Lenovo N5091 mini wireless keyboard, cramming a keyboard and a mouse into a sleek shell, is designed to enhance your the theater experience on your PC by giving you the reins on your couch itself.
With an orange on black motif and a glossy finish, the keyboard presents simple and elegant looks. Even with a light weight, it is solid enough to withstand the most chaotic living room conditions. Power is provided by two AAA batteries but there is no battery indicator which means you may have to keep some spares ready.

Lenovo N5091 connects with your PC through a small USB dongle. And I was impressed by the range. I freely roamed the other rooms up to distances of 32 feet with connectivity intact. I was also surprised by the ease with which it connected to desktops running Windows7, Vista and XP as well as a MacBook Pro (it doesn’t officially support OSX).

The small size of the keyboard may lead you to think that finger movement on it would be difficult. However, despite my oversized mitts, I found typing on it surprisingly easy. Though not for touch typing, the keyboard, with raised, uniform sized keys, is broad enough to keep your hands from cramping. That said however, it is clearly not intended for more serious typing than search queries and occasional emails.

You can hold Lenovo 5901 equally comfortably with one hand for scrolling, or with two for thumb typing. However, Lenovo’s decision to imitate a full size keyboard cannot be said to be a wise one. For instance, the Menu key, or shift and control keys, which come in handy when you rattle out page after page, are actually wastage of space on this compact device.

One glaring oversight in Lenovo N5901 is that it has no shortcut to Windows Media Centre especially as it claims to simplify the home theater experience on your PC. On the contrary, it sports a key with the sole function of flaring up My Computer window. And if you want to reprogram that button, you will have to use a third party software as the device does not have any sort of software. It does have playback and volume controls however and they functioned superbly even on OSX.

The N5901’s mouse, however, leaves much to be desired. Although the trackball moves smoothly, it is rather noisy and the continuous rustle of plastic on metal can quickly get on your nerves when you use it ensconced in your couch in the dead of the night. Navigating is also a bit irritating. Simple things like clicking on a link involve a two step process: first scrolling with the trackball and then moving the thumb to the appropriate mouse button to click it. Routine tasks such as scrolling through a webpage or dragging along a window need two handed operation.

Ultimately, however, Lenovo N5901 is a good compromise. At $60, you don’t really get the full usability range of a standard keyboard and mouse, but you do get comfort operating most of its features from your couch. Although the keyboard could have been a little more streamlined, and the trackball could very helpfully be replaced by a trackpad, yet it does a good job helping those couch potatoes with their PCs.