Lenovo KBD BO TRACKPOINT KBD-US ENG

I have a lot of Bluetooth keyboard, but I really love this one. The trackpoint makes this one special. It’s much easier to pinpoint areas of the screen to click on than a trackpad. It’s more like a little joystick. Dragging and dropping takes some getting used to, but works very well. I use this keyboard primarily with my AR glasses and it allows me to type and scroll around the screen in bed and on the sofa. Can’t do that with a mouse. The only function I seem to consistently have trouble with is scrolling. It can definitely be done with the middle button, but it’s more difficult than 2 finger scrolling on a trackpad or scrolling with a mouse wheel. Even with that minor issue, I love the keyboard and it feels like I snagged a piece of history since these are getting much harder to find.

Came packed with legitmate holographic Lenovo sticker on the box, appears to be as genuine as they come. Suffice it to say this is a very, very nice keyboard. One of the only USB options available with a trackpoint (which I can't live without -- I've tried, my muscle memory is locked in at this point) Lenovo/Thinkpad devotees will welcome the 'Fn' key location. Others might not. Overall a well-thought-out improvement in connectivity over the previous micro-USB-only model. Micro-USB is not a particularly durable design and the connection gets sloppier and sloppier over time. USB-C is much nicer to work with. The wireless features are great and do work very well, without installing any drivers. Apparently drivers with "advanced features" are available, but I'm not interested in features that require drivers to work. I don't know if the drivers would solve this, but really the only complaint I have is that it doesn't seem to support USB-HID protocol or wired connections AT ALL. The USB port is for charging only. Connection is strictly wireless. This is a major annoyance to me, and could be a serious drawback to others. The included wireless plug only fits a USB-A port, limiting you to Bluetooth mode on a USB-C laptop, or requiring the use of some kind of janky A-to-C adapter (which would be sold separately). Even if you do have USB-A ports available, this will end up taking up 2 USB ports (1 for charging, 1 for data). This all could've been solved so simply by letting it connect via the USB-C, I don't understand why they didn't bother doing this. Because of this, make sure you do not lose the wireless plug (which has a convenient home it plugs into on the keyboard itself when not in use on a PC). Unfortunately that home where the wireless plug lives is not a real USB port and cannot be used to charge or connect anything else either. Not a big deal, but maybe a missed opportunity.

I got hired in 2007 by IBM to work tech support for AT&T client customers here in Toronto. They issued ThinkPads. Then, I got into Theatre School and needed a laptop and got a X201-T. I wrote on that keyboard for years and then Lenovo warranty replaced it with a X230 which promptly got stolen. So then I bought a used X220 and had that for another half decade. Then I got a desktop over Covid because I was at home. I bought a fancy mechanical keyboard and could not type worth crap. I bought this keyboard in summer 2020 when it was a newish product. Got through a quarter million words or whatever in the last 4.5 years. Keys had fallen off. I was using the Windows Key for the letter E. It had been that way for about a year.... So my brutally-honest friend came by a few weeks ago and said: "John, why don't you replace your old broken keyboard? I can't type on this. All the letters are switched around. Why did you do that?" So then I had to say: "IT'S LIKE THAT BECAUSE I GET MY MONEYS WORTH!" The USB version is $50 bucks cheaper. Just buy this one.

It's the only wireless keyboard with trackpoint. It's not perfect: - Fn key is in lower left corner and left Ctrl is to its right; they should have been swapped - what bozo at Lenovo had that layout idea? - Quality of the keys is good but very far from the level of true Thinkpad laptops, say T40. - Keys are pretty flat. They should just copy the keys profile from a T40 - that feels so much more comfortable by comparison. - Mouse keys are stupidly flat ... on Thinkpads they are very distinct so one doesn't need to look, just touch and know instantly. - Should have included the typical group of 6 keys (home, end, insert, del, pg up, pg down), separate from other keys, even if that made keyboard a bit bigger. - Arrow keys should be full size - same as normal letter keys. They had the perfect recipe for best keyboard in the world, they used it for decades in Thinkpads ... but Lenovo had to mess it up ... I wonder, is it cheaper to make bad keyboards or new Lenovo engineers are incompetent? Regardless, it gets 5 stars from me ... because I need a wireless trackpoint keyboard and there's no alternative.

This wireless keyboard is a HUGE improvement over my previous USB TrackPoint keyboard. I would have given it 5 stars if it had a number and navigation keypad, I had to buy a standalone but with the two separates, it doesn't really do the job. It is nicely made. The Bluetooth connection is solid and reconnects quickly after waking the laptop. It's a little pricey but worth the cost. I would also appreciated if it had some lighting. Still, the TrackPoint stick is by far the only mouse pointer I'll ever use.