Matias Laptop Pro Keyboard

Wireless keyboards are great. Mechanical keyboards are great. Wireless mechanical keyboards are almost nonexistent. Maybe it's because gamers (who often prefer mechanical keyboards) are concerned about wireless lag, or because mechanical key switches are more expensive and bulkier than the membrane switches used in most wireless keyboards, but there are nearly no wireless mechanical keyboards out there. Matias, a Canadian peripherals company, offers one of the few in the Matias Laptop Pro keyboard. It's a Bluetooth keyboard with mechanical switches, which sounds great on paper but suffers from two major flaws. First, it's more expensive than most wireless and mechanical keyboards at $169.95 direct. Second, it has a Mac layout.

Design
The keyboard is a silver-colored, gently curved plastic slab just large enough to hold all keys (including function buttons, arrow keys, and page-up, page-down, and delete keys) in a compact configuration. It's 13.3 inches wide, just thin enough to comfortably fit in a bag large enough for a laptop, and weighs a fairly light 2.1 pounds. The rechargeable battery is completely internal, charged through a full-size USB port on the back with the included male-to-male USB cable. Two USB ports on the sides let you charge your phone or tablet from the keyboard, but that will drain the 1,600 mAh battery much faster than the six months Matias says the keyboard can last. Two clear feet flip up on the bottom of the keyboard to lift the back.

The keys use mechanical keyswitches, but they're not Cherry MX switches, the brand found on most high-profile mechanical keyboards like the Das Keyboard. They're much quieter than the usual Cherry MX Brown and Cherry MX Blue switches often used, and they aren't as satisfyingly "clacky" as Cherry MX Brown or Cherry MX Red switches. We can't be as sure of the lifespand or long-term build quality of the switches, but they offer soft, fairly deep keypress and feel comfortable to type on despite the lack of clacking.

Unfortunately, the keys aren't just mysterious. They're Mac. Instead of Alt and Windows keys on most keyboards, the Matias Laptop Pro has Option and Command keys. More importantly, the Command, Control, and Option keys register differently for PCs, so you'll need to memorize option key placement again if you want to use it with your computer. Matias notes that it's for the Mac, iPad, Apple TV, iPhone, iPod Touch, and Android devices, and doesn't support it for the PC. It's still functional when paired with a PC, but the command keys are mixed up. I had no problem pairing the keyboard with my iPad and Google Nexus 7.

Performance
The keyboard feels comfortable to type on, with a keystroke similar to a quiet Cherry MX Red switch. It's almost disconcertingly quiet, but it picked up my words without dropping anything. I found some major lag and some dropped keystrokes when when I used other Bluetooth devices (a wireless mouse in the same room and a UE Boom speaker streaming music on the same table), but that's a factor with any Bluetooth keyboard when you have several devices clustered together.

The Matias Laptop Pro keyboard is a unique and welcome addition to the world of keyboards, as one of the very few (the only one currently available in retail channels, I've found) wireless mechanical keyboards. Unfortunately, it's too expensive at $170, and its Mac key layout holds it back from being a functional non-Apple laptop supplement keyboard. If you really want a wireless keyboard for your laptop or tablet, the Logitech K810 is a more flexible, functional, and affordable model, and the Logitech TK820 adds a touchpad at the expense of illuminated keys. If you want a keyboard just for gaming or heavy typing, the CM Storm Quick Fire Stealth provides mechanical keyswitches and Das Keyboard-like style in a slightly more compact, though wired, package.

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