Kaiser Baas Bluetooth 2.0 Keyboard BT-130 - PC/MAC, Apple, Anroid, Windows, PS3 & Xbox

Firstly, I've been using a Logitec Dinovo Mini for my HTPC for over 3 years. That's one fantastic keyboard, which sets a very, very high standard to beat! After all that use though, the letter P and the Shift key have become a little non-responsive, so I've been looking for alternatives. I would buy another Dinovo, but it's expensive and it's end-of-life.

I accidentally came across this in the store (Harvey Norman, Australia) and bought it on impulse for $79 AU.

First the good. It's smaller than it seems. About the size of a mobile phone. The keys are well packed, it makes good use of all space it has on it. It even has F1 to F8, which the Dinovo doesn't have. It has a little track-ball for a mouse, and two easy-to-click buttons for left/right clicks. It has an integrated laser pointer, which works, and I guess would be good for presentations. Also, it's bluetooth, and will sink with any bluetooth device supporting a keyboard (it synched easily to my HTC Sensation phone, although I use it synched to my Windows HTPC). The keys are fairly good, and not very mushy.

Now the bad. The keys are very cramped. The Enter key is the same size as normal keys. Also the configuration is a straight-grid, which is not the same as normal keyboards (look at your keyboard, see how the keys in each row don't line up with the rows below? now look at a screenshot of this thing, the keys line up, this makes it a bit harder to get used to). The trackball feels cheap, and moving the mouse pointer on a 1920x1200 screen takes a lot of scrolling (even on max mouse sensitivity settings in Windows). Also, because of where the mouse clicker buttons are, selecting text or dragging something around is cumbersome (you need to exercise some finger gymnastics with two hands). The keyboard could really, really use a second left-mouse click button on the top-left of the keyboard just like the Dinovo, this would make many operations much easier to perform. Also, the Dinovo is a Bluetooth keyboard, but it comes with a special Dongle that acts as a regular USB keyboard. This however is a pure Bluetooth keyboard. Meaning it won't work in the bios, or in the safe-boot screen, or anywhere else where the full Bluetooth stack is not loaded. This means for a HTPC, you'll need a backup keyboard at hand.

Overall, this keyboard does a fine job. If I never had a Dinovo mini, I'd probably love it a lot more. But the Dinovo does exist, and is well worth the extra money. Maybe a version two of this keyboard can bring it up to par. But as it is now, it's not worth $69. Maybe $40 at most.