The Best of Both Phone, and Tablet
Entered CNET Catalog: 11/28/2007
SKU: ACC-BT-KBOTB
Manufacturer: VidaBox LLC.
Manufacturer description
This premium wireless keyboard comes standard all of VidaBox media center systems. With a 30-foot range and small size, it's easy to check your email, type up a paper, work on a spreadsheet, or simply surf the web from the comfort of your couch. With its optical trackball, everything from navigating the web to playing games becomes a breeze! Smooth and maintenance-free, the optical trackball provides 800dpi of resolution for precise, accurate control! Unlike other conventional infrared (IR) and radio frequency (RF) wireless keyboards, special high frequency wireless technology allows a pronounced increase in performance - with a minimum in dropped signals and "dead zones." No more frustrations with non-working keyboards! This wireless keyboard with trackball has an auto-shutoff feature to help conserve battery life, allowing a standby time of up 2 months without changing the battery. It comes with an anti-dust cloth sack for storage. This product comes with its own high frequency USB receiver, and comes packaged with everything you need to get started!Product summary
The good: Easy setup; trackball more intuitive than a touch pad or motion detection.
The bad: Trackball not quite as precise as a mouse; play control hot keys are easier to use when they're on the side edges, rather than along the top; no lid
The bottom line: We'd make a few minor design tweaks to the Vidabox Premium Wireless Keyboard with Optical Trackball, but for basic couch-based typing and cursor navigation, this is the best solution we've seen. Home-theater PC owners should give this a look.
Editors' review
- Editors' Choice: No
- Reviewed on: 11/29/2007
We're usually wary of trackballs. We know there are people out there who like them, but for general-purpose cursor-moving, we'll take a mouse every time. But thanks to Vidabox's Premium Wireless Keyboard with Optical Trackball ($62.99 at the time of this review), we may have to give trackballs more credit. As it happens, it's one of the best ways we've found for driving your computer from your couch. The idea of putting a keyboard in the living room is still less than appealing, but it's a necessary evil for home-theater PC owners. And if we had to choose between a living room mouse, a keyboard with a touch pad, or the Vidabox board, the latter is the easiest, most intuitive input device we've used.
Because of its small size, the Vidabox keyboard is best kept in the living room. Its RF wireless signal is strong enough to use from a distance of 30 feet or so. The included AA batteries are nonrechargeable, and Vidabox suggests a battery life of two months. You'll probably want to keep a spare set around. The keyboard keys are the same size as those of a standard desktop keyboard, but because it's only about 12.75 inches wide, the keys are placed very close together, making prolonged typing cramped. We wouldn't use it for gaming or word processing, but for couch-based uses (typing passwords, Web addresses, IM's, or brief e-mails) it's fine.
With no setup software, installation is easy. You can simply plug the receiver into your PC, press the connect button on each device, and you're set. The lack of software means you're limited to the keyboard customization options that come with Windows. We probably wouldn't want to alter the hot-keys mapping anyway, as the Play and Volume control, Web, and E-mail buttons are all clearly marked and useful. The only thing we wish is that the hot keys ran down the sides of the keyboard, rather than the top edge. We find that when we're sitting back, it's more intuitive to hold the keyboard with two hands, and if the hot keys were on the side edges, we could push them with our thumbs.
But if the hot-key placement sticks to the boring tried and true, the trackball is a revelation in couch-based input. (Full disclosure: Vidabox's keyboard is not the only living room keyboard with a trackball, but it's the first we've tried for ourselves.) We've tried and reviled remote controls, but neither was immediately comfortable. But the small trackball on the upper right corner, paired with the two mouse buttons on the upper left side, make for the most intuitive couch mouse we've used.
Between the freewheeling nature of the trackball and the 800dpi optical sensor that tracks its movement, we were able to quickly and accurately move our cursor on a large, high-resolution 40-inch LCD, a 24-inch LCD, and a 19-inch CRT, so the movement speed scales very well regardless of screen size. Finer movements, such as moving the cursor to a small checkbox, take a bit more finesse and show where a mouse is still superior (we wouldn't use the trackball to play a first-person shooter, for example) but it's not in any way cumbersome or irritating.
The only thing we might add to the Vidabox board is a lid of some kind. Gyration has one on its wireless couch keyboard, and while that one is nearly impossible to remove, it provides some sensible protection against kids, pets, and the occasional stray piece of popcorn.
User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 3 4out of 4 user reviews
Very poor reliability. Should last years, not months.
Pros: Works well enough - I use it to control my HTPC. The trackball might be better, but I got used to it.
Cons: I've had two of them fail, each after 13 months of use. With a warranty of only one year, I'm faced with buying a new $75 keyboard every year. Very poor reliability. And it's a pattern because I've had 2 of them fail in exactly the same way.
out of 4 user reviews
DON'T BUY IT
Pros: None that I can think of
Cons: Too many to list here
2. If you type too fast, can easily cause double key inputs, have to type slow and careful
3. Goes in to sleep mode in about 2-3 minutes(too quick), to wake it up, have to remember to hit a key once before typing away, very annoying. I always start typing, and the first letter never registers since it goes to sleep too soon.
3. No visual (lights or on screen) indications of Cap Lock or Num Lock
STAY AWAY, there are better keyboards out there
Updated on Jul 4, 2009I want it to be fair, forgot to mention that the only pros is that the range is decent and good battery life
out of 4 user reviews
Annoying but still the best in the market.
Pros: Having trackball with the keyboard is very intuitive, and works great.
The keyboard is meant to be grabbed with 2 hands like a steering wheel, and is perfect for Home Theater usage.
Cons: The keys don't transfer to the computer accurately. You think you entered but it's not entered in the computer. ANNOYING. You should be able to type the keys in thorugh the keyboard, first and foremost before all else, right?
But the ergonomics, and the trackball really make this somewhat of a winner, because there isn't anything like this that I could find right now in the market.
out of 4 user reviews
Yet another one with NO BACKLIGHTING
Pros: OPTICAL trackball
Cons: NO BACKLIGHTING
