The field of gaming peripherals is an ever growing mass of hardware that has a large number of keyboards for gamers to choose from.  Gaming keyboards can range from just ten dollars to hundreds of dollars for customized mechanical keyboards.

The entry level is a place that many users start at and Tt eSports is hoping that its new Challenger Prime will sway many users to give it a try.  The Challenger Prime is the newest ikeyboard in Tt eSport’s Challenger lineup, and it also happens to be the lowest costing model as well.  The board which retails for only $29.99 doesn’t skimp on features though even at that low price point. The keyboard has an anti-spill design with drain holes in case something does ever spill on it. It aslo features backlit membrane keys, with dedicated media and macro keys.  With the stylish keyboard users can switch between blue, red, and purple for the backlight color to help it match the user’s color scheme.

Specifications

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Looking very similar to the BlackBerry Bold, the beleaguered company has announced its new BlackBerry Classic. It’s smaller and most importantly, sports a full QWERTY keyboard and navigation buttons that are not virtual. That’s right; you can do your input on physical keys once again.

Nicely designed keys let your fingers know where they are and increase the accuracy of input.

Aimed at diehard fans who held on to the original BlackBerry which had been considered the best game in town, the Classic is reminiscent in design. If the newer, bigger touchscreen devices are too bulky for your shirt pocket, the Classic’s touchscreen is only 3.5 inches leaving room for the retro keyboard. The sculptured keys are backlit and come with a click so you know where you are and when you strike a key. Overall, it is 5.1 inches x 2.8 inches x 0.4 inch.

Easy to reach on the right side are the mute and volume control buttons. Call, Menu, Back, and End buttons are conveniently above the keyboard. You can set shortcut keys too. There is no telling if this move is a shortcut to a better company outlook. Currently, BlackBerry (NASDAQ: BBRY) is trading at the high end of its 52 week range of $6.08 – 12.54. Hoping to increase its bottom line, the company has made inroads with the auto industry with a recent partnering with Ford. The car company replaced its Windows based MyFord with Sync 3 using a BlackBerry QNX platform.

Neither the stock, nor the Classic’s technology is spectacular, but the device is serviceable. Its front and rear facing cameras are only 2 and 8 megapixels respectively. Video is pretty standard 1080p HD recording at 30 fps (frames per second). Qualcomm’s 1.5GHz 8960 dual core processor powers the Classic with BlackBerry 10.3.1 for its operating system. RAM consists of 2GB and16GB Flash. With SD cards you can expect 144 GB of storage. It promises 22 hours of battery life from its 2515 mAh non-removable Lithium Ion battery, depending on usage.

John Chen, CEO, smiles as he introduces the BlackBerry Classic. Photo Credit: CTV

BlackBerry telegraphed its focus by unveiling the Classic in New York in the financial district, hoping to catch the attention of the business-based consumer. BlackBerry World, the company’s store, offers secure, enterprise level apps to entice businesses back into its fold. Its motto is “Serious Mobility for Serious Business”. An added plus, you can run Android apps now.

The phone supports several multi-media formats, as well as network and connectivity for Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Canada,Latin America, and the US (LTE/HSPA+ ). The bummer disclaimer says this version only currently works on GSM carriers, which does not include popular Verizon and Sprint CDMA based networks in the United States. It also requires a nano SIM card which will add slightly to the going $449 price tag.

The company is attempting to retain faithful customers with its old/new form factor while trying to draw new devotees in with its Passport.  Classic comes in old-fashioned black but you can get Passport in red or white. This writer, for one, prefers the old-fashioned, manual approach of a physical keyboard rather than a “touchy,” sometimes spastic, touch screen. If you prefer voice interaction, you can use BlackBerry Assistant, Siri’s  distant cousin.

There are several demo videos  on YouTube if you want to learn how to use many of the functions of the BlackBerry smartphone.

With BlackBerry’s choice of a name for its new release, you can’t help but draw a parallel with the soda company that returned to its successful roots. Will BlackBerry Classic be a hit with the retro crowd who loved their earlier model just as cola drinkers returned to their favored Classic Coke?

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The mechanical keyboard market got a little more crowded today with the addition of Cougar’s 600K mechanical gaming keyboard.

Aimed at the purists it shares the same lineage as the fully featured 700K, but strips away almost everything to deliver an essentially pure mechanical keyboard design.

