Enermax Aurora Micro Wireless Keyboard Review

It didn’t seem right to put this keyboard through its paces in Battlefield 3, it just wasn’t designed for it. Didn’t stop me though as here at eTeknix we like to test what we can, safe to say I got killed, a lot. Paired the keyboard up with a normal mouse and this made for a perfectly good desktop keyboard and it played Battlefield 3 just fine. Just don’t think that a trackball and built in mouse buttons will help you in competitive online FPS gaming (couldn’t resist trying though).

I do a lot of typing on a daily basis and again, this keyboard isn’t designed as a desktop replacement but those scissor switch keys make for a very pleasant typing experience, it will go down well with people who enjoy high quality laptop keyboards and the scissor switches feel not unlike Cherry MX Red mechanical keys.

Next up was range, this being based on 2.4GHz I was expecting good range without a loss of signal and I wasn’t disappointed. It seems I can use this keyboard to type from any room in my house, just a shame I can’t see through walls. Could come in handy should you be running a long cable to an external display source. No signal loss it seems either so that’s a big win for the Aurora.

Setup was quick and easy, with Windows 7 finding the correct drivers within seconds and every hotkey working straight away. Which allowed me to crack on and start browsing webpages and playing around in media applications. functionality was fantastic and I simple couldn’t fault either the functionality or feel of the keyboard after two hours use (see: browsing facebook and reddit).

It’s worth pointing out that I run dual screen PC setup, the first connect to my desktop monitor, the 2nd is a 15m HDMI cable running to a 46″ TV / AV Receiver setup at the far end of the room. So I do already use a wireless keyboard solution on a regular basis. I also have a HTPC system with the latest edition of Ubuntu and XBMC installed, which I might add accepted the keyboard just as easily as Windows 7 did. The only obvious draw back on Linux was that not all the non primary hot keys worked immediately and buttons like “My Pictures” and “DVD” didn’t have default shortcuts on that OS, hardly a deal breaker though.

The scroll wheel, high quality mouse buttons and adjustable DPI track ball make for a pleasant browsing experience in both a web browser and in applications like XBMC.