ThinkPad Keyboard II with Mac
New ThinkPad Keyboard was released last year and I, as a ThinkPad lover, ordered it immediately. Since it’s a great upgrade for the first time in 7 years, I would like to introduce it and how to use it with Mac comfortably in this article.
What I have to mention first is stability of the housing. The previous model had a cheap sense of typing compared to the keyboard which is equipped on the actual ThinkPad laptop, but this new external keyboard is built on the internal iron board which offers stable and solid typing. Though this makes the keyboard slightly heavier than the previous model, I feel this is fair trade-off. Another negative point in new model is shorter key stroke (1.8mm while 2mm in the previous model). But looks like the recent ThinkPad laptops’ key stroke is the same level. Overall, this new keyboard offers the almost same sense of typing with ThinkPad laptops and obviously better than MacBook’s keyboard. Also, the trackpoint is a great pointing device without any doubt.
This new keyboard supports USB and Bluetooth connectivity and both wireless! For USB, a small transmission unit is bundled. This allows us to use this keyboard even before launching OS in wireless which is great. Still Bluetooth connection doesn’t support multiple devices as the previous Bluetooth model. However, we can use two devices by connecting different devices for USB and Bluetooth. The last thing I would mention here is: In the previous Bluetooth model, FnLock didn’t work with Mac, meaning we needed to push Fn key whenever we want to use Function keys which was super frustrated. But with this new keyboard, FnLock is available on both USB and Bluetooth. We no longer need to use Fn key to use Function keys.
The downside of wireless keyboard is battery. So far, the battery-life of this keyboard is good. The battery is chargeable via USB-C and can be used for more than a month once charged. However, it will deteriorate over time and cannot be replaced. We will have to buy new one someday. This is the destiny of battery-embedded wireless keyboards.
Let’s move on to how to use this keyboard with Mac comfortably. The key is still Karabiner-Elemenets which allows us to customize keyboard layout on Mac. Here is my current configuration which reproduces the default Mac keyboard layout on ThinkPad keyboard as much as possible.
Also, I prefer to disable the center button of trackpoint. You need to check a device which is recognized as a mouse device to configure it.
Then, you can disable the center button as follows.
Note that Mac recognizes keyboard and trackpoint as the same device on Bluetooth. So, for Bluetooth, you need to do this configuration for the same device with the keyboard.
In my opinion, it’s worth to upgrade for existing ThinkPad Keyboard users. Almost everything I was frustrated in the previous model is solved. This is what we have wanted to have for 7 years. However, I still have some ideas to be improved.
- USB wireless connection module for USB-C
- Wired connection support (on USB-C)
- Horizontal scroll by trackpoint on Mac (If I remember correctly, this was available in the previous Bluetooth model)
- Multi devices pairing on Bluetooth
Also, I saw some reviews which mention the durability of tilt legs. Actually, I have also broken legs when I was using the previous model (and also this model was broken in 2 years!). It’s really fragile and should be improved in the next model. Anyway, I’m looking forward to see ThinkPad Keyboard III, hopefully within next 7 years. 🙏
