Microsoft’s Arc keyboard reviewed

I’m a big fan of the Arc mouse and have both black and white models. Last week I added the new Arc keyboard to that collection. It’s a beautifully designed piece of kit even down to the packaging. Surprisingly, the keyboard comes in a small cloth cover and is smaller than I expected. It’s not a keyboard I’m going to use as my main daily unit (another review coming soon on the wireless comfort keyboard 5000) but as a portable unit for around the house, and particularly for use with my Media Centre it’s perfect.

It’s simple, elegant and unfussy. It weighs less than a pound and have a curved design that makes is comfortable on your lap. The nano transceiver is *tiny* and barely sticks out of the side of a laptop’s USB port. It’s at least half the size of the receiver with the Arc mouse and magnetically clips to a recess in the back of the keyboard. The keys have a chiclet style to them with good travel and it includes a 4 way navigation key in the bottom right. Function keys, Page up and Down and volume keys sits across the top. On the downside, there are no light indicators for caps lock and as Engadget says, the glossy finish does pick up finger prints easily. They’re two small gripes though in what is a very nice piece of design and a very usable keyboard at home.

It sells for about £40 here in the UK – via Amazon.

Comments

• Anonymous
  March 03, 2010
  My two issues with keyboards these days: the stickers for characters that are stuck and not being printed on the keys. Second being, keyboards not being backlit, it should be an industry standard for "not office use" keyboards. Though the Arc looks amazingly slick to overlook these and buy one.

• Anonymous
  March 03, 2010
  The comment has been removed