Review: Clevetura CLVX 1 Keyboard and Touchpad

I have an almost irrational desire to avoid moving my hand from my keyboard to my mouse if I can avoid it. The minor interruption is an inefficiency that bothers me. I’ve spent more time than I care to admit counting exactly how many times I have to press tab to navigate menus and learning keyboard shortcuts so I can do things faster without interrupting my flow.

While using the Clevetura CLVX 1 keyboard, I can only imagine the folks who designed this are just like me. This keyboard has a built-in touchpad directly on top of the keys itself. A small section just above the space bar and between the two Shift keys has a rectangular outline, indicating that, at any moment, the keys you’re touching can turn into a trackpad.

I was deeply skeptical at first. I’m not a big trackpad person (I’m the type of person who uses an MMO gaming mouse for work), but I thought it would be nice to be able to at least move my cursor or click on something quickly. If it works. That last thought had a sarcastic tone.

Then I tried it. And I was pleasantly surprised. It works.

Seamless Touch

The CLVX 1 can connect to your computer via one of three Bluetooth channels (each with their own button for easy swapping) or a USB-C cable. After pairing it to my laptop, I expected that I would need to download some proprietary software or something to get full use of the device, but to my delight, I accidentally moved my cursor with the trackpad mere seconds after pairing was done.

The keys are flat and fairly close together, which is a mild annoyance while typing, but in my experience, it wasn’t that much different from some chiclet-style laptop keyboards. More importantly, it meant swiping across the touchpad area felt so smooth I occasionally forgot that I was touching a keyboard.

My biggest concern, of course, was whether I would accidentally trigger the touchpad. The only way this concept works is if the cursor moves the instant I swipe across the touchpad area. If there’s any delay, or if I have to activate any buttons to swap, I may as well grab my mouse. Impressively, the CLVX 1 managed to intuit exactly when I was trying to move my cursor, and distinguish when I was merely resting my fingers on the keyboard.

Photograph: Eric Ravenscraft

There were a couple of minor hiccups early on as I was getting used to it. I have a tendency to hover my fingers over my keys as I think about what to type next, and this sometimes meant that I lightly tapped one key, which would cause my cursor to click. Suddenly, I was typing three paragraphs above where I intended. However, I adapted to this pretty quickly by either taking my fingers all the way off the keyboard or just committing and resting them all on the device.

It took some time to adjust my muscle memory, but the benefits far outweighed any annoyance with the adjustment period. I truly cannot stand having to grab my mouse just to click one button, and the convenience was astounding. Over time, my mouse started to feel more and more like an unnecessary afterthought.

Customizable Clicks

The one thing that felt a little off for me, however, is that I don’t particularly like lightly tapping to click on things. This is an annoyance I have on laptop trackpads as well, and your preferences may vary, but I often turn off tapping to click. I much prefer trackpads that support pressing to click.

In fact, I prefer this so much that I was surprised by my own muscle memory when I tried to click on something using the keyboard’s trackpad by just pressing a random key. Clevetura anticipated people like me and gave the keyboard a Keytap mode. In this mode (activated with the Keytab button, located just above the PgUp key), you have to press the Type key (located next to the right Ctrl key) to switch to the trackpad. In this mode, you can click on things by pressing whatever key your finger happens to be on top of. When you’re done with the trackpad, press Type again to switch back to your regular keyboard.

Photograph: Eric Ravenscraft

I found this mode a little clunkier, and despite my desire to click by pressing a key, I ended up not using it very much, but I was glad it was there. Sometimes I’m doing work that involves more mouse movement than typing, and on rare occasions, I swapped to Keytap mode to make it a little smoother for me.

The CLVX 1 also has a middle-ground option if neither of those sound appealing. There are two physical buttons just below the spacebar that you can use to left- and right-click while using the trackpad. This was the most awkward for me, since I usually use my right hand to point with the trackpad, and I’d need to use my left thumb to left click, but many laptops also have this layout, so it might work for your muscle memory.

Thoughtful Extras

If the touchpad was the only feature Clevetura added, I’d already be impressed, but there were a few thoughtful extras. The function keys along the top of the keyboard are within the touch-sensitive trackpad area, but by default, they glow in different colors and have arrows printed along the bottom. Without even knowing what would happen, my curiosity took over and I swiped along them.

The F2 through F6 keys (lit up in yellow) controlled the keyboard’s backlight. Once I started swiping, I could turn the LED brightness up or down by swiping along the entire row of function keys (the lights also change to indicate that you can do this). Similarly, if I swiped along the F7 through F11 keys (lit up in purple), the entire row would then become a volume slider. There are no dedicated volume up or down keys for this reason, and frankly I’m glad Clevetura saved the space. This method makes way more sense.

Photograph: Eric Ravenscraft

There are also a couple shortcuts that can tweak the trackpad itself. Hold down Fn+U+[1-9] and you can adjust how quickly the keyboard transitions to touchpad mode. I found the default level of 5 to be perfect, but if you want it faster, you can adjust it. Just be aware that this will likely result in more accidental touchpad activations. On the flip side, if you’re triggering it too often, you can turn the sensitivity down, as long as you don’t mind waiting a hair longer for the trackpad to activate.

You can also adjust the trackpad’s usable area if you prefer to only control it with one hand, and let your other hand rest without accidentally activating it. There’s a dedicated button just above the Backspace key that controls this. When set to just the right side of the touch area, the trackpad will only extend left out to around the V key, and on the left side, it will cover all the way to the N key.

In my personal experience, I found this unnecessary, but again, your needs may be different from mine. What impressed me the most is how much Clevetura seemed to have considered every use case here. Whether you’re left- or right-handed, prefer to tap or press to click, and even if you’d rather disable the touchpad entirely sometimes, there are options for all of it.

I was skeptical that I would want a keyboard that I could trust to just know when I wanted it to be a touchpad, but not only does the CLVX 1 pull it off well right out of the box, but it comes with a bevy of customization options to make it a smooth experience in the niche cases where it doesn’t. I test lots of keyboards for our Best Keyboards guide, and at this point, it might be hard for me to go back to a keyboard that doesn’t at least give me the option of some quick mouse movements.

I'm impressed enough that I would recommend that anyone who's interested in this concept to pick one up, but unfortunately you can't just yet. Clevetura started a very successful Kickstarter run back in April, so you'll have to sign up for a waitlist on Clevetura's site for the Windows version (with Mac coming later in the year).