At a Glance
The Good: Slim, cool number pad, roller ball, charging cable
The Bad: Keys not always super responsive, pricey
Key Pad
The Eclipse Wireless Litetouch keyboard from Mad Catz -- which also puts out the Saitek brand, of which the Eclipse Touch Mouse is part of -- is a slim, techie-looking keyboard with a white backlight. It weighs about the same as your standard-issued keyboard, but it's about half the thickness. The Litetouch's shining glory is its 3-in-1 LCD key pad. The panel can be switched from a standard number pad to a media-oriented pad, to a pad with programmable keys. It also features a volume adjustor and a battery-life indicator -- all helpful things.
In order to program the key pad, you will need to run the included software, and this set up fairly quickly for me. The software proved to be intuitive, and I can really see a heavy media user getting a lot of use out of this feature.
Unfortunately, I did face a few problems. Although it gets high marks for usefulness (and its cool factor), I found that I often had to tap the number twice if I hadn't been using it for a while. Also, I found that it almost always incorrectly failed to create an em dash when using the CTRL + ALT + hyphen shortcut. It would create an em dash and then two hyphens after it. Since I use em dashes frequently, I noticed this right away. However, it's very likely that some of you may be thinking, "What the heck is an em dash?" and you'll never notice this issue.
The number pad also has a roller ball flanked by left- and right-click buttons. Although it's too small to replace a cube dweller's mouse, it's certainly practical for those who want to use the Eclipse Litetouch as a media keyboard in their living room.
Keyboard
The first Eclipse Litetouch review unit I received had the period key break off almost immediately (within a few days). Although I’m a speedy typist, I’m not exactly what you’d consider an aggressive one. Mad Catz shipped another one along, and although all keys stayed intact during the reviewing period, I did notice some responsiveness issues. The Eclipse Litetouch keys have low profiles, which made easier for my fingers to slip to unintended keys.
The Wireless Litetouch (which uses a wall charger, not batteries, for power) is considered to be a full-sized keyboard (104 keys), although it saves space by placing its navigation keys in the most right-hand column (to the left of the number pad). While not the only keyboard to do this, it’s not a favorite design because it requires some retraining on your part. As I said before, many new devices involve a learning curve, and this is part of the Litetouch’s. If you’re a frequent arrow and “Insert” or “Page Up” user, you’ll have some retraining to do.
Bottom Line
The Eclipse Litetouch would make an attractive addition to a living room or kitchen, but at $129.99, I wouldn’t recommend if for your average desk jockeys. Its slim profile and USB receiver placeholder makes it an option for travelers, although that means you also have to bring the charging cable along.
