Logitech Cordless Desktop Wave
August 19th, 2007 | by Josh Norem
Full Review
Features and Design The Keyboard The keyboard features three tilt options, which is fantastic. You can lay it down flat or choose to flip down one or both of the stands behind the keyboard, which raise it up a bit — whatever you desire.
Do the gnomes toiling in Logitech’s keyboard workshop ever take a break? It certainly doesn’t seem like it, as the company releases new mice, keyboards, and mouse/keyboard combos almost as fast as we can print reviews of them. Just as the ink was drying on our review of the Cordless MX 3200 review, Logitech has announced the Cordless Desktop Wave.
The keyboard is certainly the star of the show here, as it features an unusual wave design that runs contrary to the established ergonomic keyboard design philosophy. Most other ergonomic keyboards are either flat, raised in the center, or have the left or right sides pointing toward one another in order to compensate for the way our arms naturally rest on the keyboard. The Wave, however, takes a different tack by using a straightforward orientation of the keys, but including a gentle down slope on both sides of the keyboard to compensate for the fact that our middle fingers are longer than our index and pinky fingers. It’s not just that some buttons are shorter than others, though. The keys are all specifically designed to curve smoothly up and down, and if you look at the keyboard from a profile view, you can see the difference in key size.
The Wave keyboard used seven different size keys to create a gentle sloping action.
Like any Logitech keyboard, it’s ringed with special function buttons, and some of them are enhanced when used in Windows vista. The far left side of the keyboard features just two buttons. The bottom key activates Flip3D in Vista and also opens a small window in XP that lets you choose between open windows. Above it is a zoom button that is actually quite useful for zooming in and out in images or web pages.
The top of the keyboard sports shortcut buttons to the Vista Sidebar (on XP, it opens a webpage for Yahoo Widgets), your pre-selected music player (iTunes, Winamp, WMP), your My Pictures folder, and has media control buttons as well. It’s important to note that all these buttons can be customized using the included Set Point software.
The far right corner sports just two shortcut buttons that open Calculator or put the PC to sleep. Of course, all the F buttons have dual functions as well and can all be customized.
The Mouse
Say hello to the LX8 Laser cordless mouse. It’s an ambidextrous mouse with soft rubber side grips, five buttons, and a pleasingly comfortable shape. The buttons are standard fare and include right and left click a mouse wheel that clicks and moves left and right, and forward and back buttons on the left and right sides of the mouse. The mouse tracks via laser and has a modest 800dpi.
USB Receiver
The USB receiver is the size of a USB key, and it can either be inserted into a USB port or plugged into a USB extension cable that sits on your desktop. We did not experience any performance degradation when plugging it into the back of our PC, so we’d recommend going that route for maximum wirelessness.
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by Aaron on August 23, 2007:
“I eventually took mine back as I could not get used to the new feel. And the keys are pretty mushy, not something you would expect from a high end keyboard. The mouse rocks, and I like the media buttons though.” More...