A lot of keyboards these days try to be as flashy as possible, with RGB lighting, colourful keycaps, and all sorts of other gimmicks and aesthetic pulls. Logitech’s MX Keys Mini keyboard does away with all that, focusing on giving you a clean and comfortable experience of typing out your life memoir about how you miss boring, simple keyboards.
What Is It?
The Logitech MX Keys Mini is a compact wireless keyboard that uses the company’s PerfectStroke micro-scissor switch system for its non-mechanical keyboards. It features low-profile spherically-dished backlit keys for a minimalist design with a frame made out of a single metal plate.
The closest form factor that can describe the keyboard is 75%, but without the home cluster. It connects either via Bluetooth or the Logi Bolt USB receiver which can be used with up to six compatible mice and keyboards simultaneously.
Logitech’s mini keyboard works with practically any common OS, including Windows 10 and up, macOS, Chrome OS, Linux, iOS, iPadOS, and Android. It also charges via USB-C and claims a battery life of up to 10 days with the backlighting enabled and up to a whopping five months with the backlighting turned off.
Is It Any Good?
For a non-mechanical keyboard, the MX Keys Mini is surprisingly comfortable to type on. The switches have relatively short travel but are good enough for something this stealthy and are much better than the butterfly switches on my MacBook. Everything is responsive and stiff, and there is a satisfying, albeit quiet click that you wouldn’t expect from a membrane keyboard.
It also takes very little space on my desk due to its small profile and can connect with up to three different devices with the ability to quickly switch the connection using the dedicated keys with LED indications. While it’s heavier than it looks due to its metal construction, it’s light enough that you can easily take it anywhere with you.
Best of all, the Logi Options+ software allows you to easily customise most of the function keys with an extensive list of actions and even your own custom keyboard shortcut. The battery life is amazing and is virtually as advertised; it can easily last for over a week on a single charge even with me typing on it for hours every day, though it does come with a small caveat which I will get into below.
The Bad Stuff. Tell Me.
The screen capture button on the MX Keys Mini is a bit iffy for me as it keeps saving the screenshots to my desktop even though I’ve already changed the default folder, with no way to fix it as far as I can tell. For something that is seemingly designed to prioritise macOS (the keycaps use a Mac layout), this was a disappointing bug that kept me from fully loving this keyboard.
The keyboard automatically turns off the backlighting after you haven’t used it for a few seconds to save battery, with no way to turn this feature off. While it does have proximity sensors to turn the backlighting back on when it senses your hands, it is a bit disappointing that there is no option to keep the lights on continuously.
While it isn’t exactly a dealbreaker for me, I really missed having the home navigation cluster the entire time I was using the MX Keys Mini. What might be a dealbreaker though is the fact that if you don’t want or can’t use Bluetooth with it, the keyboard does not work with any receiver other than Logi Bolt, so you can’t use it with other Logitech receivers you might have lying around. The icing on the cake is that the Logi Bolt receiver is not included with the keyboard, so you will have to purchase it for an additional RM52 if you ever need it.
Should I Buy It?
The Logitech MX Keys Mini is a wonderful companion for work and easily blends with any minimal office aesthetics. The battery life is phenomenal and it is easy to quickly shove it in your backpack for travel without having to worry about it taking too much space.
That being said, the keyboard does carry an eye-watering price tag of RM489, which is on the high side for those of us who aren’t exactly keyboard enthusiasts. You can’t go wrong with this device from Logitech, but it would be remiss of me not to mention that there are compact wireless mechanical keyboards out there such as the Keychron K2 and K3 that are going for under RM400 and come with swappable switches and keycaps.
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