Logitech K400 Wireless Touch Keyboard

I bought this to use with a small 'under telly' PC that's mainly used for a bit of web surfing and watching downloaded iPlayer content. The PC runs Ubuntu GNU/Linux and I already had a wireless keyboard/mouse combo which worked usually, but suffered from reliability issues - the mouse had a habit of going crazy unless kept close to the receiver (like 1m away). Plus it was heavy and used loads of batteries.

So I was after either a trackball or trackpad keyboard. I happened to see this one first and the price was reasonable so I bought it.

Initial impressions were excellent - I plugged the tiny usb dongle into the PC and rebooted. First off, this keyboard works with the BIOS so you can alter settings without plugging in a different one.

Secondly... it just worked with Ubuntu. Straight away, with no fuss, from a distance farther away than it's possible to read text on the TV screen. No faffing with drivers or anything else. Phew :)

The keyboard layout is a little quirky, but no worse than many laptops. As this is smaller and [much] lighter than a normal keyboard, the large trackpad takes up the space where the number keys would usually be. Also the enter key is rather small and some of the auxiliary keys are scrunched up or moved around a bit. Page/up down and similar are accessed via a function key but this is all clearly marked on the keyboard and easy to get used to. The keys require a fairly firm press to register - if you're a light typer you might find the od drped chrcter.

The large trackpad is very responsive and works accurately. I have no problem clicking on menus and buttons and so on. The only minor issue I have is that it can be hard to resize windows sometimes in Unity - but this is mostly down to Canonical's current 'my way or the highway' approach to its users at the moment :-| (the grab area for the window edges is very tiny).

Oh yes, my one reservation was the loss of the 'scroll wheel' functionality from the mouse. But I discovered that you can scroll using two parallel fingers as the trackpad supports 'multi-touch'.

I would prefer the mouse buttons to be a little further away from the trackpad too but again it's just a case of getting used to the layout as I'm not normally a trackpad user.

The other hardwired buttons are a second 'left click' mouse button on the left hand side which is very useful. and mute/volume controls which work in Linux. Also there's a 'home' button which opens your homepage if you're in a web browser, or your home folder if you're not. The usual plethora of 'media' buttons is missing but as I never used them that's fine by me. Oh, there's a tiny on/off switch too.

The keyboard is amazingly light and can be held in one hand to type with the other if required. There are no fold-out legs but the battery compartment provides a slight angle to the keys when the unit is on a flat surface.

Apparently the batteries should last for around a year.

All in all I'm very pleased with this purchase and would recommend it to anyone looking for a small/light ingegrated keyboard and mouse replacement. Oh, there's space to carry the dongle around in the battery compartment too if you're taking it with you to use elsewhere. Nice little touch.

Wireless transmitter provides much better range than bluetooth mac keyboard/magic mouse, so you can use it more than a couple inches away from your computer. No drivers for osx, but command keys can be converted and volume controls work. trackpad is not multitouch but great for general use. An excellent second keyboard for the sofa.

Firstly, here's what's missing from this Amazon page: the size of the keyboard, from Amazon.com:
Product Dimensions: 5.9 x 1.2 x 15.8 inches

Good points:

- Stylish design (has a white plastic base)
- Compact and very small size

Bad points:

- Touchpad lacks scrolling features (that is, you cannot "drag" or swipe to scroll)
- You cannot emulate a "middle click" by depressing both buttons at once (so no easy way to open new tabs in browsers!)
- Terrible mouse tracking. The pointer jumps around due to interference either from other parts of your hand being near the trackpad.
- My item did not "left click" properly. It would depress and make a noise, but you had to push VERY hard to get it to click. Unacceptable.

I would not purchase this again, although Logitech do make quality products in general.