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Raspberry Pi Keyboard Mini Review

2022/09/10 by sudo Leave a Comment

The raspberry pi keyboard is small and compact, perfect for traveling with if you have a phone or tablet but want a physical qwerty keyboard that you can connect with a cable. The cable connection saves significant battery power compared to Bluetooth keyboards. The key spacing of the keyboard is reasonable, but it does feel somewhat cheap when compared to premium keyboards like he MX keys. It’s got a very plasticy feel to it and there’s some sloppy key movement which might put off some more professional typists. For small pieces of work or ones that don’t require significant speed it is tenable as a keyboard, but if you’re in it for typing speed and accuracy there’s just something about it that seems to slow you down.

The keyboard itself requires a reasonable amount of force to trigger key presses and it makes quite a lot of noise for a low profile keyboard. I was quite surprised by this and I’m not sure what about the mechanics and construction make it work in this way. Coming from an IBM model M you might feel quite at home with the stompy key presses but from something like the MX Keys as a more modern low profile example I would say my preferences lead towards the more premium keyboard. You can soft type with the keyboard but something about it, either the construction quality or key travel distance really makes me want to hard-press instead of gently touch each key.

The integrated USB hub makes the device slightly more interesting than most run of the mill keyboards. It has been quite useful when the keyboard is setup on a desktop PC or with a laptop with few USB ports It’s allowed quick insertion of USB drives and even the wireless dongle for my mouse. I would not say it is a killer feature though.

I’ve been able to use the Pi keyboard, using a micro-USB to USB-C shim with both my phone (Google Pixel) and tablet (Samsung s6 lite). It has worked well with Google Docs in particular, although the keyboard did need changed from English US to English GB layout to work with quote marks, etc.

Overall I’d rate the Raspberry pi keyboard with half marks, 5 out of 10. It’s not unpleasant to work on and entirely serviceable but it does leave me longing for a better keyboard when writing longer pieces and it does get a little bit tiring to type on with the key stomp. Good for it’s price range but nothing to write home about.

Filed Under: Review, Technology, Uncategorized Tagged With: keyboards, raspberry pi, review

Iiyama 34″ IPS Ultra-Wide Monitor XUB3493WQSU Review

2020/04/26 by sudo Leave a Comment

The Iiyama XUB3493WQSU is a low cost, reasonable quality IPS screen with a few minor issues that shouldn’t detract from the ultrawide experience. If you’re looking for a good quality, budget ultrawide, this should be near the top of your list!

Background

Ultrawide monitors. They’re the current “big thing” in the monitor industry, with big brands producing 49″ super ultrawides. Much as I’d like to own such screens, I really don’t have that kind of money (or space)! So I spent many months investigating ultrawide monitors with just a few specifications:

  • It must have an IPS panel, in my mind they’re generally superior in terms of colour and quality
  • It must be at least 34″ in size, otherwise it’s smaller than my current work monitor I’d be replacing it with
  • It must be at least 3440 by 1440, again to make it practical as a replacement
  • It must be flicker free. I’m really sensitive to some types of light flickering; they give me migraines
  • Ideally, it shouldn’t make me regret the purchase too much afterwards! (because money).

After dreaming of a number of the LG utltrawides for some time, but not being able to justify £700+ for a screen, I discovered the Iiyama 34″ XUB3493WQSU, an IPS panel with flicker free technology. I have to admit, when I found this I thought it was too good to be true and passed it by a few times. The listing on Ebuyer and Amazon were not clear about it’s flicker free credentials and there were no reviews of it anywhere online (this has since changed). Having interrogated the Iiyama website about this screen, I decided to give it a go and below are my impressions.

 

Initial Impressions

I purchased the screen from Ebuyer, a UK based company. They shipped the monitor in its original packaging (no extra box, so that the shipping label was stuck onto the actual Iiyama packaging). It’s large, but as a result is well packaged, with polystyrene cutouts protecting the screen. It comes with a few cables and power lead. It’s reasonably easy to remove from the packaging.

The first thing this screen reminded me of was a Dell Ultrasharp. It’s got a similar bezel to the 2015 models and has a stand that provides some tilt, pivot and height adjustment. Note: there is a sticker on the stand stating that the pivot function is not supported; this makes sense, since the monitor is so wide it can’t really go anywhere!

