f8ster's Full Review: Ideazon (PW1USE1-B3) Keyboard
Quick Summary of Key Points:
- Gets 'confused' right in the middle of games; keys get mixed up or stop working
- Can't swap keysets in the middle of a game
- Key layout for gaming is good
- Chatting in games is very difficult with Gaming Keyset due to unorthodox key layout
Detailed Review:
I am an avid gamer (Half-Life 2, Doom 3, etc.), so I was excited when I saw this keyboard. Although the gaming controls worked well enough, I found the keyboard very unreliable. It would work fine for some period of time, then many of the keys would begin misbehaving (i.e. you'd get a 'w' when pressing 'p', etc.) More often, most keys would stop working altogether. Sometimes the problem was fixed by exiting the game, going back to the special ZBoard driver and selecting 'Refresh'; other times required a reboot.
What You Get
The keyboard itself is an interesting design: it comes with a base unit, and two 'keysets' -- full-size keyboard layouts that drop into the base and snap in. You get a 'standard' keyset (the basic 101-key US keyboard layout), and a 'Gaming' keyset. The Gaming keyset has no 10-key number pad, and all of the normal letter keys are shifted over to the right two-thirds of the keyboard. The left third is replaced with a set of gaming controls (up, down, left, right, etc.), and some common buttons for a lot of games (crouch, jump, etc.)
The spare keyset folds up into thirds when not in use, a nice feature for storage. The construction is far from bulletproof, but it seemed a bit more solid than I would have expected. There's a thin plastic wrist rest that may be snapped on as well.
Included Software
The ZBoard comes with a special driver, which is required for proper operation using the Gaming Keyset. (The standard keyset works fine with the built-in Windows keyboard driver.) The software runs in the system tray, and provides a few useful features. First, there are a number of quick-access buttons at the very top of the keyboard base that can be configured to launch programs, URLs, etc. And, the keysets may be configured for a long list of popular games. As new games are added, the configuration list may be updated directly from the ZBoard web site from within the software.
Swapping Keysets
When you want to swap keysets from, say, the standard one to the gaming one, I found it necessary to always tell the driver to 'refresh' -- the change was never properly detected automatically. This also makes it impossible to swap keysets in the middle of a game.
Typing with the Gaming Keyset
Many online/multiplayer games allow you to chat with others while playing. This is one area where the Gaming Keyset really falls short. All of the normal typing keys have been shifted over, and there's an unnatural split in the middle of them because of the fold. This makes chatting extremely slow, frustrating, and error-prone. In addition, a lot of the keys use different styles (numbers are big and round, some special characters are small, so it makes you have to think a lot harder when trying to type something. (Try to find the underscore, for example.)
Additional Hardware Features
In addition to the quick access buttons I mentioned earlier, the keyboard has two low-power USB ports, suitable for a mouse or joystick. Additional keysets may be purchased for about $20 for other games where the standard Gaming Keyset is not appropriate.
Summary
Primarily because of the reliability issues, I cannot give this product a good rating. Even if it were reliable, I would still be hesitant to recommend it due to the typing difficulty with the Gaming Keyset, since it's something I do frequently when I play. The gaming controls are OK, and the swappability of the keysets is a nifty idea -- it just doesn't work out so well in practice.
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