Product Description

Wireless mini keyboard with built-in touchpad and Modern design innoble matt black SoftSkin coating

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #29464 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Keysonic
• Model: KB-ACK-540BT
• Released on: 2008-07-13
• Dimensions: 1.76 pounds

Customer Reviews

Keysonic 540BT
The keyboard arrived this morning, installation was quick and simple. It paired with my PS3 without any issues. I then paired it with my PC (dongle/adapter not supplied) this was also straightforward under Vista. It's worth bearing in mind that if you want to use the keyboard in BIOS or DOS you will need to pick up a dual mode HCI/HID dongle.

The Keyboard is compact (200mm x 195mm) and well constructed with a pleasing matt finish. The layout is intuitive, the keying action is responsive and keys are standard size. Bright blue LEDs in the top right corner light up to indicate pairing mode, reconnecting mode and battery 'low' level. The Keyboard goes into sleep mode after 15mins of inactivity, reconnection is instigated by pressing any key which just takes couple of seconds. The touch pad works well but the mouse function buttons are a bit 'clicky' for my liking but overall it's comfortable to use.

After using the keyboard for a day I can't comment on battery life so far. Batteries were supplied but are not re-chargeable. Needless to say there is no recharging dock so batteries need to be swapped when they run down.

The bottom line is that despite a minor gripe or two this is a fine Bluetooth keyboard which given the price point swayed me from saving up my pennies for a DiNovo - so far I'm happy I've bagged an absolute bargain!

Don't bother if you're a Mac OSX user
I'm only commenting on this from the point of view of a Mac user, Windows users should form your opinions elsewhere.

I bought this in the mistaken belief that it would be a good controller for a Mac based media centre that I'm trying to setup (bluetooth, trackpad, mini keyboard, cheap, sounded promising). Unfortunately it's not, I'm not sure where the balance of blame lies between Apple and Keysonic, but anyway the main issues when using it with OSX are as follows:

- the keyboard drops the bluetooth connection after a very short time in order to conserve battery life, fine; the problem is that it then take about two minutes and numerous key presses to persuade it and OSX to play ball again.

- when it and OSX do decide to get it together again, OSX frequently, erroneously thinks it no longer recognises the keyboard and pings up a dialogue window saying as much.

- the keymaps all over the place and some characters it appears are impossible to to type e.g. "|"

- the worlds most annoying trackpad miss feature, click to drag (or more correctly named "the randomly click when the user least wants or expects it" feature), is activated by default, and there's no way to disable it because OSX thinks the trackpad is a mouse and consequently doesn't show the relevant option in preferences (I could cope with the first three problems, it's this last one that's almost had me throw the damn thing through the window on more than one occasion).

Anyway, I can't decide what to do with mine, part of me wants to take it outside and stamp on it, part of me says flog it to someone else ...

Ok, but still not there
If someone wants to produce a small, neat, bluetooth keyboard with integrated trackpad suitable for use with a media centre Mac (or, heaven forbid, a PC, though why you would want to is anyone's guess), then the niche still exists - because this product is too big, the trackpad has a slight but appreciable lag and the connection drops every few minutes. Also the soft-touch finish, of which the manufacturers are so proud, shows fingerprints like you would not believe. Conclusion: a good idea, not very well executed. If only the logitech diNovo wasn't so expensive and so tasteless.