Sunbeam Illuminated Keypad

First Impressions:

The keypad has a sleek, almost streamlined, appearance with its rounded and beveled edges and curves. The unit is nicely packaged and can be seen through the clear plastic on the front of its container. The back face of the box tells you every thing you’ll need to know, so no instruction manual here. The keypad has a good and comfortable feel to it and, in spite of its lack of weight, feels solid and sturdy.

With no software or drivers, the keypad is super easy to install and use. The keypad's lights are bright enough to be seen during daylight hours and soft enough that they won't blind you at night. That is, with the exception of the num-lock LED. My tip, don't look at it what ever you do. The num-lock LED has about the same intensity as the sun or a high-powered cutting laser. Luckily, Sunbeam located the light where your wrist will block it while in use, but it's a real pain at night when you have a bright blue light right in the corner of your vision. Those of you more adventurous folk may wish to change the LED or place a resistor between it and the power source to cut down the light's power.

I had a small problem with the keypad wanting to move around while using it. It seemed to be only an intermittent problem that seemed to occur on smoother surfaces but it was not enough of a problem to cause major troubles while using it. This could be easily solved by placing some more gripping feet on the unit's underside to supplement the two already there.

I tried using the keypad as a game controller for Counter-Strike and Battlefront 2. The keypad was comfortable and easy to use for long periods of time, but I think I'll be sticking to my regular keyboard controls for now. Those of you who already use the keypad for gaming may have a differing opinion though. Even with its good response and feel I missed the heaviness and weight of my keyboard. As for entering numbers and using it as an input for the calculator it feels and works great. The keypad uses a scissors laptop style key press system, which leaves it with a quiet and soft fall. I frequently got my fingers in the wrong spot when putting my hand on it with out looking, the bump on the '5' key seems to be hard to find but once you get it the unit delivers a good tactile feel with smooth key press action. The keys also have a smaller reach and are a tiny bit larger than my keyboard's keypad, making it a little difficult to use at first.

Select a Page Page 1: Introduction Page 2: First Impressions / Testing Page 3: Operation/Testing con't, Pictures, & Conclusion