[section_title title=”Packaging & Closer Look “]Packaging & Closer Look
Let’s take a look at the packaging followed by the keyboard itself.
The front of the box is Mionix all over, very minimal and clean with a nice big photo of what’s inside.
The back of the box sports a labelled image of the keyboard with translations into a variety of languages.
Opening up the box we just have the keyboard itself and a user manual, out of shot there is also a key cap puller included. As you can see the packaging the Zibal 60 comes in is the definition of minimal and as with all Mionix packaging it makes it easy to get your hands on the product without any faffing which is great.
Taking a top-down look at the keyboard we can see it is very stealthy in it’s matte black design with the only logo being the very subtle Mionix lettering in the top right. As you can see there are no macro keys or dedicated media keys, which is sure to be a turn off to those who want those features, but to me I really love the understated look it brings.
The bottom of the keyboard is nothing too exciting, you can see we have four large grippy feet and of course the two fold out flaps to raise the keyboard.
Here is the keyboard with the wrist rest attached, I don’t use them personally but it is an inclusion I’m sure many will appreciate and it fits in with the lo0k nicely.
As we know already the Zibal 60 sports Cherry MX Blacks and here they are with the attached LEDs that give the keyboard its green backlight.
On the top edge of the keyboard, we have the USB and Audio hub.
These shots show the cable and its various connectors. Now I do like the fact that the keyboard features the USB and Audio hub, but look how thick that cable is; it’s ridiculous. It’s so thick and inflexible when I first used the keyboard I actually knocked a speaker off my desk by sliding the keyboard’s cable along past it, it barely responds to bending and it is just generally inconvenient.
Then at the connection end we have four connectors, so for the users that only use the USB connection for the keyboard there are a bunch of loose wires down the back of the computer that just confuse things even more when you are swapping USB devices around.
For me, the frustration caused by the way this lot is implemented far outweighs the convenience of the hub connections, and certainly is my principle complaint about the design of the keyboard.
