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Monday 7th January 2008

Hands-on with the $1,500 keyboard 10:35PM, Monday 7th January 2008

The much-hyped - and extravagantly priced - Art Lebedev keyboard is making its debut at CES 2008, and PC Pro was given a hands-on demonstration of the ultimate typing machine.

Click here for our full coverage from CES 2008

Beneath each of the Optimus Maximus's 113 keys is a small OLED screen, which can be tailored to display icons and shortcuts of the user's choice.

Down the left-hand side of the demonstration model, for example, there is a bank of 10 shortcut buttons, displaying the logos of YouTube and Engadget for one-touch access to those websites, or the Firefox symbol to launch the browser.

The shortcut keys can also be dynamically updated - the Gmail logo displays a small number to show you how many unread messages are waiting in your inbox, which handily saves you from having to install a desktop alert.

Each of the 48

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x 48 pixel OLED screens is sharp and clearly visible, and they can even be used to display small animations, although little movies running on your keyboard would surely prove horribly irritating after a while.

The Maximus has some clever tricks up its sleeves for your $1,500: press the shift key, and all the letter animations change to upper case, for instance, which is showy if not particularly useful.

Such extravagance does come at a cost - and not just to your wallet. The keys are over-sized to compensate for the screens, which makes touch-typing tricky. The keys on our (admittedly overworked) demonstration model also felt uncomfortably spongy, leading you to wonder whether you'd actually pressed the key down properly or not.

Overall, the Optimus Maximus was more impressive than we first gave it credit for when it was announced, but can we think of better ways to spend $1,500? Just a few.