Keyboards aren’t particularly sexy, let’s be honest. Unless of course, like me, you genuinely enjoy the art of typing. If that’s the case then you’ll know that typing anything longer than three or four sentences on a tablet is a pretty poor experience. Sure, it’s doable and it’s not the end of the world if you have to deal with email or whatever like that, but it’s far from ideal. As such, there are now more Bluetooth keyboards on the market than we can deal with. That doesn’t mean they’re all good though and many of them try to stand out by including stands, illumination and more. What I’ve come across with the BK1003E from Inateck is a keyboard that doesn’t break the bank, offers a decent typing experience no matter which device you’re using and isn’t a bad-looker, either.
Starting with the design of the keyboard, Inateck have kept things simple here with very readable keys, a stainless-steel back (while a massive fingerprint magnet) whick looks very nice and carries round to a thin strip on the front of the keyboard. There’s a gentle slope to the keys as well, which I’ve tried my best to show in the gallery below, which makes a difference on a flat surface; there’s just enough tilt here to provide a very nice typing experience. The keys are large, and each features a sort of dip that comes from every corner of the key to the center. This is another nice touch that genuinely makes a difference, and it’s a subtle design choice as well.
There’s one thing that might be somewhat offputting to some users and that’s the size of this keyboard. While definitely portable, this isn’t exactly small. I’ve compared the keyboard to a Nexus 9 (sans case) in the gallery, which shows how large it is. For me, this is a big plus – I have large hands and I’m used to larger keyboards – but for those looking for something more portable, the extra few inches here might not be ideal.
On to the actual typing experience and Inateck have definitely got this right here. The keys are well spaced out on this keyboard, and I rarely found myself hitting two keys at the same time as I would with other keyboards. When typing, there is a feeling of hitting the bottom of the board a lot, as in the keys feel quite shallow, but this is easily overcome after getting used to things. While an annoyance, I doubt there are many Bluetooth keyboards immune to such a problem. I could easily type for a few hours straight on this, and I spent a lot of time over the holidays doing so. I made few typos or errors and I could type a decent clip here, too. The arrow keys are actually quite usable thanks to the keyboard’s larger size and the function keys for Android (once you hit the Fn and Q keys to enable them) are handy, too. With keys for home, search, copy, paste and media keys the main bases are covered. All-in-all, this is a decent typing experience, and one I would gladly give up bag space for.
At $26.99, the Inateck BK1003E isn’t exactly peanuts, but it’s a far cry from being expensive. Especially considering how well it performs. Still the fact it’s a little longer than other Bluetooth keyboards could be an issue. You can purchase the BK1003E for yourself from Amazon or directly from Inateck’s website.