Logitech Announces The CRAFT Keyboard With Creative Dial Integration
by Brett Howse on September 4, 2017 5:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Accessories
- Logitech
- Keyboard
- Trade Shows
- IFA 2017
- Craft
Logitech has added another keyboard to its arsenal, and this time they’ve integrated an input dial into it as well. The CRAFT Advanced Keyboard is designed for “creators” in the same vein as the Surface Dial, and it provides similar functionality, albeit without the on-display capabilities.
Logitech is calling their dial the Crown, and it sits in the top left corner of the keyboard. The idea behind it is much like the Surface Dial, in that you would use your left hand to run the Crown, while your right hand is on the mouse. There’s no reason you couldn’t swap those hands around if you prefer mouse duties with your left hand, but the placement of the Crown isn’t going to be as well suited to that without moving the keyboard.
Logitech is touting the same functionality as the Surface Dial as well, in particular in creative apps like Adobe Photoshop, where you can control context-specific functions. Ian got a chance to check out the CRAFT keyboard at IFA doing just that.
In addition to the Crown, the keyboard itself is typical membrane keyboard, but it does offer “Smart Illumination” which automatically lights up the keys when your hands approach the keyboard, and the lighting adjusts to the ambient lighting. The keyboard can be connected to up to three devices, and has a switch to change which device has focus. It can be connected either over the Logitech Unifying receiver, of with Bluetooth LE.
With macOS and Windows support, the keyboard would be a way to bring the Surface Dial to a Mac.
On either OS, the capabilities of the Crown are connected through Logitech’s software suite. On a Mac, that makes sense, but on Windows, it would have been nice to see integration with the Windows Dial APIs so that the Crown could be used with any app that supported that as well, but that’s not the case, and that’s a miss by Logitech. Even if the Dial doesn’t have widespread support, there’s already plenty of apps that do support it, and none of those can be controlled via the Crown.
Logitech’s CRAFT keyboard is at the premium end of their lineup, and will be available on October for $199.99
Source: Logitech
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HomeworldFound - Monday, September 4, 2017 - link
I don't see how playing with knobs is going to revolutionise computing.abrowne1993 - Monday, September 4, 2017 - link
Well, computing already revolutionized playing with knobs.BrokenCrayons - Monday, September 4, 2017 - link
Thanks to Logitech, people all over the world can now sit down at their office computer and work their knob for hours and hours.Tams80 - Tuesday, September 5, 2017 - link
I'm not sure that's what they intended when talking about RAW images.smilingcrow - Wednesday, September 6, 2017 - link
Now there are two words you don't want to see in the same sentence; RAW & Knob.Azethoth - Monday, September 4, 2017 - link
It will not. The point is to allow different UI. For instance you can find research on how floating point numbers are faster to input using a rotary dial like this. Or people can use a keypad.Think of the mouse wheel. Can you really live without it now? Or the forward and back buttons on a mouse. Or the right mouse button? Obviously anyone can live without the mousewheel click because that thing is an unholy abortion of dumbfuckery mated with aggressive stupidity.
This will sink or swim based on its usefulness. My Corsair K95 has a roll button for volume. I kind of don't want a keyboard without that now.
MrSpadge - Tuesday, September 5, 2017 - link
I use the mousewheel click all the time to quickly close tabs.Lord of the Bored - Tuesday, September 5, 2017 - link
I use the wheel-click routinely, and would trade my side-buttons for a dedicated middle-click button like we USED to have. Then MS decided they were finally going to move to 3-button mice like everyone else made, but ruin it in the process. I am convinced wheel-click was an actively spiteful attempt to sabotage anyone that used middle-clicks.Old_Fogie_Late_Bloomer - Tuesday, September 5, 2017 - link
I use it all the time to quickly open links in new tabs.Impulses - Tuesday, September 5, 2017 - link
The roller/drum on the Corsair K series was one of the primary reasons I chose it (still clinging to my original K90!)... Tho I don't really use it anymore now since I moved to an external amp for headphones (and added a passive external knob/switcher for my active speakers), that's getting into even more of a niche tho.