The Legendary Optimus Keyboard, Still Not Ready

Today Engadget reported that the infamous Optimus Keyboard, will not be making its debut at the upcoming CeBIT show. For those of you who may not be familiar with the legendary keyboard, it’s been making news for quite a while. The concept is a keyboard with small displays built into every key. They keys were to be customizable, to the point where you could put the logos of different programs onto each key, and pressing one would launch the specified program. Another example of how they would work: each letter key would appear in lowercase. However, holding down the shift key, would turn them all to uppercase.

The very concept of this keyboard, designed by Art Lebedev Studios, has had tech junkies, like myself, yearning for its release for years. And finally over the past few months it’s been making news, that it is no longer a concept, but that it was going into production soon and that it would be shown in person. However, with this news came some details about the keyboard that dissuaded many people, also including myself.

One of these revelations was that the keys would not be colored. What good is having a pretty iTunes or Internet Explorer logo on your keyboard if it’s going to be grayscale? Then that was taken back, and they decided that the keys would use OLED (organic light-emitting diode) technology. This was taken back at one point, but is again the plan for the keyboard. However, this means that the LEDs in the keyboard will have a lifespan. Yes, you can expect to have your keys die eventually. With the latest update, they revealed that the lifespan is expected to be five years.


A five-year life expectancy is only slightly ludicrous, that is, until you hear the price. These days, a high-end keyboard might cost somewhere around $80, with a few exceptions over $200. So if the highest of high-end keyboards cost $200 you might expect the Optimus to cost somewhere around that, maybe even $300. I could even settle with the idea of it costing twice as much, $400 or even $500. However, at that point, I’d have to understand that I would never own one. Well, the price first came out, somewhere around $1,200. At $1,200, as we’ve established in previous posts, you can also get an all-in-one LG Blu-Ray burner, or most of a video conferencing robot. Well, with Engadget’s latest post, they’ve established that the Optimus, now named Optimus Maximus, will cost you $1,490. Honestly, Art, are you kidding? I suppose at $1,490 a pop, selling just five or six, will do a long way in recouping some of the R&D costs.

I just can’t see this keyboard as a justifiable purchase for anyone, except maybe Bill Gates. I understand that a lot of work has gone into making it, but $1,490 is just too much for a keyboard that is going to slowly die over a rather short period of time. You can, however, by replacement keys, for a mere $10. Still, it’s unfortunate to see such a promising project turn out this way. In my eyes, over the years the project has lost it’s shine. Now don’t see an amazing keyboard, one that you would only expect to see in Sci-Fi, now all I see are a few developers who came up with a good idea, and had a few computer generated renders of it made up. And once it became popular they realized that they were going to have to deliver, and in the process they’ve not been able to keep all the promises that they’ve made, and with the price tag, they’ve made it unattainable for almost all average consumers.