Review: the Lenovo ThinkPad trackpoint Keyboard II

[mdlbear]

For some time now I've been eyeing Lenovo's ThinkPad Compact Bluetooth Keyboard with TrackPoint with a mixture of gadget lust and skepticism -- most of the reviews I saw said that the Bluetooth connection had a tendency to be laggy. Combined with the amount of trouble I've been having with Bluetooth on Linux Mint lately, and the lack of a USB connection, and the high price, it's been pretty far down on my list of things to buy.

Anyone who knows my fondness for addiction to Thinkpad keyboards can figure out what was going to happen when Lenovo came out with the ThinkPad TrackPoint Keyboard II, featuring both Bluetooth and a wireless USB dongle, but otherwise looking almost exactly like my wired KU-1255 keyboard and the keyboards on most of my Thinkpad laptops. I discussed that in "The Curmudgeon Contemplates Keyboards", a couple of weeks ago.

It arrived yesterday, much sooner than I'd expected. It's lovely, and just about what I expected. It's hard to go wrong with a Thinkpad keyboard.

Being nearly icon-blind it took me a while to puzzle out the switches, because the quick-start sheet had nothing but a few pictures to explain them. It didn't say anything at all about the "Android/Windows" switch. So I went looking on their tech support website and found nothing but a PDF of the quick-start. Not helpful. (After a day and a half I found a review that explained that it gives F9-F12 Android-specific functions, and indeed I was eventually able to make out the tiny markings above them on the beveled edge of the bezel.)

The website -- and most of the reviews -- also mentioned its support for "6-point entry for the visually impaired", but DDG and Google found nothing except references to this keyboard. Braille, maybe? Whatever. There's nothing about it on the tech-support site.

There are some things I really appreciate as a cat's minion. It's exactly the right size to sit on top of my laptop (Sable is a Thinkpad X230; the keyboards are almost identical) with the lid closed and an external monitor plugged in. If a cat shows signs of wanting to sit on it, I can set it aside (or close the lid), and pick it up later. (I broke the micro-USB connector on one of my wired Thinkpad keyboards, because I often flip it up behind the laptop with the keys away from me -- and the cat.) If a cat does sit on it, the on-off switch is easily reachable on the right-hand side. Much easier than unplugging the cable.

So let's sum up. On the positive side: the wireless USB, Bluetooth, the classic ThinkPad feel and layout, the TrackPoint nub, and two of the three buttons are exactly as I would expect. (The middle button is in the same plane as the two side buttons, and the raised dots are much lower and are no longer blue.) The charging connector is USB-C. I haven't used it long enough to evaluate battery life, but it's been on since yesterday and claims to be at 99%; Lenovo claims two months, so that's believable. It's just the right size to sit on an ultrabook like a Thinkpad X230 with the lid closed.

I'm not sure whether to count the low-contrast markings on the function keys as positive or negative. I've pretty-much abandoned my old emacs key-bindings for them, and some of the functions indicated by the icons are actually useful. I'll get out my label-maker, or label them with white-out.

On the negative side: the USB cable is just for charging. For goodness' sake, how much circuitry would it have taken for it to make that a third connection mode? The documentation is sketchy -- the QuickStart page is nothing but icons and arrows, and for an icon-impaired curmudgeon that's a bit of a problem. Nowhere in the documentation does it explain what the Android/Windows switch is for. There's nothing on Lenovo's tech support website, either. There's no backlight, and the function keys are labeled with low-contrast tiny letters. The dongle is, of course, incompatible with Logitech's, so it uses another USB port. (This is a minor quibble, because I had the slot I unplugged the old keyboard from.)

Some people would make the position of the Fn key, to the left of Ctrl, as a problem. They might also complain about the Page Up and Page Down keys' flanking the Up-Arrow in the inverted T arrangement. Since I've be using Thinkpads since sometime in the last Millennium, and the new page-up/page-down positions for 95% of the last decade, I don't have a problem with either of those -- they're exactly what I want. Some people would miss the trackpad and palm rest; I've been using a wired but otherwise identical keyboard for years, and don't miss them. Your mileage may vary.

Another fine post from The Computer Curmudgeon (also at computer-curmudgeon.com).
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Comments

[kengr]

Braille keyboard are essentially 6 keys in a row above a space bar with a return key to one side. Each key corresponds to a dot in the standard Braille cell.

Googling a Perkin's Brailler should get you a pic of a typical one.

So my guess about that "six point entry" is that it's likely six keys on the bottom row. I could see arguments for the three outermost keys on each side or the middle six, above the space bar.

Obviously a driver is needed. And yeah, the lack of documentation sounds like a really *dumb* thing.

[mdlbear]

Yeah; braillers are exactly what I had in mind. It's just weird that Lenovo seems to be the only place where typing Braille is called "6-point" or "6-key" entry. And they don't seem to mention "Braille" anywhere -- I tried a site-wide search and came up empty.