ASUS Eee Keyboard PC Review

ASUS Eee Keyboard PC Hardware

The thick chunk of brushed aluminium adds a nice texture and with the recessed black display looks beautiful. The keyboard keys in the spacious 'chiclet' style afford a deliciously defined but soft hit, although the extra key spacing takes a bit of getting used to. Having no wrist rest can also be awkward if you're crashed on the sofa - it really needs a more natural Microsoft style wave keyboard curve.

The rest of the casing is black plastic that actually gets pretty damn hot, as there's a mouse fart puff of air out the side vent, but on the plus side it does make it is completely silent.


Its power and home buttons are recessed to try and prevent accidental press, and Asus has gone for white LEDs to match the light metal surrounding it. Asus claims it's still quite easy to hit the power button if you're carrying it so it's even included a 'battery off' switch in the top that requires the tip of a pen to switch, but again this is a 'doing too much' design thought. The Eee Keyboard should only need to travel between coffee table and sofa, or at most, room to room.


The display is capacitive and accepts simple multi-touch gestures in specific scenarios but it doesn't use 'typical' pinch/twist smartphone style ones due to Apple patents. The only ones it does need are for scrolling up and down web-pages and that works pretty well once you learn the two finger swipe.


Its contrast is very good but the viewing angle is terrible. This directly affects its use because unlike a smartphone you're not looking straight down at it - it's always off to one side as naturally the keyboard keys are centred. So unless you're constantly using it at arms length to minimise the angle offset there's always a polarisation that means while the white on black text can be seen, sometimes the icons cannot.

The Eee Keyboard is packed with extra gizmo's and sockets - HDMI, D-Sub, Ethernet, 3.5mm headphone and microphone jacks and three USB ports. The 'L' shaped stubby wireless antenna protrudes neatly in the corner, and doubles up for both normal WiFi-n and the wireless display.


Inside Asus packs an Intel Atom D330, 1GB of DDR2 memory and a Broadcom Crystal HD display chip, as well as the associated hardware for ultra wide band display, 802.11n WiFi and a battery. Asus claims four hours life from that integrated battery, and admittedly we've no idea how much use this display model has seen, but it burns through it in a fraction of the time. After a full charge we couldn't even get an hour out of it.

The casing comes off with removal of the screws underneath and some gentle persuasion. Inside there's a custom size Eee Keyboard PCB and a few others for the wireless and external connectors. Right down the middle is the 4,900mAh/35Wh Lithium Polymer battery as well.