for that, but that’s the trade off you make.
Where to Buy
You can purchase the Mountain Everest Max directly from their official website.
Final Thoughts
Sometimes, gadgets are announced that look and sound “cool”, but are often too good to be true. This is especially the case when they first get launched on a crowd-funding website. There is a stigma attached to products that get funded on Kickstarter or Indiegogo simply because they rarely deliver on their promises. However, the Mountain Everest Max is an exception to this. Not only did Mountain deliver on an brilliant keyboard, but the company fulfilled its promise by giving the world the most customizable keyboard it has ever seen to date. The final result is a mechanical gaming keyboard that punches hard in its pricing weight-class and impresses with some excellent software that is constantly evolving, to compliment a great device with a some very impressive modules.