Like many other industries, the humble keyboard trade was caught up in the whirlwind of product announcements produced by the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month.
Keyboard Company partners Matias were at the show in force, where they announced three new keyboards that we’ll be stocking in the near future. These are the Mini Quiet Pro, the Mini Tactile Pro, and the Bluetooth Laptop Pro.
The first two are tenkeyless variants of Matias’ popular Tactile Pro and Quiet Pro.
Mini Tactile Pro
The Mini Tactile Pro uses white Alps switches for a gloriously old-school, Mac-friendly typing feel. With the tenkeyless model, you’ll have more desk space and a more comfortable posture, with your hands closer together in front of you. The small size also makes it much more portable – it’s ideal for tucking away in your laptop bag or including in your LAN kit.
The Mini still retains the three USB ports of the larger model, allowing maximum connectivity even on laptops or desktop computers with few USB ports to go around. Matias have really though of everything when designing this keyboard – the Mini Tactile Pro has a detachable USB cable and comes with a spare cable in the box, allowing you to keep one in your travel bag so you’ll never forget to pack it. Finally, the Mini Tactile Pro includes the same N-key rollover as the full size model, ensuring that you can press as many keys as you like at once and all of them will register. The Mini Tactile Pro is available in a Mac format, with support for all of the Mac function keys.
Mini Quiet Pro
The Mini Quiet Pro is very similar, but offers the beautifully muted Quiet Click keys developed by Matias last year. The patented technology produces a much quieter sound, not much louder than a standard non-mechanical keyboard. That’s brilliant for working in a crowded office or on the train. You’ll still get N-key rollover, three USB ports, two detachable USB cables and all the other advantages of a smaller and lighter tenkeyless keyboard. The Quiet Pro is available in a PC layout, with media keys accessible via a Function key.
Laptop Pro
Our third keyboard is a bit different. It’s a wireless model designed for use with laptops, tablets and smartphones. It’s called the Bluetooth Laptop Pro, and it packs the best of the Mini Quiet Pro into an exceedingly portable design – no cables required. That means you get the Quiet Click mechanical switches, a thin and light tenkeyless layout and Mac-friendly function keys.
Where the Bluetooth-enabled Laptop Pro truly excels is its battery life. With a massive 1600 mAh battery on tap, you’ll be able to use the keyboard between six months and a year before you need a recharge. While it was designed for Mac, the keyboard uses a standard Bluetooth connection – meaning it’ll work with a wide range of computers, mobiles and tablets. That includes Windows PCs and Macs, Android 3.0+ smartphones and tablets, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. So if you’re looking for the ultimate wireless keyboard, check out the Matias Bluetooth Laptop Pro.
Signing off
I’m excited to try out these new keyboards for myself, and I’ll let you know when these begin to become available for purchase at the Keyboard Company. These will be US layout only at present, but of course we’ll let you know if and when this changes.
In the meantime, why not let me know what you think of the keyboard in the comments below? Thanks for reading and have a good day!
I’d certainly be interested in the laptop pro! Do you know yet when you’ll be stocking it?
I know this is a little late, but I pre-ordered a laptop pro, a day or two after they announced it. They tell me, they received their first shipment (which sold out) and I should get mine next week. It sounds like early March for new orders.