XUB3493WQSU

The size of this monitor does not come across very well in the photos I’ve taken, but it certainly makes an impression of being big!

Iiyama XUB3493WQSU tilted as far as it allows

Iiyama XUB3493WQSU rear branding

Iiyama XUB3493WQSU and Dell u2514h

Iiyama XUB3493WQSU and Dell u2514h from above for size comparison

Iiyama XUB3493WQSU rear ports

Iiyama XUB3493WQSU rear input ports

The screen feels well built, as well built as the Dell monitor, which is impressive given they were almost the same price! The stand offers significant height adjustment – a little over 12CM total movement. Pivot and (unsupported) tilt is also quite impressive.

Ultra-Wide, Ultra-Good?

The monitor is really easy to set up (with the slight exception of its sheer size on my desk). I did find my old display port and HDMI cables didn’t work – the screen wouldn’t display anything but black. It’s possible that due to their age they don’t support modern standards used by this monitor. The included cables felt a little cheap, but the monitor worked perfectly after swapping the cables out.

I did find that there’s a lot of light bleed with the screen – something that plagues IPS screens. This is something that’s hopefully visible in the pictures below, notice that the light bleed from the bottom left hand side of the screen is significantly worse than the right hand side.

Iiyama XUB3493WQSU light bleed right hand side

Iiyama XUB3493WQSU light bleed right hand side

Iiyama XUB3493WQSU light bleed left hand side

Iiyama XUB3493WQSU light bleed left hand side

Iiyama XUB3493WQSU running Tomb Raider

Iiyama XUB3493WQSU running Tomb Raider benchmark

Iiyama XUB3493WQSU running Orville simulator

Iiyama XUB3493WQSU running Orville simulator

As you can hopefully make out the Tomb Raider screen is darker and shows a lot more light bleed than a brighter screen as seen in the Orville simulator. If this is the kind of thing that bothers you, then re-consider buying this screen! I actually find that it’s not too noticeable when properly engaged in a game.

The actual game play on this screen is reasonably good (coming from the Dell u2514h, which is not a gaming monitor in itself). I did get some screen tearing, but my graphics card is a reasonably (7 years) old Nvidia Zotac 770 so it can’t take advantage of the freesync support this monitor provides. I would suggest getting a better graphics card than I have for any reasonable game players out there! It’s okay for older games such as counter strike source, but the newer Tomb Raider games really struggle (as you may have noticed from my 17 frames per second). Game play is actually surprisingly immersive, I cannot describe the experience, but once you’ve used an ultrawide you likely won’t want to go back!

Working on the screen is reasonably easy to do, and I can comfortably have a Libre Office Writer and Firefox window open side by side at the same time. It’s also reasonably good for coding, although I would say that a two or three screen setup is better supported with window snapping than the single display. This is important if you code like I do with about 5 different windows in active use! The text is clear and sharp, really to the extent that I would say it is the same as the Dell Ultrasharp.

The main problems with the Iiyama XUB3493WQSU are reasonably supervicial. First is of course the light bleed. It’s an IPS screen and to some extent you need to live with it. My next biggest complaint is the delay both in turning on and switching inputs. The input switch lag is crazy; we’re not talking a couple of seconds, it’s more like 8! There’s a lot of hesitation in the monitor when using the input buttons as well and the menu can be almost impossible to use. Once you’ve got the monitor configured as you want I would advise never touching the input buttons again for fear of messing something up and getting stuck in the menu somewhere! One last complaint is there’s a noticeable polarization effect on the left and right hand edge of the screen. I couldn’t get a good picture of this, but I’ve noticed that with a scroll bar for a web browser on the right hand side, I sometimes have to move my head to the left to stop the polarizing filter from “hiding” it behind blackness.

Overall, I think this screen has ticked all the boxes for me. I really like it. I like using lots of windows at once and my work layout is actually far easier to make dynamic based on activity with the extra real-estate to play with. I think it’s pitfalls are worth putting up with given the value of the screen, especially if you’re after an ultrawide!

Note: it does have picture in picture for multiple inputs at the same time, but I haven’t really used this feature. Given the clumsy on screen menu input, I’ve set the monitor up how I wanted it and then dared not touch it again!

Iiyama XUB3493WQSU FireWatch desktop background

Filed Under: Review, Technology Tagged With: Iiyama, review, ultrawide

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