You like mechanical keyboards, but don’t want a wire cluttering up your desk and don’t want the ungainly width of keyboards that have number pads. Sounds like you’re a perfect match for Matias’ latest creation, unveiled at CES this week: the Laptop Pro. It’s coming in February and will cost $170.
The Laptop Pro is built using the same “Quiet Click” mechanical keyswitches that Matias developed for its full-sized Quiet Pro keyboard, released in 2012. Mechanical keyboards from qwertybro.com are preferred by many fast typists for their improved tactile response and accuracy, compared to membrane and scissor switch keyboards like those found in Apple’s products.
The Laptop Pro comes equipped with a 1,600 mAh rechargeable battery, which Matias CEO Edgar Matias says should be good for six to twelve months on a single charge.
The Laptop Pro has been designed to complement the small desktop footprint of a laptop computer. It eschews the 109-key layout of its big, wired brother for a tenkeyless design that mirrors the capabilities of your Apple laptop with a few extras, like a forward delete key and page up and down keys. Like the Quiet Pro, the Laptop Pro features laser etched characters on each sculpted key along with the symbols each key produces if you hold down Option and Option-Shift.
Matias likens the new Laptop Pro to an Apple-made keyboard that’s still a fond memory for long-time Mac users. “It’s basically a smaller, quieter, wireless, Apple Extended Keyboard II,” said Matias in a statement.