Cougar’s newest mechanical keyboard has been designed for those who want the pure mechanical keyboard experience and strips away most of the fluffy features that are found on its flagship 700K model.

The board is outfitted with Cherry MX mechanical switches and should come in blue, brown, red, and black variants.  The features that did make it onto the 600K are a gold-plated USB connector, N-Key rollover, multimedia keys,  LED lighting on the WASD keys, and USB pass-through port.  The keyboard comes with two keyboard wrist rests, a full length and a 1/3 size that is used under the hand when using WASD keys for FPS games.  A nice feature that minimalists will appreciate is that the keyboard will not require any additional drivers to work and is straight plug and play.  There is no word on pricing or availability from Cougar but we expect that this should be a decent savings over the 700K due to the removal of many features.  The board looks like it will be a great choice for those who are wanting a standard mechanical keyboard without a lot of fluff, it should give other models in its price range a good fight.

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QPAD, the eSports and gaming peripheral company announced the MK-70 mechanical keyboard today.  The mechanical keyboard has Cherry Red switches, adjustable led backlighting,  media keys, and gold plated connectors.

The MK-70 takes QPAD’s top of the link MK-85 and removes the programmable keys, USB ports, audio ports.  QPAD sees this as an ideal gaming board aiming to give gamers what they want in a keyboard without the added premium of those extra features.  QPAD is a Swedish company that is known for their high quality gaming and eSports peripherals.

The led backlight is adjustable with four levels.

MK-70 Features:

• Cherry MX red mechanical switches
• Ultra-durable, long life keys designed to last 50 million strokes
• Individual LED backlight with four levels of brightness
• Media control keys
• Laser engraved keycaps
• Full size keyboard
• Braided USB cord
• Full N-Key rollover with the included USB to PS/2 adapter
• Gold plated USB connector
• Dimensions: 44.8 x 15 x 3.5 cm (17.6 x 5.9 x 1.37 inch)
• Weight: 1.4 kg / 3.08LBS

The MK-70 will be shipping at the end of October with a price of $125 (99€).

The ideal person for this keyboard is a gamer who will rapidly be pressing the keys during gaming.  These would be FPS, MMORPG, and RTS players as the Cherry Red switches are the linear Cherry switch requiring the lightest actuation force (45g).  The Cherry Red switches do not have tactile feedback when the switch is actuated, meaning that rapid cycling of the switches will be easier.  If you want a switch that you will be able to feel when you hit the actuation point, then you will want to look at  keyboards that offer the Cherry Brown switches ( non-clicky ) or possibly the Cherry Blue switches ( clicky ).  One of the benifits of having keyboards with the Cherry mechanical switches are than there are many companies making aftermarket keycaps.  There are many different options for making the keyboards your own with the keys available to customize to your heart’s desire.

Cherry Red switch actuation

Though they share the same chassis the MK-70 does away with the USB ports and audio ports that the MK-85 has

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Recently, a lot of people have been asking how to enable multi-language Google voice texting using the default Android keyboard in Android Kitkat. Most people have no idea how many lanugages Google officially supports and because they assume its only English, they miss out on a huge productivity opportunity. In fact, Google is one of the few platforms that will recognize what language you are speaking automatically, enabling you to switch between languages mid-sentence or without having to manually switch keyboards like you would need to if you wanted to physically type something out on the screen.

Step One – Open the Google Keyboard, if you do not have the Google Keyboard, you need to go to settings and then select the “language and input” option and make sure that the default keyboard is Google Keyboard.

Step Two – Once you have that enabled, you can go to any application that needs a keyboard and open the Google keyboard by pressing a text field.

Step 3 – After you’ve opened the keyboard, you need to press the microphone button on the top right hand corner of the Google Keyboard and then Google’s Voice recognition typing will come up and start recording whatever you say. When the microphone is red, it is recording, when it is grey, it is not.

Step 4 – Press the menu bar above the Google voice typing button and select add or remove languages.

Step 5 – Once you’ve selected add or remove languages, you need to press languages and then select the languages that you wish to add to the voice recognition.

Step 6 – Once the languages have been added and saved, you can close the window and start using voice typing for as many languages as you like. I personally have three languages enabled and am able to successfully get it to recognize all three languages without any additional input other than pressing the voice button and speaking.

