Zoom ZDTV Wireless Keyboard 9005-00-00F Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)The ZDTV is a great wireless keyboard/touchpad for those who want to sit on the sofa while controlling a computer connected to a TV. I have three TVs of varying ages in my house, each hooked up to my main computer. I was looking for a wireless keyboard with a long enough range that I could use it to control my computer while sitting in front of any of them. This allows me to have one Blu-Ray drive in my computer, no need for extra DVD/Blu-Ray players, no need to worry about the different NetFlix/Hulu/YouTube/... streaming "standards" popping up as extras on different set-top Blu-Ray players.
Pros:
+ Great range. As long as you place the USB receiver (about the size of a USB thumb drive) in a location not blocked by the metal of your computer's case, printer, refrigerator, etc you can go a fair distance, even with walls in the way. Once I dug out an old USB extension cable and used that to put the wireless receiver on top of my case I was able to go about 50 feet without trouble.
+ Great functionality, even WITHOUT Windows 7. I have this hooked up to a computer running Windows Vista x64 with no ZDTV drivers or software installed. It is picked up as a standard USB keyboard, so I am even able to enter my BIOS password with it, before any operating system even boots up. It will work with any computer/operating system that can handle a USB keyboard and mouse. Even without Windows 7 I was pleasantly surprised that the specialty buttons along the sides of the touchpad correctly start up Windows Media Center, Windows Media Player, your default web browser, Play/Pause, Stop, Mute, Volume Up, and Volume Down. (The Magnification and Magnification Level buttons require the Windows 7 only software to work.)
+ Standard sized keys. Many wireless keyboards aimed at the HDTV/Computer market are "compact", trying to make the entire keyboard smaller but using keys that are a tad smaller than standard. For touch-typists this can easily through you off, especially with those farther out towards edges. The ZDTV keyboard uses full sized keys so touch typing does not suffer, and although it is a fairly thin keyboard with shallow keys, the depth of travel of the keys is very good, which also makes it feel like you are typing on a standard desktop keyboard even though it is a fair bit slimmer.
+ Large, deep touchpad. This is one of the larger touchpads I have used. Having a small touchpad with a netbook isn't too much of a hassle, but when setting a wireless keyboard on your lap, controlling a big screen TV with a fairly high resolution that is several feet away means that a larger touchpad allows you to have more stable, precise control of the cursor. The touchpad is also recessed a bit, helping to prevent the user from unintentionally moving the cursor as they type due to their thumb or palm brushing against the surface of the touchpad area.
+ Multi-touch touchpad. The touchpad has a right and left button under it, but it also uses mutli-touch in an interesting manner. A single tap acts as a left-click (double-tap for double-click, double-tap and slide for dragging.) A two-finger tap acts as the middle mouse button. A three-finger tap acts as a right-click. A two-finger vertical movement will act as a scroll up/down.
+ Energy conscious. It runs off of four AAA batteries (I use rechargeables.) It automatically turns itself off after a few minutes of non-use. Unlike other wireless keyboards there is no on-off switch. Using the touchpad will NOT wake it up, but ANY key press (including SHIFT or FN, safe ones to use since they won't trigger any program to do something unintended) will wake it up.Cons:
- No Caps/Scroll/Num Lock indicators. This is not a huge negative, but it can be an annoyance at times. I have a standard keyboard connected as well as the ZDTV wireless keyboard. Toggling Caps/Scroll/Num Lock with one will also do it to the other. My standard keyboard has a number pad, so I tend to leave Num-Lock on since I do a fair bit of work with spreadsheets. If I switch to the ZDTV keyboard and do not disable Num-Lock then suddenly U becomes 4, I becomes 5, O becomes 6, etc. This became quite annoying at first when I was trying to use it to put in a password and didn't realize what was going on (a U and a 4 both appear as a * in that case, so I didn't realize what was going on for a while.) Pressing Fn-NumLock on the ZDTV keyboard will toggle Num Lock for both keyboards so you can correct this without going back to the main computer, but it would be nice to have some form of Cap/Num/Scroll Lock indicator on the ZDTV keybaord.
Well, I guess only one con, so that should be "Con", not "Cons" ;-).

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