When you’ve dimmed the living room lights to approximate that movie theater experience, you don’t want to kill the mood by fumbling for a way to control your TV.
Logitech is looking to provide a little illumination in the form of a backlit keyboard aimed at controlling a connected TV.
Logitech’s Illuminated Living-Room Keyboard K830 features a QWERTY layout that’s much better suited for tapping in search terms and passwords than a standard remote interacting with an on-screen keyboard. But when the only light in the room is being thrown off by the warming glow of your TV, hitting the right keys can be a challenge. So Logitech includes a backlighting feature so that the K830 automatically dims or brightens its keys depending on the ambient light.
Backlighting comes at a premium. The K830 costs $100. By contrast, Logitech’s basic wireless keyboard, the K360, costs $30 while the K400, which includes an integrated touchpad like the K830, has a $40 price tag.
The K830 connects with a Unifying receive over 2.4GHz wireless. You get a 33-foot range with the keyboard.
The integrated touchpad lets you navigate around a TV menu, and you can customize the touchpad settings if you prefer. The K830 doesn’t offer dedicated media control keys—an odd choice for a keyboard that’s being pitched for the living room. Instead, Logitech includes function keys for managing entertainment features—F9 for launching a media player, for example, or F10 for controlling playback.
Logitech says the Illuminated Living-Room Keyboard K830 will be available later this month.
