Laser keyboards. Once an idea of the future, now a consistent sticking point with any gadget that relies on projection technology to fill in a gap where a physical keyboard doesn’t fit. Why does every laser keyboard hit the market and then sink into obscurity? The answer is, essentially, that it’s just not as good as a ‘real’ keyboard.
Firstly, the laser has its limits. The device is relying on its vision to tell what you’re typing, meaning you need a flat, minimally reflective surface to actually use a laser keyboard. Emphasis on flat. It’s infuriating! It would mean having to find a table to type in an airport, or bring a plank or something with you on the bus, rather than just opening up your laptop and simply balancing it on your lap to type. It actually removes more opportunities to work or play on the device than it creates.
The second issue is that a laser keyboard doesn’t provide any physical feedback. Your fingers are bashing against whatever flat surface you’re using. That doesn’t sound terrible until you actually try it, and you’ll discover why Apple is able to successfully sell typing covers for iPads even though the iPad obviously has onscreen keyboard capability. You don’t notice with your phone because you’re either typing entirely with your thumbs or pecking at the letters, both of which are totally different motions than trying to type with your entire hands at any sort of speed.
Not to mention all of the little practicalities of a keyboard needing 3D space to work in! If you accidentally press two keys at once on almost any other kind of keyboard, you’ll feel it immediately. When you double tap on a laser keyboard, you don’t until you look up at your screen. Your home row has no lines or bumps to tell you where your index fingers are on the keyboard. You can’t rest your hands on the keyboard either because it doesn’t know you’re resting, it thinks you’re still typing, at least for a little bit. Many of the issues the laser keyboard promises to solve can be solved instead by just using a Bluetooth keyboard.
The long and the short of it is that the laser keyboard doesn’t do anything better, but manages to do a whole lot of things worse. Laser keyboards aren’t the only sufferers, either. The especially thin Mac laptops, with their hair-thin keys and butterfly latches that give hardly any feedback at all, also get similar complaints, but with the added disadvantage of overdesigned hardware. Typing too hard can break it. Feedback is such an essential part of typing today that most phones come with the ‘vibrating on keypresses’ setting switched on by default. To ignore the need for feedback is to ignore decades of consumer demand, and for what? An even more fragile, even thinner device? Something that’s all screen, no keyboard, no touchpad, no nothing, not even the minimum for comfort?