The Logitech K480 Bluetooth keyboard is an excellent device for people who have multiple mobile devices like a smartphone, tablet and laptop. I came across this keyboard when I was out shopping for some stationery and what got my immediate attention was just how well it stood out when compared with the other competing products on the shelf. The Logitech K480 keyboard is designed to be used as a desktop accessory and it comes with a built in cool looking lime green cradle that you can simply rest your smart phone and your tablet when you need to type a document or an email or even simple text message.
Who Is This For?
The Logitech K480 keyboard is recommended for students, business men and women and pretty much anyone who owns a smartphone or tablet and they need to be able to get access to a full-sized keyboard while on the go.
Now this keyboard is way more powerful than it looks. To be honest, I personally think that Logitech listened to its customers and they have studied all of the competing offerings currently in the market today and ended up designing this keyboard. After playing around with it for the first 5 minutes, I was hooked and that was the reason I had to have one.
Key Features
The Logitech K480 keyboard comes with a built in toggle 3 position switch, located on the upper left hand side of the keyboard layout. Each position would represent a connected Bluetooth device. So what does that mean for you, the owner off this keyboard? Simply put you can connect up to three devices via Bluetooth connections at the same time. Now isn’t that cool?
Another great feature is the simple docking station. There are no wires and the brightly colored docking station (lime green on a black background) is about a half an inch deep and about 10 inches wide. The default viewing angle is about 60° which I found was quite comfortable after long periods of typing.
You can successfully pair this keyboard with all of the popular mobile and desktop operating systems in use today such as Android devices, Windows smartphones and tablets, chrome OS devices, iOS devices and let’s not to forget our friends who own Mac OS computers. In other words, full compatibility across the board.
There are two Bluetooth connect buttons that are located on the upper right-hand corner of the keyboard which you would press to sync up to all of these devices. The button on the left labelled “PC” is the one that you would press when you want to connect to Android, Windows and Chrome OS devices. The button on the right labelled “I” is the one that you would use when you want to pair with Apple iOS and Apple Mac OS devices.
Don’t be deceived by the size of this keyboard for it actually has roughly the same surface area as a typical keyboard on a 15 inch laptop. This keyboard is actually similar to the one on my 15 inch Mac Book Pro and would you believe that the keys are roughly the same size and the spacing between the keys is also roughly the same size as those on the Mac Book Pro. Even the length and width of the overall keyboard itself is roughly the same as the one on my Mac Book.
I am a novice typist and I can type a decent number of words per minute on a regular PC keyboard and I actually found that my typing speed on the Logitech K480 keyboard was roughly the same or even sometimes better than that on my laptop.
Logitech did hold back on a couple of bells and whistles however which I actually did not miss seeing that the goal was to strip out the unnecessary features and produce a streamlined and low cost keyboard. Speaking of price, an MSRP of $50 US is quite affordable for a Bluetooth keyboard. For one, there are no connectors in the docking station to charge your equipment and secondly the keyboard is not back lit.
Now this keyboard does require two AAA batteries in order to power the Bluetooth radio and they do come preinstalled with a pair of alkaline batteries when you buy one of these brand-new.
When it comes to the maximum size of tablet that you can fit into the docking station of this keyboard I did get to test it out with the standard iPad – you know, the one that measures about 9.5 inches or so – and it fit comfortably in both portrait and landscape mode. I even was even able to fit both an iPad in portrait mode as well as a standard 5 inch smart phone in the same dock at the same time.
I did even try to fit in a 12 inch (diagonal screen size) Microsoft Surface Pro 3 tablet and it obviously did not fit in landscape mode but it didn’t fit in portrait mode. Having a huge 12 inch tablet fit securely in portrait mode is perfect for word processing. Now, you may assume that if you put in a large enough and heavier enough tablet at a 60° angle in the keyboard dock that the whole thing might fall over on its back. But lo and behold, it seems as though the product designers at Logitech put a lot of research and development money into this keyboard design because I did try to tip over the tall and heavy Surface Pro 3 tablet while it was in the cradle and it didn’t fall over. Nice.
Logitech has even included all of the shortcut keys that covers all of the operating system types. There are shortcut keys for the Mac OS and iOS devices as well as the Android, Windows and Chrome OS.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- The price
- Large realistic size keyboard
- 3 way toggle switch that connects up to three devices
- A large docking station to hold multiple devices
- Compatible on all of the popular operating systems
- It does not tip over when using large tablets.
Cons
- The docking station does not have any charging ports
- Only one viewing angle
- You have to buy batteries for it as opposed to having to building rechargeable battery.
Summary and Where Can You Get This
In summary I would strongly recommend that you get this keyboard if you do have many mobile devices and you need a very good Bluetooth keyboard that can connect to them simultaneously. For the price, you’re getting a very valuable accessory.
If you want to get your hands on one of these, you can check them out here at Amazon where you can get these at a pretty decent price.
Checkout my YouTube video review of this keyboard below.