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(Review) - We’ve looked at a number of Kensington products thus far, and we’ve noticed an interesting trend. Almost all of Kensington’s products are straightforward in terms of design and usability, which makes them more attractive than a lot of products that tend to overcomplicate simple functions. Today, we have the company’s PilotBoard wireless keyboard and mouse duo for a quick look, and we hope Kensington can continue to deliver on the quality we’ve come to expect from its products.

As is the case with a lot of duos, the package includes a wireless keyboard and a mouse set with RF wireless technology. Right off the back, we would’ve preferred the standard wireless technology (something that Logitech already employs in a number of its wireless products) or Bluetooth connectivity. The fact that we have to make sure the receiver is within a viewable distance of the devices makes us slightly uncomfortable considering how wireless technology has improved over the years for peripherals.

From the layout standpoint, the keys on the keyboard are smooth and soft to type on, which is one of the main deciding factors. The good part of the keyboard is fairly ordinary, although Kensington has taken a very Logitech-like approach by giving added functionality to the "F" keys at the top. You can now use the function switch to toggle between the regular F keys and other features that include Save, Copy, Spell, Bold and other such features. The PilotBoard keyboard is also equipped with a Zoom/Scroll wheel that you can use to work with documents on the left, while a set of multimedia keys are situated at the very top of the device, which are again a commodity. However, we certainly appreciate the detachable wrist rest for those of you would rather replace it with a better one or remove it altogether.

The wireless optical mouse is your common household mouse with two buttons and a scroll wheel. That’s it. Needless to say, there’s no innovation going on with either of the peripherals. This is your common household duo that’s very basic in what it does without any bells and whistles whatsoever.

During our performance testing, we unfortunately couldn’t test the battery life, since we haven’t had the PilotBoard duo for that long. On the contrary, we did test the signal strength and weren’t impressed at all. We had the RF receiver less than 3ft. away from both devices, and yet we were still experiencing heavy lag during gaming and normal sessions. In order to make sure there were no extraneous factors that were disturbing the signal (there’s no reason why they should), we plugged in another RF wireless duo and it worked perfectly. When we were working in Word, we noticed the keyboard would take half a second or so before inputting the characters. It was annoying beyond belief.

That’s not all, though. We tried to program some of the multimedia keys to launch specific programs, but for some odd reason, the driver wasn’t recognizing the newly inserted commands. Dealing with the PilotBoard duo was too cumbersome; when other companies are innovating their peripherals, the least Kensington could’ve done was to make sure their simple duo was working correctly. It was awfully careless of them to release a product that’s obviously in an immature state. It’s more like a Beta than a mature release.

Even though the drawbacks far outnumber the benefits, the keyboard is undoubtedly one of the softest and silent ones to type on. It was a pleasurable experience, to say the least. Similarly, the ergonomics of the mouse and the keyboard (with its detachable wrist rest) were also superb.

With that said, Kensington certainly needs to make sure to innovate and release often to stay updated with consumer requirements. Now that we are seeing laser devices make their way into the market, RF is slightly old school. More importantly, however, the company needs to release mature products that don’t frustrate users. It’s puts a dent on its reputation, and unnecessarily annoy users with products that should be the simplest to work with. For $69.99, we would recommend you pass on Kensington this time and look at other and far better alternatives, maybe from Logitech or Microsoft.