Please note that some of the links in my video descriptions are affiliate links where I earn from qualifying purchases. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Intro
If you spend hours every day in front of a keyboard like I do, the Clevatura CLVX1 gesture keyboard is definitely worth checking out. And after reviewing a ton of different type of keyboards, I can easily say this is one of the most innovative keyboards out there right now. And that’s thanks to this large built-in gesture touchpad area. You can easily go from full-on typing to using the gesture pad just like a mouse trackpad. Or you could even use two, three, or four finger gestures. Not only that, you can also set appsp specific gestures using their Touch on Key software. But if you’re like me and you’re kind of picky about the typing experience, you’re probably wondering how good is the typing experience on a keyboard like this?
How accurate is it switching from typing to the gesture touchpad? And will you actually reach for your mouse less if you’re using the CLVX1? Well, let’s take a closer look. And a big thanks to Clevatura for sending this out for review. In the box,
Package Contents
we have the Clevatura CLVX1 keyboard. We have a 2 m or 6.5 ft long. USB C to C cable and quick start guide and documentation. In terms of the design,
Design
so the CLVX1 is coming in at around 628 g or about 0.6 kg. So, not too heavy at all. And you can see this is an extremely thin and lowprofile keyboard. The top frame is a PC build with ABS key caps and the side frame and rear of the keyboard is an anodized aluminum finish. Looking at a side view, you can see just how thin that is. Now, if I just measure the side frame, not including the keys and the adjustment feet. That’s only about 7 cm thick. The top case has a matte type of finish, so it’s not super slippery. And you can see we have this kind of speckled type of pattern going on, so it’s not just a flat boring black. And then at the very bottom right corner here, we have a heart with a one. The underside of the keyboard has a bunch of rubber feet.
So, there’s a large strip at the top, four mini strips at the bottom, and we have rubber feet on the adjustment feet as well. Now, these have two angulations, 2.5°, and 7° as well. On the rear of the keyboard, there’s a power switch and USB type-C port to charge this up or to use it in wired mode. We have an ANC layout with 110 keys. And this is such a lowprofile keyboard. If I just do kind of a side view, you can see just how flush all of those keys are. Now, due to the low profile nature of the key caps, these are using scissor switches instead of mechanical switches, which is why we have this very low 1.2 mm travel distance, and it doesn’t require much of an actuation force. Note that the large rectangular outline is where we have the gesture control area.
And under the space bar, we actually have left and right click buttons that are tactile, but you can also do a soft tap instead of clicking them in. The space bar has an LED indicator light to let you know if you’re in typing mode or gesture
Specs
touch mode. Here’s a quick look at the specs. Feel free to pause and review or jump ahead to the next section. In terms
Connectivity
of connectivity, you can connect up to four devices. So, one device in wired mode using the USB type-C connector and and three devices in Bluetooth. And you can see you can seamlessly switch between Bluetooth devices.
Sound Profile
No speech in this section.
Typing
the sound profile reminds me of typing on a laptop keyboard. Now, when it comes to the typing experience, again, it also reminds me of using a laptop keyboard. We have very low profile keys, very low travel distance, and it doesn’t require much actuation force. And if you’re someone who’s coming from a mechanical keyboard, well, you will find the typing experience a little bit lacking, but maybe the trade-off for the gesture controls is going to be worth it for
TouchOnKeys Software
you. Let’s take a look at the Touch on Keys software. Now, when you open it up, you’re going to be presented with the screen. You could see the current battery life, and you can enable or disable application profiles. Now, one thing to note is I will be entirely using the gesture control pad here. I will now be using it on my laptop and I won’t be using a mouse. Now, first thing we’ll do is jump into the kind of full options here. So, we’ll jump into gestures. Um, this is probably where you’re going to want to set up a lot of things. Now, uh, single tap and double tap. That’s kind of predefined, but you also have the option to do it for three-finger and fourfinger as well.
And note that when you’re on three-finger and four-finger independently, you could set whatever you want for, you know, a three-finger swipe up, swipe down, swipe left, swipe right. So, if I was to just tap on one of these, you could see for a three-finger swipe right is going to do um Windows D to kind of like show my desktop. And then you also have other options like opening up your Windows settings, doing nothing. You can also do um volume up, volume down, previous track, next track, D-pad, kind of um window switching and things like that. open up task view. The only thing I haven’t found is to like launch a specific app, but you still get a host of um different type of things you can do on here. So again, you can set these for either right, left, uh swipe up, swipe down.
If we jump under four finger, again, same thing. Now, this is when you’re using four fingers to swipe either right, left, up, down. Um, and you can see basically the same options as what we had for three finger uh three fingers. So you can just set those independently. Now this is under a global profile, but you can set these for specific apps. Now the way this works is if you tap on add new, it’s going to scan in the background whatever you have open. So um if you didn’t have Photoshop open, it wouldn’t find it on here. So for example, I have OBS right now. I could tap into OBS. Um tap here and I can just go ahead now and set profiles for OBS. Now some of these apps it will change. Now, for example, if we jump into Windows settings, you can see these remain the same.
