Xenta Wireless Keyboard PKB-1720 mini review

DavidT

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I thought it might be useful for anyone looking for an inexpensive wireless keyboard to get my views on this one.......

Xenta Wireless Mini Keyboard with Touchpad and.. | Ebuyer.com

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This keyboard is also available by ORtek. My first impressions are positive, the build quality is IMO very good and I like the weighty feel to it. One thing I will say though is that this keyboard will not totally replace a remote control for just two reasons;

1. There is no on/off button to control a PC. :thumbsdow
2. There are no fast forward or fast rewind buttons. :thumbsdow

What you do get is a full qwerty keyboard with play, pause, stop, skip forward and skip backward buttons (skip is about 4 mins) on the right side which work flawlessly with XBMC. On the left side there are up, down, left and right buttons which also work in XBMC. There are buttons on the keyboard for all XBMC functions like select, back, info, statistics and others. I assume these will also work for other media frontends. There are also the following buttons;

4 Internet Hot Keys: WWW, E-mail, Back, Forward
7 Multimedia Hot Keys: Pre track, Next track, Play/Pause, Stop, Volume up, Volume down , Mute.
12 Embedded Vista Function Hot Keys are controlled by the “Fn Lock” key
6 MCE Hot Keys: My Music, My Videos, My Pictures, My TV, My Radio, DVD
6 Application Hot Keys:, Close, Win select, Zoom +/- , Minimize , Flip 3D

There is a mouse pad and top mounted mouse buttons which work just as expected and I found very comfortable to use.

The supplied RF receiver is recognised automatically by Windows7, luckily as there is no driver disk, and has a good operating distance. I sit about 3 metres from my HTPC and even with the reciever plugged in to a rear USB port I have no issues, the receiver protrudes about 2cm. There is also an on/off button on the back for the keyboard to conserve the batteries (2x AA not supplied). There is a low battery LED and after 30mins of not being uesd the keyboard will go to sleep.

Overall I think this is a very good wireless keyboard that if it had an on/off and ffwd/frwd buttons would be a great keyboard.

I give it 8 out of 10. :thumbsup:

David
 
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Thanks for the review. Are there any mini-keyboards with play, FF, RW, stop etc. functions or do you have to rely on keyboard mapping? I have a Rii mini remote which I now use in the bedroom for XBMC and it works okay but I would prefer one with the buttons, rather than having to press 'M'. It's hardly a hardship though!!
 
Thanks for the review. Are there any mini-keyboards with play, FF, RW, stop etc. functions or do you have to rely on keyboard mapping? I have a Rii mini remote which I now use in the bedroom for XBMC and it works okay but I would prefer one with the buttons, rather than having to press 'M'. It's hardly a hardship though!!

Well the Xenta has play, pause and stop just not ffwd or frwd. I guess you could remap the buttons though with EventGhost.

David
 
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Hey Dave,

Can you confirm that you can navigate around the BIOS using this keyboard?

Does everything work in XBMC out of the box?

Does it have F1-F12 keys? Do you have to use the Fn button to access them?

Sorry for all the questions, I cant find this info out anywhere else!

Cheers
 
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Hey Dave,

Can you confirm that you can navigate around the BIOS using this keyboard?

Does everything work in XBMC out of the box?

Does it have F1-F12 keys? Do you have to use the Fn button to access them?

Sorry for all the questions, I cant find this info out anywhere else!

Cheers

I can navigate around the BIOS on my HTPC but I can't guarantee you will be able to as well.

Everything works out of the box with xbmc, my only critisicm is the lack of a power key/button.

There are no F1-F12 keys, why do you need them?

David
 
Hey mate, thanks for the info.

I plan on dual/triple booting with XBMC (OpenElec), Win7 and Kubuntu so I'm sure I would need function keys at some point. I read somewhere that the Fn lock button allows the 1-9 keys to work as function keys, have you tried that?

Are there any other details about the keyboard? How are you finding it after more use?

Thanks!
 
I have never used function keys on any of my PC's other than the F2 for entering BIOS but the delete key works on most BIOS's anyway.

I have had no problems with the keyboard at all, everything appears to work in xbmc as it should, all the keyboard shortcuts are working. My only wish is that it had a power on/off button but that is no big deal as I just use the power button on the HTPC to turn it on and the shutdown menu within xbmc to suspend.

The range is very good, I sit about 3.5 metres from my HTPC and even with the RF dongle plugged into a rear USB port I have had no connectivity issues so far.

The keyboard uses two AA batteries and has an on/off switch at the back plus goes into a sleep state after a period of non use.

Note that the keys are NOT backlit but that is not an issue for me as after just a short period of use I became acustomed to where the keys are and it is a QWERTY keyboard after all with just a few extra keys for the HTPC functions.

I like the keyboard and would recommend it.

David
 
Hey mate, thanks for the info.

I plan on dual/triple booting with XBMC (OpenElec), Win7 and Kubuntu so I'm sure I would need function keys at some point. I read somewhere that the Fn lock button allows the 1-9 keys to work as function keys, have you tried that?

Are there any other details about the keyboard? How are you finding it after more use?

Thanks!

Why are you triple booting? You can run xbmc on Windows or Linux anyway.

David
 
Hey thanks for all the info mate, put an order in today :)

Have you tried Openelec? (openelec.tv)

Its a custom release of XBMC and boots in about 10 seconds, is much easier to configure, much easier to update.

You always get a slight performance hit when running XBMC on top of Windows/Linux. Running it as its own OS works much better.

You can install it on a USB, give it a try ;)
 
Maplin have a special offer on it at the moment £12.99 delivered!
Wireless Mini Keyboard With Touchpad For Media Centres : Media Centre Keyboards : Maplin Electronics

FWIW I've been using one of these for a couple of years without any problems. Battery life is good, range is fine and it's comfortable to use and thumb type for selecting recordings and searching on iPlayer.
The right d pad arrows work as skip forward 30 or back 10 seconds in WMC which works for me.

I would recommend it as a cheap keyboard and I can happily use it as a full remote if we can't find the WMC remote :)_
 

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