Adrian 07/03/2022
This keyboard is not great. Sadly my old Apple wired keyboard was totally worn out and had to be replaced, and I really like the idea of tenkeyless for mouse ergonomics, but this keyboard is just not good.
The first and main problem with this keyboard is that it doesn't debounce very well (or something along those lines). When I'm typing fast I often get doubled-up characters. I never had that problem on the Apple wired keyboard (or any other Apple keyboard, or any other name-brand keyboard to be honesst). I've turned the key-repeat rate right down and it's better, but every now and theen I still get a duplicaate charatcer (as you can see!). I typed that last sentence at full speed to make the problem appear, I have to slow down to about 60wpm and the problem mostly goes away. To be honest, this issue alone probably makes this keyboard a total waste of money for me.
Apart from the debounceduplicate characters, the keyboard is sort of ok. It is nowhere near the quality of the Apple keyboard -- the keys are plasticy and rattle as you type, and have a tiny amount of play iin them. The keys on the Apple keyboard felt solid and the action was incredibly smooth, there was no play at all with fingers just resting on the keys.
The USB ports are one of the main reasons I chose this keyboard, because I found them incredibly useful on the old Apple keybard. The USB ports are ok, but my PKI token doesn't fit as well as did on the Apple keyboard (probably a tiny bit less clearance) and they're also angled slightly down which is annoying (probably just sloppy manufacturing tollerances). Again, it's ok, but it's a shame that there's just not as much attention to deetail as the Apple keyboard.
I was going to give this 35 stars when I started the review, but as I wrote more and more I had to mark it down as I realised that it really isn't that good, and because it keeps typiing duplicate characters, even at slower speeds (though it's hard to actually slow yourself down once you're in the flow), it has to be marked down again to 1 star. The only thing I will mention is that I'm usinng this on an HP laptop, not Apple, but it's standard USB so I don't think that makes any difference at all.
The tenkeyless form factor is nice. Shame about everything else.