I’ve used several wireless keyboards with my home entertainment center, both Bluetooth and RF 2.4 GHz types. In my experience the 2.4 GHz ones have a much better range and connectivity. That has definitely been the case with this Azio Keyboard.

I’ve managed to pair up this keyboard with four different computers or computing devices: Mac Mini, Dell Windows 7 desktop, Android PC-on-a-stick, and LG Google TV. The keyboard paired up well with all of them. I was particularly pleasantly surprised with how well the keyboard worked with my little Android PC-on-a-stick. I’ve tried using several different Bluetooth keyboards with that little device, and they have all been a disaster. All I had to do with this Azio keyboard is connect the little RF dongle to the Android PC and I was set. The only issue that I had with that device is that the Enter key did not work properly under certain settings. The same holds for my LG Google TV – there was no installation process required, and the keyboard worked as soon as it was plugged in. The situation with Mac Mini was a bit different. My Mac was not able to recognize the keyboard immediately and assigned to it a “generic” North American profile. Unfortunately this keyboard doesn’t have a “command” key or its equivalent, which makes it less than suitable for use with Macs. The pairing with the Windows PC was easy and without any hitches.

This keyboard has several really attractive features that I really like. Number one is probably the thumb sized trackpad. I think this is the most elegant solution for compact integrated keyboard that I’ve seen. It’s small and generally very responsive, but the experience varied somewhat across devices that I’ve tested. I definitely prefer this experience to that of a dedicated trackpad areas on the side of the keyboard, and a trackball would probably be too large for a keyboard of this size.

The keyboard is supposed to be made for thumb typing, but it’s actually too large for that. If it could be shrunk by about 20%, or if it had a split-key layout then it would be good for that kind of typing. Furthermore, the lack of a right shift key and an extremely small space bar make typing anything more than a single sentence a bit of a chore. All this is fine if you are just going to use this keyboard with your entertainment center to surf the web and do an occasional text search, but for anything more than that you might be frustrated.

Despite all of its shortcomings I think this is still the best entertainment center keyboard that I’ve come across. If some of these shortcomings are addressed in the next version of the keyboard Azio could have an undisputed king of the living room remote control devices on its hands.