Digital Trends

Gyration Media Center Remote and Keyboard

May 5th, 2004 | by Jeff Fila

Likes and Dislikes

As far as performance goes, there's not much more we can ask of the keyboard. As the company claims, it works at up to about a 100 foot range and it works well. The multimedia keys are useful and well placed and the keyboard is comfortable to type on. It also includes a back panel cover which allows you to make the bottom of the keyboard more of a flat surface.  This gives you two options for the keyboard — add a little weight and a slight amount of extra bulk for a flat underside or reduce the weight and have to deal with the rounded battery compartment on the bottom. We found either setup to be fine and we had no issues at all with the battery compartment or design of the keyboard — prompting us to wonder why Gyration even bothered to include the bottom cover.

The Media Center Remote is another story though. While for the most part it works as intended, we think the remote suffers from some serious design flaws that greatly reduce its usefulness.

The Media Center Remote works well as a mouse, but lacks important features.

The idea of "Swipes" is a good one. The GyroTools software includes preset and user-definable profiles for each Media Center application — "MyTV", "MyMusic", "MyPictures", "MyVideos" — and for what's called “AdvancedUser”. This enables you to use the same "Swipe" for a different action in each application. You also have the option of setting up "Shakes" — up and down or left and right shaking motions that execute a command in conjunction with the Swipes button. GyroTools also includes the ability to program “Hotspots” - commands that are executed when you move the pointer to a corner or edge of the screen and hold for a set number of seconds. All of these commands are great, but they certainly take some time getting used to and remembering. Fortunately, holding the Swipes button for a few seconds will bring up your current Swipes settings to help you remember what command does what and help you execute the command.

But besides the innovative gyroscope and Swipes idea, we think the Remote has more negatives than positive features. First of all, we think it was a big mistake for Gyration to design their remote control without a number pad. In our experience, the number buttons are some of the most used buttons on a remote control while watching TV and their choice to not include these buttons was a terrible decision. A TV remote just isn't a TV remote without number buttons for the channels. Changing channels can only be accomplished by using the channel up and down keys or by bringing up an on-screen number pad - which takes too long to appear and takes your TV out of full-screen mode. This is just unacceptable. You can also use the keyboard but wasn't the whole point of the remote so that you didn't need to use the keyboard? We understand that the mouse buttons and media center buttons take up valuable real-estate on the remote, but there must be a better way of designing this to allow for number buttons.

We also found the "Swipes" button to be in a tough location. To get your thumb to press that button, you may often end up hitting the mouse buttons and other buttons by mistake. We found this to happen quite frequently. Females or people with smaller hands will have an even harder time as this remote seems to only be comfortable for larger hands.