Hands-on with the BlackBerry Mini Keyboard

The BlackBerry PlayBook is a solid tablet and the new BlackBerry Mini Keyboard helps make it even better for the enterprise user. While the keyboard is expensive at $120, if you use your PlayBook for writing and remote access it may be valuable enough for your needs. Like most BlackBerry gear from RIM, the Mini Keyboard is branded by BB and very well made.

Check out my full ZDNet Mobile Gadgeteer post that includes a short video walk-through of using the keyboard with a PlayBook.

The PlayBook and BB Mini Keyboard go well together.

As you can see the trackpad and area below the keyboard takes up quite a bit of room.

Here you can see a close up of the keys, spacing, and missing Tab key.

There are Sym and Alt keys on the keyboard to access different functions.

I think the trackpad is the best part of the keyboard and as you can see it is quite large.

The back of the case shows you the camera opening, weak elastic strap, and flip out bracket.

There are rubber buttons for power and volume, with openings for the 3.5mm headset jack and microphone.

The flap has to be held open as you prop up your PlayBook, which is actually quite annoying.

The flap is not adjustable and as you can see here the angle is a bit extreme. I would like more control over this for watching movies, etc.

This view shows how the PlayBook and BB Mini Keyboard work together.

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