18 June 2013

Swapnil Bhartiya's picture
Posted by Swapnil Bhartiya on May 21, 2012

I am always looking for a nice keyboard which is compact, yet good enough to not come between me and my work. I was looking for a keyboard which works flawlessly across all my devices without having to connect a dongle which you need to connect to your PC. I was looking for a great companion for my Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and Galaxy Nexus while I am traveling. At the same time I wanted to be able to use it for my day-to-day work with my Ubuntu PCs.

AmazonBasics Bluetooth Keyboard
I found this keyboard as a perfect match. Though Amazon's page specifically says that it's for iPhone and iPad, that's not true. This keyboard works flawlessly with my Android devices including Galaxy Nexus and Galaxy Tab 10.1. It also works great with my Ubuntu PCs.

AmazonBasic Keyboard

All the media keys such as play, pause, volume work without any glitch.

It's a compact and lightweight keyboard, but despite its size and weight it feels solid in your hands. It doesn't feel plasticish at all.

You don't need any dongle with it as it can connect to the built-in bluetooth chips of your devices. The pairing is fast and easy. Another notable point is wake-up time. Its fast and wakes up immediately. If you are using Ubuntu and have built-in bluetooth chip (or using a generic Bluetooth dongle) you can can connect it with your Ubuntu machine without any hassle.

I heavily recommend this keyboard to anyone looking for a compact, lightweight and sturdy keyboard.

Ubuntu users may rejoice as there is no 'Windows' key on it which I always cover with Firefox or Ubuntu sticker as I don't use Windows. The reason there is no Windows key on this keyboard is that this keyboard is designed for Mac.

The keyboard is available for $40. You can order the AmazonBasic wireless keyboard here.

Swapnil Bhartiya

A free software fund-a-mental-ist and Charles Bukowski fan, Swapnil also writes fiction and tries to find cracks in a proprietary company's 'paper armours'. He is a big movie buff and prefers listening to music at such high volumes that he's gone partially deaf when it comes to identifying anything positive about proprietary companies. You can follow him on Twitter, Google+ & Facebook. You can write to him on editor at muktware dot com