I have a I have an almost irrational desire to avoid moving my hand from the keyboard to the mouse if I can help it. The minor interruption is an inefficiency that bothers me. I’ve spent more time than I’d like to admit counting exactly how many times I have to press the tab key to navigate menus and learning keyboard shortcuts so I can get things done faster without interrupting my flow.
Using the Clevetura CLVX 1 keyboard, I can only imagine that the people who designed it are like me. This keyboard has a touchpad built right above the keys. A small section just above the space bar and between the two Shift keys has a rectangular outline, indicating that at any time, the keys you are tapping can become a touchpad.
At first, I was a little hesitant. I’m not a huge fan of trackpads (I’m the kind of person who uses an MMO gaming mouse for work), but I thought it would be nice to be able to at least move the cursor or click on something quickly. It worksThat last thought had a sarcastic tone.
Then I tried it and was pleasantly surprised: it works.
Seamless touch
The CLVX 1 can be connected to your computer via one of three Bluetooth channels (each with its own button for easy switching) or a USB-C cable. After pairing it with my laptop, I expected that I would need to download some proprietary software or something to get the most out of the device, but to my delight, I accidentally moved the cursor with the touchpad a few seconds after the pairing was done.
The keys are flat and fairly close together, which is a bit annoying when typing, but in my experience it wasn’t much different from some chiclet-style laptop keyboards. More importantly, it meant that sliding my finger across the touchpad area felt so smooth that I sometimes forgot I was touching a keyboard.
My biggest concern, of course, was whether I would accidentally activate the touchpad. The only way this concept works is if the cursor moves the instant I slide my finger across the touchpad area. If there’s any delay, or if I have to trigger some button to change, I can just grab the mouse. Impressively, the CLVX 1 managed to intuit exactly when I was trying to move the cursor, and distinguish when I was simply resting my fingers on the keyboard.
Photography: Eric Ravenscraft
At first, I had a couple of minor hiccups while I got used to it. I have a tendency to hover my fingers over the keys while I’m thinking about what I’m going to type next, and this sometimes meant I’d lightly tap a key, causing the cursor to click. Suddenly, I’d be typing three paragraphs above what I wanted. I adapted to this pretty quickly, though, either by taking my fingers off the keyboard entirely or just resting them all on the device.
It took a while for my muscle memory to adapt, but the benefits far outweighed any discomfort the adjustment period caused me. I really can’t stand having to grab the mouse just to click a button, and the comfort was amazing. Over time, my mouse started to feel more and more like an unnecessary afterthought.
Customizable clicks
The one thing I found a little odd, though, is that I don’t particularly like tapping to click on things. This is also an annoyance I have on laptop trackpads, and your preferences may vary, but I often disable the tap-to-click feature. I much prefer trackpads that support press-to-click.
In fact, I like this so much that I was shocked by my own muscle memory when I tried to click on something using the keyboard’s touchpad by pressing a random key. Clevetura anticipated people like me and gave the keyboard a Keytap mode. In this mode (activated by the Keytab button, located just above the PgUp key), you have to press the Type key (located next to the right Ctrl key) to switch to the touchpad. In this mode, you can click on things by pressing whatever key your finger is on. When you’re done with the touchpad, press Type again to return to your regular keyboard.