I got a package today! I thought it perhaps was that keyboard I ordered some time ago, and my confusion grew when I picked it up, because the box is, like, a couple kilos. And I only ordered a li’l keyboard!
Let’s unbox!
Yeah OK…
Still mysterious.
And the box contains… something that makes a noise? Is that a good sign?
Now then…
Yes! It’s a keyboard!
How cute.
And there’s… stuff…
And more stuff.
Oh, the other box had lots of alternate keycaps. So I guess the stuff is for prying off the caps if I want to.
So much stuff.
And, yes, the keyboard is small, but indeed — it’s heavy. It’s got a metal insert (that can be removed) to give it more heft.
It’s a portable size, so I guess the extra weight is to give you a better work-out while you’re out climbing mountains with the keyboard in your bag.
And what’s the range? This is a bluetooth keyboard, and I’ve had some with just horrible range. It’s important that this has a good range, because in my use case here, it’s going to be placed about three meters from the Raspberry Pi that it’s going to connect to.
Looking promising in my very scientific test, as you can see above, unless you get too sea sick.
So what is my use case, you ask? I mean… you do, doncha?
BE THAT WAY, THEN
As you probably won’t remember, I was looking for a way to hyper-optimise one thing: Grocery shopping. As you can read in that blog post, I ended up using the li’l laptop you see above, but that was only because this keyboard took its time to arrive. (Not through any fault of the manufacturer — it’s just that I bought the keyboard at a pre-sale; it wasn’t in production yet.)
I couldn’t find any other wireless keyboard with these specs — just the normal alphabet keys, space and return and no much else. And — it had to be a “real” keyboard, not something you’d thumb or anything.
And.. I think there’s too much going on visually — all the “alt” meanings (which I have no use for) are marked on the keyboard, so perhaps I can buy new key caps that are plainer?
But otherwise I think it looks pretty good. The range is good, and it allegedly has enough battery to last three months on a single charge. But on the other hand, I do have access to electricity where I’ve put it, so perhaps I can just leave it plugged in.
I tried it a couple times. There’s no screen here, of course, but you don’t need to see what you type to type bananas RET, which is what I type the most. It feels very nice. Because of the weight, it feels very solid, and doesn’t scootch around, and the key switches are clicky in a very satisfactory way.
So… I recommend it, I guess? Here’s the link again if you’re looking for something like this.
But I’m not absolutely sure whether I want to switch out my current solution. I kinda like the look of the li’l laptop? It’s so… technical.
(Oh, and I’ve now been using this system for a month, and I have to say that it works even better than I’d hoped. Whenever I’m cooking and noticing that I’m missing something or is low on something, I can just tap away at that keyboard without really thinking about it and then get on with what I was doing. That is, it doesn’t involve a distracting context shift. The poor delivery guy, though — this has led to bigger deliveries (at least the first few times) because I’m forgetting less of what I was going to buy. So the previous delivery was probably the biggest one I’ve ever had done. And it’s on the fourth floor without an elevator, so poor guy…)
Anyway! Nice keyboard.