Review: ThinkOutside Bluetooth Keyboard
The ThinkOutside Bluetooth keyboard is designed to be a true keyboard for PDAs, mobile phones, and Tablet PCs that don’t have their own keyboards. Does it work? Is it as good as a regular keyboard? We put one to a long term test. Read on for the report.
Quality
Firstly, I have to say that the keyboard hardware is pretty amazing. It’s quite well designed and surprisingly solid for such a thin device. There is one small issue with the way it opens that makes it easy to accidentally over-leverage and potentially break, so keep it away from kids and people who haven’t read the directions. It’s not hard to open, but you do need to know how to do it to make sure you don’t damage the device.
The driver software is well designed and works reliably. Connecting the keyboard is not difficult, but you’ll want to keep the instructions around to remember the special key sequences to activate Bluetooth pairing. The Bluetooth radio is more than adequately powered for the distance you’ll be using the device at, and we had no issues with connectivity even with many other Bluetooth and wifi devices nearby.
Usability
Typing quality is equal to a good laptop, with the exception that the number keys (and associated punctuation) share the top QWERTY row and you have to use a special shift key to activate them. For most types of writing, this isn’t much of an issue, but if you’re trying to program using this keyboard and you’re a touch typist, it will probably drive you nuts.
Battery life is quite good—you can expect a set of batteries to last a few weeks under normal usage. If you’re using the device all day long, battery life will be a few days.
Summary and recommendations
If you are a touch typist and you want to be able to use a keyboard with your Bluetooth PDA or cellphone, this is the keyboard for you. It’s vastly superior to similar IR based keyboards, which typically require tricks with mirror to get the IR beams lined up properly. I’ve even replaced a similarly sized wired USB keyboard that came with a Sony Tablet PC because I like the feel better.