And there you have it, that’s how you can speak in multiple languages and even switch languages mid-sentence. While Google’s voice typing isn’t quite perfect yet in terms of switching languages mid sentence, if you speak slowly enough it will recognize the language switch fairly quickly and easily. However, almost nobody will use voice typing this way as most people will stick with one language per message and perhaps switch between languages between people and apps, which is what this is useful for.

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Are tablets finally reaching the point of saturation? According to Best Buy’s CEO, Hubert Joly, they are “crashing” as he stated in an interview with recode. In fact, Hubert says that they’ve seen a revival of the PC’s growth in sales within Best Buy which accurately depicts some of the trends we’re seeing in the industry as a whole with Intel and others reporting better earnings quarter after quarter. Hubert partially attributes it to the fact that Microsoft stopped supporting XP and the fact that there are now thinner, more portable PC formfactors that also act as tablets. Best Buy [NYSE:BBY] has been struggling as of late to compete with online and other big box retailers slowly eating into their business and have recently adopted a store design that include mini Samsung, Microsoft and Apple stores within their stores.

And you know what? He’s sort of right, if you look at most people that have 2-in-1 laptops (myself included) the likelihood that they’re ALSO going to carry around a tablet is very low. Even the most premium tablets today (like the Surface Pro 3) effectively act as PCs, not tablets. You can’t really use the Surface Pro 3 without a keyboard for productivity and the same goes for an iPad or almost any tablet. You need a keyboard and a keyboard adds weight and thickness. And in many cases, a very thin laptop may actually be thinner than a tablet with an attached keyboard.

Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly

There is also a lot of talk about how many tablets, once purchased give very little reason to many users to ‘upgrade’ to the next version. A first generation Nexus 7 is still a great tablet and accomplishes most of what anyone would want a tablet to accomplish. However, if you look at what Microsoft has done with their Surface tablets, they have continually looked for ways to give people a reason to upgrade or at least join the Surface generation. Ultimately, there is no denying that tablets are here to stay, its just with ever increasing phone sizes (we’re now around 5-5.5″) you start to reduce the need for a tablet since many of our phones are already reaching that size. I remember when Samsung’s first Note came out it had a 5.3″ screen and many started to question whether it was a phone or a tablet.

While Best Buy most certainly isn’t considered a wildly growing business, they are still quite established and still sell billions of dollars of consumer electronics including smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktops. There aren’t many companies as keyed in as they are in terms of what’s selling and what’s not. Perhaps they struggle a bit with profitability, but in the end they still sell a lot of product and may have a very valid point with tablets. That we may have finally reached the ‘saturation’ point that many have been talking about. This saturation point, however, may force tablet makers to be more innovative and adopt technologies like Tactus’ tactile touch display tech.

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We sat down at Computex 2014 with Synaptics’ Godfrey Cheng and Scott Poole to talk about the company’s latest innovations, including their developments with their Forcepad. I was personally unaware that Synaptics’ first generation Forcepads actually had glass built into the touchpad to enable the Forcepad to work correctly and evenly distribute the pressure. However, the new generation of the Forcepad is capable of measuring the smallest amount of pressure at every point and no longer uses glass, making the touchpad more flexible, less breakable, and thinner than the previous generation.

We also got some hints that the company might be working on some interesting fingerprint tech that hasn’t yet been seen in products before, but will make using any computer with it much faster and more secure.

Now, getting to their Thintouch keyboard, as you can see in the image above, it looks like just any normal keyboard. But then once you close the switch, the keys disappear into the keyboard.

We sat down with Synaptics’ Godfrey Cheng so that he could explain this new keyboard technology to us and exactly what they believe it can do well. We’ve got a video of this technology in action so that you can see it for yourself, beyond just looking at the photos of the Thintouch keyboard we’ve taken.

This new Thintouch technology looks like yet another innovation from Synaptics that will enable even better user experiences, with the current target being 2-in-1 systems where a keyboard would be rendered useless in certain scenarios. Some current scenarios would be tablets with attached bluetooth keyboards or notebooks that transform into tablets where you don’t want the keys to get pressed or become a nuisance when being used in tablet mode. It will be interesting to see how manufacturers utilize this tech in their 2-in-1 devices in order to make their keyboards better, which they still are working on, as could be seen from Microsoft’s Surface Pro 3.

