Logitech has announced a new flagship keyboard with a business focus: The Logitech Craft. Sporting a clean look and a “creative input dial” just north of its escape key, it’s designed to augment software like Photoshop, Premiere, and Office. When you’re not working, you can use that same dial for more personal applications, changing playlists on Spotify, scrolling through tabs, or use it as a volume control.
Seemingly inspired by the Microsoft Surface dial, the Craft is designed to give the keyboard’s owners a new way to control their various applications. While many keyboards in the past have had volume control wheels, the Craft’s “crown,” as it’s known, is a customizable and intuitive input mechanism for various applications and uses.
The dial itself will automatically adjust what it does depending on which program you’re using, letting you adjust brightness in Adobe Photoshop, change stroke weight in Illustrator, enlarge text in PowerPoint and more. The Craft dial supports both turn, touch, and tap gestures, so there are plenty of interactive opportunities through the tool — though it doesn’t seem able to do fingerprint ID logins.
A number of Logitech profiles are available for this keyboard in the Options back-end software. There you can also make your own customizable profiles and functions for the Craft’s dial, remapping it for any number of applications. Logitech also promises an SDK for the keyboard in the near future, which will help application developers customize the experience for Craft users, offering even more detailed interactions through the dial.
Like many gaming keyboards, the Craft supports backlighting, though it is only white LEDs — no RGB coloring here. Although you can adjust the brightness automatically, the keyboard features a built-in light sensor so it can also automatically adjust its own brightness depending on the environment’s lighting.
Another noticeable change over most keyboard designs is the concave nature of the keys. Although most keyboards have a slight dip to them, Logitech’s caps feature obvious spherical depressions, which we’re told aid efficiency in typing.
The Logitech Craft is also wireless, so you can use it away from your desk if you like, or at least untethered from the usual wires. It has a range of up to 10 meters in an ideal environment and the connection is encrypted to make sure no one can track your keystrokes remotely.
With support for Windows PCs and Macs, you can even have the keyboard connected to multiple devices simultaneously, jumping between each system with the touch of a button.
The Logitech Craft is available now from Logitech’s own store with a price tag of $200.
