The 540

The 540 is packaged in a colourful box, with the main picture depicting the keyboard in all its glory. The rear of the box lists the features of the keyboard in six different languages implying this products destiny for world marketing.

Inside you find the keyboard itself complete with a built in touchpad, a short manual, 4 Energiser AAA batteries and the wireless receiver. The keyboard takes the four batteries in the underside of the unit.

The manual is multi-lingual and is short and to the point. It explains how to pair the keyboard and your computer, changing batteries and that a ‘state-of-the-art’ operating system will be able to use the 540RF.

The keyboard is small by design and hence the numberpad has been missed of the end. However, if you really need to use the number pad then you can press the ‘Fn’ button in the bottom left of the board and click ‘Insert’. This activates the numberpad keys which are labelled in blue type.

Below the keyboard is the touchpad. It’s large which is great news for anyone with larger fingers. It also has a built in scroll strip which allows you to use the pad like a scroll wheel on your standard mouse. There are two large buttons beneath which correspond to left and right click.

The keyboard has a black strip that seems to imply that the unit uses infra red to communicate with your PC, however, it uses a Bluetooth type connection and you receive a USB dongle which talks to the 540RF. It would have been nice if the board used actual Bluetooth to free up a USB port if you already have a dongle. However, this would have made matching your PC and the 540 more difficult and a higher price due to the Bluetooth licensing.

On the dongle itself you find a small indent which hides the ‘SW’ button which if used when you want to connect the 540 and your PC together. Once pressed, you have 15 seconds to press ‘Fn’ on the keyboard itself which will pair the two together.

The 540RF is a good weight and firm construction which allows it to be thrown around to a certain degree, and can put up with the rigors of continuous office use. As the unit is so compact, KeySonic have decided to use laptop style keys which are the standard size, apart from the top row of ‘Esc’ and function keys. The direction keys have also been shrunk, and so have the bottom line which are the standard height but narrower.

There are no LEDs on the board, not even any to tell you whether it’s turned on and working. The Caps lock and other lock LEDs are missing meaning that you have to refer to your text output to see whether they are turned on or not. It would have been nice if the keyboard had drivers with the dongle allowing you to see the status on screen of these locks, but I’m sure there is a free program out there that can do this.

On the underside of the unit, you find the battery compartment, the usual flip-up stands that allow you to change the angle the keyboard is at, and four rubber studs that do a reasonable job of keeping the 540RF in one place.