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Today at Computex 2014, Corsair released a variety of new products.

First up are the Cherry MX RGB Gaming Keyboards, the first mechanical keyboards to utilize the Cherry MX RGB switches that allow for different lighting. They’ll be available as the K70 RGB and K95 RGB.

Also launched is the M65 RGB mouse, a gaming mouse that provides three zone 16.8 million color backlighting.

The K95 RGB will have an MSRP of $189.99, the K70 RGB will be $169.99, and the M65 RGB will be $69.99.

Next up is Corsair’s new Hydro Series HG10 GPU cooling bracket. The cooling bracket will replace the reference cooler on a GPU and allow the user to hook up a Corsair Hydro Series liquid CPU cooler to the GPU. It will be available for $39.99, and will have several editions designed for specific graphics cards.

Also, Corsair showed off three new PC chassis.

The Carbide Series Air 240 is a Mini-ITX and Micro ATX chassis, which will ship in August at a list price of $89.99 to $99.99.

The Graphite Series 780T is a Full-Tower chassis, which will ship in September at a list price of $179.99 to $189.99.

The Graphite Series 380T is a Mini-ITX portable chassis, which will ship in August at a list price of $129.99.

In addition, Corsair announced the Voyager Air 2 Wireless Drive. The Voyager Air 2 wirelessly adds 1 TB of storage to Android, iOS, Windows, and Mac OS X devices. It utilizes the Voyager Air 2.0 software that adds new features such as support for simplified media browsing, cloud sync with Dropbox and Google Drive, and Airplay streaming for Apple TV. It can also be plugged into a USB 3.0 port for faster access. It will be available starting in June for $179.99.

Corsair also announced the Flash Voyager GTX USB 3.0 flash drive in 256 GB and 128 GB configurations. The Flash Voyager GTX uses SSD technologies with TRIM support for up to 450 MB/s reads and 350 MB/s writes. It will retail at $199.99 for the 256 GB version, and $119.99 for the 128 GB version.

Finally, Corsair launched the new HXi series PSU line. The HXi PSUs will be fully modular, they will have 80 PLUS Platinum efficiency, meaning they can achieve greater than 92% energy efficiency. The HXi PSUs will be available starting in August, and prices are as follows: HX750i 750 watt: $169.99, HX850i 850 watt: $189.99, and the HX1000i 1000 watt: $229.99.

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Tactus, the maker of the tactile touch technology (with many applications) has signed a strategic manufacturing partnership with one of the world’s largest ODMs, Wistron, which includes a strategic investment from Wistron to help Tactus grow. For those of you unfamiliar with Tactus, they are the company that originally started out a few years ago promising to bring physical keyboards to touch screens. Now, they are promising to bring physical buttons to more than just touch screens, but with far more usefulness and simplicity. We actually have a video of Tactus’ latest technology from this year’s CES to demonstrate how the technology works.

This announcement involving Wistron illustrates not only the feasaibility of Tactus’ technology, but also a confidence in the fact that it will be applicable in future technologies for years to come. To get an idea of how big Wistron really is, you have to understand that they are one of the top 5 biggest ODMs and contract manufacturers in the world and are listed as a Fortune 500 company with around $23 billion in revenue annually.  This comes as a follow up to Tactus’ Series B funding that they announced at CES this year and actually had included Wistron at that time, but they weren’t officially announced as an investor until today. While the exact amount of the Series B funding was not announced, the expected amount was over $10 million.

By having Wistron as an investor and a partner, Tactus gains a valuable channel to promote their technology. Having Wistron onboard means that certain companies that may have not yet heard of Tactus’ groundbreaking technology can see it for themselves without Tactus ever needing to approach them. Additionally, it may afford Wistron the ability to be one of the first companies in the world to manufacture devices with Tactus’ technology as we are still awaiting a commercial/consumer version of Tactus’ technology in either a consumer product or an accessory as we led on at CES.

While there were no further indications of what we can expect for the year to come, I have a feeling that this announcement is merely a formality and probably a lead up to some larger product announcements that we’d expect to hopefully come before the end of the year.

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Three villains... or just accidental tourists?

It seems that the keyboards are suffering from some sort of keystroke lock, which is pretty bad if you are a gamer or multi-tasker (I can imagine more than one scenario in Photoshop where I am pressing more than 3 keys at the same time). You can follow this developing story here.

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