Onkyo unveils aluminum WAVIO keyboards
By Darren Murph 
posted February 7th 2007 2:21AM
posted February 7th 2007 2:21AM
We'll admit, we've seen a plethora of unique and well-featured keyboards in the past few months, but we can't exactly say we saw this one coming. Now that pigs are reaching cruising altitude and Denon's kicking out some new high-end headphones, we suppose an aluminum keyboard to match Onkyo's recently-unveiled metallic PC isn't all that shocking, but it's certainly not the company's usual cup of tea. Nevertheless, the WAVIO aluminum keyboard rocks a fairly typical QWERTY layout, an unfortunately truncated backspace key and spacebar, a noticeably cluttered numeric keypad, a bevy of macro / multimedia hotkeys, and entirely too much bezel for our liking. Still, the board comes in a few flavors, with a more rectangular wired USB version costing ¥8,000 ($67), while the curvaceous cordless version comes bundled with a matching critter for ¥5,000 ($42) more. Those who don't mind the tether can pick up the KB-1 sometime next week, while the folks waiting on the KM-1W won't have any luck until late March, but be sure to click on through for a few more closeups of Onkyo's oddities anyway.[Via AkihabaraNews]
Just so you know, that is the standard layout for a Japanese keyboard. I assume it will be different if they release it in an English-speaking country.
Yeah, that's actually on the wide side for a Japanese spacebar... my last Japanese keyboard had a spacebar the size of a shift key!
It's got that big-ass enter key from the 80s...hate those.
keepin it real fake: the onkyo vaio
I would fully support any lawsuit that Sony may bring against this blatant rip-off of the Vaio name and trademark.
Am I the only one that gets a good laugh whenever hearing about this company? I mean cmon, its the Onkyo Wavio. THE ONKYO WAVIO. Say it out loud.
Copyright infringement and funny names aside, the black keyboard does look pretty nice. I would probably get one if it had a normal english layout. Put low profile laptop keys on that and youd have one sexy keyboard for a good price.
Spaces aren't used in Japanese sentences, but the spacebar is used for tabbing through lists of kanji.
Commadore64 meets Sony and has a child...
Onkyo Wavio? is some kind of pig latin knock-off?
This thing is making my head spin... this is a clear VAIO ripoff!
Where is the creativity Onkyo?
We have Sony fan boys now? It's a keyboard, who cares?