Projection keyboard arrives straight from your imagination, price also outworldly

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Projection keyboards arrives straight from your imagination, price also outworldly
Smartphones already pack enough power to replace our notebook and desktop PCs for most of the basic tasks we do, but the small size of these handhelds doesn’t allow them to incorporate a full-fledged keyboard and that’s one key hurdle to achieving good productivity. Actually, smartphones with QWERTY keyboards are become very rare - at this CES and MWC we can’t recall a single high-end device to pack a physical keyboard.

To solve the dilemma of small size and productivity needs comes the Elecom TK-PBL042BK (whew, what a name!) projection keyboard. It looks like it’s straight out the future - a small rectangular block uses infrared to project a keyboard on any flat surface. Unfortunately, the futuristic projection keyboard comes with an outworldly price tag of $350 - more than some smartphones! This is also more than a similar product, Celluon's Magic Cube, that promises to project a keyboard and trackpad for $200 when it rolls out this Summer.

If you’re ready to swallow that bitter pill though, here’s what you get. The Elecom TK-PBLO42BK is very compact, with dimensions of 38.0 x 29.0 x 75.0 mm and weighing 2.7 ounces (77g) without the battery.

The length of a key matches that on a physical keyboard - it’s 0.75 iniches (19mm) and it registers up to 350 words per minute, a task even the fastest typer won’t be able to meet.

The projection also includes “mouse mode,” or more accurately “trackpad” mode where an area is projected for you to use as a trackpad.

The innovative keyboard works on both Android and iOS via Bluetooth, and supports USB connection for PCs.



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