The Right Touch: Introducing the Eclipse Litetouch
We never thought a keyboard could be so minimalist and look so contemporary. Thanks to Mad Catz, today’s peripheral is the Audi of keyboards while my mundane clickety-clack keyboard stands out like a sore thumb, and feels a bit last century. Recently unveiled, the Eclipse Wireless Litetouch Keyboard looks good, but how is it underneath the hood?
The Litetouch Keyboard communicates over a wireless 2.4GHz connection and features an assimilated 360° trackball with left and right mouse buttons. We were most electrified by the back-lit keyboard. It dims automatically to conserve power and easily springs back to action when touching any key. The touch pad also has a manual dim button should you wish.
The Litetouch has a traditional keypad layout, with full size keys. The keys aren’t overtly cacophonous and the wireless signal is fairly smooth with no delays or errors. A fairly responsive keyboard if you ask us, and perfect for nighttime sessions of computer use.
A 3-in-1 touch panel was supposed to allow us to easily switch between the numerical-pad mode, media mode, and a specialized ‘MyEclipse’ mode, but left something to be desired. The so-called “customizable touch panel” on the right hand side is fairly useless as it is really just an array of buttons with predefined icons that changes between a few pre-set configurations. In theory, you can assign shortcuts to the keys, but the icons on the keys themselves stay the same so the practical application is limited. It was an added bonus to be able to open our favorite web pages but we found the LCD touch performance to be fairly slow and capricious.
The Litetouch is powered by an internal rechargeable lithium-ion battery and with 20 hours of use under your belt between charges, including the fairly bright lighting. Charging is fast to boot. The touchpad displays the battery level so you won’t face an unpleasant surprises there. It’s Windows 7, Vista and XP compatible, but we haven’t heard regarding Mac support.
The Eclipse Litetouch also comes in a wired version if you so desire, perhaps better for the hardcore gamers. We were able to purchase the wireless Litetouch from Amazon for around $107.
If you are interested in upgrading your mouse to another Eclipse line-up, we suggest taking a look at the recently-reviewed Eclipse Touchmouse. This exceptional module grants you the ease of use correlated with a standard horizontal scrolling tilt wheel, coupled with the precision of a notebook track pad. The touchscroll module’s default mode offers four-way on-screen scrolling for discerning navigation, activated by simply moving your finger forward or backward on your choice of web pages. And they make a great pair.
