SVEN Company is widely known to the Russian user thanks to its qualitative and relatively inexpensive speaker systems and large assortment of different computer periphery. SVEN produces and sells headphones, headsets, microphones, mice and many other products, but today our point at issue is some of other plan. We are interested in compact, wireless and specially designed keyboards to operate jointly with an iPad or smartphone. It is hard to come by a user of these mobile devices, who would not be acquainted with difficulties of quick typing on the on-screen keyboard; SVEN Comfort 8300 Bluetooth keyboard must help to cope exactly with these difficulties.
Carton and package contents
The keyboard carton is a regular cardboard, there is a window on the front side covered with transparent plastic. The front side contains minimum information. There is the description of main technical specifications and the information about a producer on the rear side. On the whole the carton is unpretentious and very common.
The package content is limited by the keyboard proper, a short User’s Manual and two ААА type batteries.
Ergonomics and design
The keyboard is developed to be used with mobile devices, and accordingly its dimensions and weight are minimum. For dimensions sake it had to sacrifice a digital module, to minimize Enter, Shift and Backspace keys, etc. Therefore it will take time to get used to sizes and location of keys. Cyrillic characters are engraved on keys in a quite quality manner; blue color is distinguished quite well even with insufficient light.
The font is classic, no crooked letters or gaudy “blunders” have not been noticed. Now as regards dimensions, the keyboard is just bigger than a modern typical smartphone, its length and width are 208 and 84mm accordingly. The device can be easily placed in the back pocket of jeans or into the inside pocket of a jacket/coat.
For the user’s convenience the producer also envisaged additional keyboard abilities by equipping the top row of F1 – F12 keys with an additional functional. With simultaneous press of FN and F1 – F12 keys you can increase/decrease the volume level, stop or start the music playback, switch over a track, etc. This functional, probably, may be called superfluous for such devices, but it may be useful for some people.
The thickness of SVEN Comfort 8300 Bluetooth is a little bit more than 5 mm, but this is the thickness of the key block only. If you turn the keyboard over you will see an element, which rises above a surface, it simultaneously serves as a support and the battery compartment.
Thanks to this support the keyboard thickness is increased rather substantially, up to two centimeters, and when in use it is placed inclined to the user, that is quite convenient.
The key material is the soft touch plastic, fingerprints on the keyboard are practically unnoticed, except for the rear side glossy surface, it collects every fingerprint and during their cleaning it is quite easily covered with microscratches. Keystrokes are rather smooth and quiet, it was achieved due to a special so-called “scissors mechanism”, which is very lasting as well, the producer promises up to 20 million strokes.
Connection
SVEN Comfort 8300 Bluetooth supports operation with MacOS, Windows, iOS and Android version 3.0 or higher operating systems. The keyboard operability was tested with Android 4.1.1 operating system. The keyboard is connected as follows: it is necessary to turn on the keyboard transmitter, to turn on Bluetooth of an iPad/ smartphone, to press Ctrl+K key combination on the keyboard and to hold within no less than 5 seconds, after that the keyboard is accessible for searching and it is displayed on the screen of your device in the list of found devices.
Then four number combination is displayed on the screen in attempting to connect to the keyboard, and after entering them into your device the keyboard is connected to it.
Everything is ready, now you can type a text in the text editor, or communicate in ICQ or Skype with comfort, which had never even dreamed for the on-screen keyboard.
Conclusion
SVEN Comfort 8300 Bluetooth is an excellent solution for persons, who have to type too much on their mobile devices, whether it be Android or well-liked iPad. The keyboard has compact dimensions, and therefore it will not take much place in your bag during journey to somewhere.
Advantages:
- Compact dimensions
- Keystroke mechanism
- Great mean time to failure
- Compatible with many OS
Operation from ААА type batteries makes the keyboard practically undischarged, because such batteries can be bought in any shop. It is also necessary to distinguish its quite democratic price, SVEN Comfort 8300 Bluetooth at the moment of writing this material can be bought for RUB 700-800.