Everything USB Keyboards

IOGEAR Mini Wireless HTPC Keyboard Review

Reviewed by: Anthony Garland
Reviewed on: March 20th 2011 The IOGEAR Mini Wireless HTPC Keyboard (GKM571R) is a wireless keyboard designed with Home Theatre PC's in mind. It is meant to be used in an extremely chaotic environment (relative to a desktop) and do so while being as unobtrusive and feature-rich. This certainly is a tall order, but the keyboard with its ultra small sized coupled with a protective flip lid, backlit keys, scroll wheel and trackball may be able to pull it off. Will all these work together? Read on for the full review.

Keyboard Design & Features
With its small size and square edges, the Mini Wireless Multimedia Keyboard can be mistaken for a paper back novel. At this size, it will easily work in just about any living room. The downside to having dimensions of only 6.25" x 4" x 1" is that there is not enough room to fit every function a HTPC user usually needs. Not that IOGEAR failed, but in order to get a keyboard with 17 multimedia hotkeys and a trackball with scroll wheel, they had to make the keys very small.

Luckily, while the keys are tiny, they are actually spaced far enough apart that you will rarely hit the wrong one. You won't be wanting to type long messages or emails on this nor should you. This keyboard should primarily be doing searches on IMDB or entering and executing commands for remote control activities. The keys themselves feel much a like a laptop's keyboard. While they are fairly tactile and responsive, you will not mistake it for a mechanical switch-based keyboard.

The keys, including the mouse button keys, are smartly distributed and quite comfortable. In most HTPC devices, these two crucial keys are located next to the pointing device. Instead of going with the typical layout, IOGEAR instead opted to placed these in the upper left hand corner. This means while holding the Mini Wireless HTPC Keyboard in both hands, you manipulate the trackball with your right thumb and click with your left index finger. This really very natural feeling, but only if you are right handed person. Lefties may find this setup uncomfortable. There's also a scroll wheel on the left side of the keyboard, but I found it to be not as well laid out as rest of the hardware features.

Power is controlled by simply closing the integrated lid. Not longer does the lid makes it easy to turn it on or off, but also provides for the protection for the keyboard when not in use. In addition, you won't have a problem with sitting on the keys and sending improper commands to the HTPC provided you always remember to close the lid. Having the lid control power also inherently saves battery life.

The IOGEAR keyboard also incorporates quite a few dedicated function keys. Along the top row are 7 keys that have two multimedia commands a piece. To fast forward, rewind, volume up, volume down, mute, stop or pause you simply hit the proper key. To execute operations more suited to opening up programs, you hold the "Fn" or function key and then press the proper button. The +/= key is the only key in the top row which has only one hot key built in (which opens up your default web browser). IOGEAR also includes 3 DPI sensitivity options under the QWE buttons to choose the trackball's sensitivity level, from 400 to 1200 DPI.

The battery compartment thoughtfully has space for its tiny USB reciever, which will make it easier to keep track of while traveling. The entire bottom side of the remote, including the battery compartment, is covered with a protective rubber coating.

The last feature IOGEAR managed to cram into their Mini Wireless HTPC Keyboard was backlighting. Sadly, the only options you have for the blue glow is auto-on and off. The auto-on feature is controlled by a light sensor just above the top center of the keys. This allows the device to be seen in all lighting conditions without wasting battery life. When the batteries are low, there is even a small LED which glows to remind you its time to change them.

It is amazing that such a small device can actually have more features than most full sized keyboards. The only obviously missing feature was a sleep/hibernate/off button for the HTPC itself.

More Keyboards...