right here. This is the intended usage model of this product. This is the
Phantom lap board. I'm sitting on a couch and I have the Phantom lap board
where it belongs on my lap. So, it is no longer a Phantom, although it does say
Phantom on the box because it finally exists. It's finally released. I have a
physical lapboard now. We've been talking about this product for ages, but
here it is. So, this is a wireless laser mouse and keyboard combo with a built-in
sort of mouse pad surface. The keyboard swivels around. It's got all these great
features, but I think probably the best thing to do is take a quick look at the
box here and then get it open so we can have a look at it. So, here we've got
the package contents, which I'm sure you're fully capable of reading. On the
back, we've got some outlines of the media functions that it has. So, it has
13 media keys, 10 of which are like um
FN something else keys. So, they've got the the blue text on them and then three
dedicated media keys. Here we've got another general outline of the overall
specs. So, remember this is well, not remember, I haven't said it yet, but the
intended use of this keyboard is from the couch. So, they want you to be able
to game, operate the internet, do whatever it is you do on a computer with
your media PC from the comfort of the
couch. So, we've had we actually had a look at the Vision Tech Candy Board
recently, and my overall impressions of that was this is pretty cool, but if I
were actually going to like sit on sit on the couch and browse the internet, it
wouldn't really be suitable. So, this is
meant to be the sort of in between having a dedicated uh keyboard device
that is handheld and using like a regular keyboard and mouse and operating
the mouse on the couch beside you. So, here, let's have a let's have a look at
the laser mouse. What the cameraman was trying to do. So, we've got a glossy
white finish on here. There's a black version as well. We've got a scroll
wheel, two buttons, no back and forward buttons. I wouldn't have minded seeing
that, but maybe in Rev 2. On the bottom, we've got a power on and power off
switch, as well as a battery.
Oh, I'm not sure how that works. Hold on. There's probably a way to do this.
That's cleverer than I am. I bet you push this in and then slide it
or something. Okay. Well, we'll figure out the battery later. There's a binding
key and that's about it. You can see the laser sensors right there. So, there's
the mouse and then the keyboard. This is the really innovative piece because the
reality of it is you could kind of use it with any
wireless mouse that you so desire because here I'm going to go ahead and
move the box. They both operate with AA batteries and they estimate about a 4
month lifetime for the batteries. Here is how it works. I actually don't know
how it works yet, but okay, there we go.
So, the lap board actually sits like
this. And then if you're left-handed, you can operate the mouse on this
surface right here. So, I'm going to go ahead and put it down the way that it's
intended to be used. So, if I'm left-handed, it works like this. But get
get this. Wait, there's more. There's more. Okay. So, you actually can take
the lap board and turn it at any angle you like,
including all the way the other way around. So, now you can hold it like
this. So, you can type, which is actually reasonably comfortable, and the
keys feel all right. I really like the keyboard layout on this thing. I cheated
a little bit before I did the unboxing, but they haven't done anything stupid.
Everyone always does something stupid on a keyboard. It's like, "This keyboard
would be great except it's got a short backspace." Or, "This keyboard would be
great except it has a short shift key." This keyboard is just great. It's
compact. It has all the keys that you really need, including dedicated arrow
keys. Yes, thank you. It's designed for internet browsing. You've got home, end,
page up, page down, dedicated keys. So, it's got everything you need to
comfortably browse the internet. The tactile response is reasonably good. You
got long shift keys that are exactly where they belong. long backspace key,
long enter key. I mean, they got everything right. I don't think I've
seen a keyboard that's gotten everything right in terms of a standard layout. And
I mean, that's the funny thing is standard layout. It's supposed to be standard. It's supposed to be easy.
Anyway, here's your media keys. So, I'm not sure exactly what all of these do,
although I can cheat a little bit and I can pull out the box and we can find
out. So, F1 is going to launch media center. Okay, that's pretty cool. F2
launches my music and then my photos, my videos, my TV. Uh you can play back a
DVD with a dedicated media key. So it's all about media and games. So this laser
mouse Phantom is saying is perfectly capable of gaming. You can see the mousing surface, the usable size of it
is actually quite large. Like I can go all the way up and down here. I can go
all the way side to side until my knuckle brushes the bottom of the lap board. And you can see they haven't
cheaped out on the surface. So even though the edge, you can see the edge of
the mousing surface is here. They've used the same material here. So, you can
actually cheat a little bit if you want to go over a bit further. Mind you, I
guess you'd run into that USB dongle pretty quick unless you're really kind
of uh creative about it. So, there's the USB dongle that's also included. So,
that's a 2.4 GHz. So, you can see it's a Phantom Model 3000. So, that's pretty
cool. Plug that into your computer and then press uh presumably the bind key on
the mouse. And then I don't know if there's a bind key on the keyboard. We
haven't flipped it over yet. So, here on the bottom, oh, okay, this is neat. So,
you've got two rubber bars all along the
bottom of the Phantom lap board. So, that's going to keep it in place while
you're frantically gaming or less frantically doing something else. You
can see it's actually quite difficult to slip. You can't see that, but I'm
telling you that it's actually quite difficult to move it around once it's
positioned on your lap. Now, the overall feel of the keyboard is it does have a
little bit of flex. You're not going to get around that. I mean, you they're creating a hinge device that is
basically, you know, just using an ARM down here to support the whole keyboard.
But as long as you're not mashing on your keyboard, you're going to be able
to use it quite comfortably. Okay. So, you can see once I put a little bit of
weight on it and I start typing, it doesn't actually move much even when I'm
depressing the keys. So, it does not interfere with the typing process. Take
my hand off. Use this. And let's have a look at the mechanism itself. So, I
mean, that's going to sort of be a make or break point for something like this.
So, I don't know how Oh. Oh, there we go. Oh, okay. I get it. So, this piece
right here when you lift it up, see that
lock in place. So, then to lower the lap board, you just pull No, push it in and
lower it down. And then you can use the lap board without the mouse
should you so desire. And then this I
don't know what this piece does, but Okay, here. Let's lift it up again. So, it only has one setting, which honestly,
I don't think that's really very bothersome, but maybe some people
wouldn't like that. It's only got the one setting, but the fact that you've
got this adjustability, although I'm not sure what some of these settings are
actually for, like maybe if you wanted to sort of hold it at a bit of an angle
like this, and then you have maybe have like kind of a longer right ARM and you
want to hold it over here. I don't know. Mostly I can see people using it like
this or in the left-handed configuration where they turn it around and then use
it on the other side. But uh yeah, I
guess I said pretty much all I want to say about it. This looks pretty cool. I
can't wait to try it out. I'll be doing a a more full review once I find out,
well, how's the wireless signal strength? How comfortable is it to
actually sit on the couch and browse the internet or play some games? And uh
overall, my impressions are quite solid. Um,
yeah, this looks pretty cool actually.