Yesterday, the keyboard in my Logitech MX3100 desktop stopped working, and after half an hour of trying to get it to work again, I decided it was time to replace it.  After poking around online I found the Logitech Illuminated Keyboard, which was just released a few days ago, and I headed over to Best Buy to pick one up.

At 9.3mm thick, the keyboard is incredibly thin.  It uses laptop style keys and, true to its name, the keys are backlit.  Unlike other backlit keyboards I’ve seen, however, it’s still very easy to read the keys even when the backlight is turned off.

Another nice thing about this particular keyboard is that Logitech didn’t decide to mess with the location of the backslash/pipe key, which a couple of models I looked at did (by using a large Enter key, then moving the backslash/pipe to the left of the backspace).

The Illuminated Keyboard doesn’t have a lot of unnecessary keys like my MX3100 did.  There are a couple of media shortcut keys at the top of the keyboard, but that’s it.  For comparison, the MX3100 had a few programmable keys, keys for launching Office and several other applications, a volume knob, zoom & scroll wheels, etc.  The result is that the new keyboard fits much better on my desk that the previous one, and I now have plenty of room to put my mouse and mousepad alongside it in the keyboard tray.

Summary:

Retail Price: $79.99

Pros: Laptop style keys, incredibly thin, well designed backlight.

Cons: Pricey for a keyboard, but as a programmer a good keyboard is essential.