Brando Bluetooth Smart Keyboard

Gadgeteer Hands On Review by Julie

December 28, 2004

Product Requirements:
Device:
Bluetooth enabled PDAs and Smart phones

ThinkOutside's Stowaway Universal Bluetooth Keyboard now has a competitor. Brando is selling a similarly sized product named the Smart Keyboard. Priced $50 cheaper, what does this keyboard have that might make you purchase it over ThinkOutside's offering? Keep reading...

Package Contents

Smart Keyboard
2 AAA Batteries
Zippered vinyl carrying case
CD with drivers
Quick Install Guide

Hardware Specifications

QWERTY keyboard layout with dedicated number keys. (5 rows of keys)
10 dedicated programmable hot keys.
Lock open for stability.
Dimensions folded : 140 x 95 x 19 mm
Dimensions Open : 280 x 95 x 9.5 mm
Weight : 205gm

Top to bottom: ThinkOutside's Universal Keyboard, Brando's Smart Keyboard

Made of silver plastic with black accents, this keyboard has a sturdy robust feel to it. Unlike the Universal Keyboard, it's not that hard to immediately figure out how to open. A black sliding latch located on the side of the keyboard easily unlocks the keyboard so that it can open like a book. A slider at the bottom of the frame pushes the left half of the keyboard over to meet the right half. Another slider at the top locks the keyboard into an open flat position. In this position, the Smart Keyboard is not quite as rigid as the Universal Keyboard. That said, it will work perfectly fine on a flat surface.

Left and right sections apart

Left and right sections together

The two included AAA alkaline batteries can be installed by removing a cover located at the top of the frame. A small power switch at the bottom left allows you to manually turn the keyboard on or off. An LED under the power switch blinks Green while the keyboard is in use.

Before you can use the keyboard with your Pocket PC, Palm or Smart Phone, you will have to install the included driver.

After installation, it's just a matter of activating the keyboard in the driver, turning on the keyboard via the power switch and enabling Bluetooth on your PDA / Phone. With my HX4700, the keyboard was recognized pretty much immediately, and was ready for use.

For those of you that like to assign applications to function key combinations, you can set up 10 different apps to launch when holding the Fn and a number key.

The first time I went to use the Smart Keyboard with my Pocket PC, I was annoyed by the lack of a stand for the PDA. It's a good thing I went to Brando's site and happened to click on another review of this product. In the review the author talked about the slide out stand. I was like "what slide out stand?!"... But upon a little closer investigation, I found it. There's a little lip on the top right side that pulls out and swivels around to create a stand. Pretty nifty design actually. The stand works well in both landscape and portrait orientations.

The Smart Keyboard has one thing going for it that the ThinkOutside Universal Keyboard does not. The addition of a dedicated numeric and punctuation key top row. That gives this keyboard 5 rows instead of just 4 like the Universal Keyboard. There are also a total of 63 keys.

The keys are definitely smaller than the Universal's. Touch typists may find them too small. I had a bit of trouble with them myself. Nothing I couldn't get used to though if I wanted to work at it. Hunt and peck typist should have no problems at all with this keyboard.

So here's the thing... There are only three real advantages that the Smart Keyboard has over the Universal keyboard. One is the addition of the 5th row of keys. For someone that plans to type a lot of numbers, or a lot of !@#$%^&*()_+'s, that might be a deciding factor on the purchase of this input device. Another reason is that this keyboard is compatible with with Bluetooth enabled Palm OS PDAs. The Universal Keyboard currently is not. And the last reason is price.

For me personally, the full-size keys of the Universal Keyboard keep me from making the switch to the Smart Keyboard. If the smaller keys don't bother you, or you have a Palm OS PDA then the Brando Smart Keyboard is a good product that can easily give your Pocket PC, Palm PDA or Smart Phone the data input power of a larger bulkier computer.
 

Price: $99.00

Pros:
Wireless
Small, compact size
Dedicated numeric / punctuation key row

Cons:
Smaller keys
Slightly unstable to use on lap