Friday, March 27, 2015

Best all in one wireless media keyboard


- It's the perfect balance of features, size, weight, layout, and price.
- I picked it up for under $19 when it was on sale
- It's light and comfortable to use on your lap
- It has a very nice standard keyboard layout with all the keys where you would expect them like the right shift key
- The multi touchpad is pretty responsive and supports more gestures than logitech.  It's a good size without making the keyboard too large or cumbersome.
- It has a dedicated left mouse click button in the upper left corner which is handy for drag and drop operations.
- It has customization media keys and a bunch of function keys including sleep.
- Has dedicated on/off switch
- Runs on 2XAAA (I wish it were AA but oh well), and has a storage compartment for the tiny usb receiver.
- There is one annoyance that might be a deal breaker for some.  The two finger scroll gestures is reversed (more tablet like).  On windows 8.1 you can flip the scroll direction.  But if you are using with some other os like a chromebox then you are kind of stuck with it that way.

Other keyboards I've tried.
- Logitech K400:  One of the earlier keyboards I tried.  It was very cheap at the time but you kind of get what you pay for.  It's small but almost too small as the touchpad and keys are a bit cramped.  It's very light though.  The absolute worst thing for me is the location of the right shift key.  You have the arrow cluster where it should be so you end up hitting arrow up a lot when instead you want to hit shift.  This makes the keyboard one of the worst choices for touch typists.  It really sucks, and I own two.  I thought I could train myself but trust me it's not worth the trouble.  Skip it!

- Logitech TK820: I have two of these.  It's a large and heavy keyboard.  The touchpad is enormous.  It's pricey at $50-60.  It has no extra dedicated mouse button.  It runs on 4XAA batteries but has no receiver storage.  It's not a bad keyboard but it's not as nice as the Microsoft one and costs 2-3X as much.  There is also the more expensive K830 backlit one which is a crazy $92.  No thanks.

So yeah get the Microsoft one.  After all these years my search is finally over, and I've found the perfect all in one that works great with an htpc or chromebox and is super affordable to boot.