It’s not OBS specific. But if I was to um switch this into Photoshop right here, you can see now if I go into one of these here, it actually is um Photoshop specific actions like increasing brush size, uh decreasing brush size. In Photoshop, I’m always hitting controll up, controll down to zoom in and out. But on the keyboard, I could just go ahead and use three fingers to zoom in and out effortlessly. And then if I jump into Resolve here, you can see I could just do a two-finger swipe to just kind of go forward and backwards through the timeline. And that is so neat because usually I’m using a mouse. I’m clicking, you know, this little um selector here and just sliding it or using the horizontal scroll. This is just way more fluid and easy to do on the fly.
Let’s jump into the touch sliders. And they’ve split this into left and right, which I’m glad to see. It’s just more functionality. So, the left side is going to be for the backlight brightness on the keyboard. So, you can see right now it’s at the max. I can slide it. All the backlighting is cut off. And then I can slide it to the maximum brightness. And then for the right side, this is going to be volume control. So, I can swipe up, you know, kind of crank that volume or swipe down to lower the volume. And you can see you can actually remap what the slider does. So instead of, you know, maybe adjusting backlight brightness, I can just go ahead tap into that and I can have it, you know, do nothing, do volume control.
Maybe I want volume control right and left side, you know, kind of do right and left arrows, uh, navigation or a custom shortcut. And you could set the sensitivity, but the default sensitivity is working good for me. Let’s jump into backlight. Now, under backlight, you have these kind of chunks. So you have the first chunk here where it’s kind of the touch area, this outline here. And then you have, you know, this selection for everything else. So if I go ahead and I just tap into the touch area, you can see I could change the backlighting color here. So I could pick, you know, maybe like green instead of uh the default color or, you know, red or whatever you want. And there is no way to change the intensity on here per section. It was just kind of across the board.
And notice for trace, this is where, you know, as I run my finger here, you can see there’s kind of a green outline that follows my finger all the way around. So, you can set that trace from, you know, kind of medium or low to high. Now, note that to do this, you would have to kind of click and hold. So, either I can use the bottom button here where I’m clicking and then I’m going to slide it. So, let me just do that again. So, click slide um low or high. But what’s an even easier way is to just double tap. And then without lifting your finger, you’re kind of holding without using this bottom button here, which is just way more fluid and easily to do. And now if I go ahead and I do the trace, you can see it’s just more fluid in the way it follows my finger along.
It just kind of is a longer um duration before that green glow fades out. If we look at the other key, so I’ll just go ahead tap into that. And again, you can change the background color from the default blue to something else that you want from the color wheel here. And you can change the duration from either high to medium or low. Let’s jump into the function keys. So, you can see the function keys are going to do clipboard, emoji, file explorer, voice typing, etc., scissors, calculator, and then you can go ahead and switch that at any time by hitting function and escape. And it’s going to give you the standard F key functionality. So, you can just toggle through that as you like. Let’s jump into the full settings now.
And you can set if you’re going to be predominantly uh right-handed or left-handed. You can have, you know, tap with a single finger for a single click, which is what I have. You can switch primary and secondary click buttons. You can do a tap with two fingers for a right click menu. So, let me just go ahead and demo that. So, if I just double click right here, you can see it’s pulling up that context menu. You can have gesture defender. And it says, “This mode helps the user adapt to the keyboard. So, if a key is pressed while you’re performing a gesture, it’s just going to kind of ignore that unless you actually, you know, kind of raise your fingers uh off the gesture pad, you can have a whole delay on the touchpad border. Under adaptive intelligence, you can click on start learning.
The keyboard will learn how you use the keyboard, you know, when you’re switching from typing to gesture controls. Now, you can also go ahead and dial in the AI level. So, right now, it’s on the medium level. If you move it to higher sensitivity, it’s going to react quicker, you know, switching from typing to gestures, but you increase the chance of false gesture alerts. And then if you put it to lower sensitivity, it may take a little bit more time to kick in to know you’re trying to do gestures versus typing, but you’re going to have lower chance of false gestures. And then you can go ahead and enable the Fn if you want to just kind of, you know, lock the Fn keys to only do one thing. And again, if you just hit function and escape, you can toggle this at will.
You can suppress, you know, pressing two keys at once. You can enable a battery saving mode, which I’m not going to do right now. And then you can also change the backlight brightness, automatic brightness, or you could dial it in um kind of automatically in the software. And you can just have this start on boot and then just kind of reset everything.
Gesture Demo
Let’s take a look at gesture control. So, I’m just navigating up and down this web page just using the gesture control area. I’m not having to, you know, take my hand off to use a mouse at all. I can also zoom in and zoom out at any time as well. If I do a triple tap, that’s actually going to go ahead and refresh the page. So, I’ve set that kind of as a custom um keybind in the Touch on Key software. Now, I can also go ahead and, you know, switch between apps top or bottom. And then whenever I’m on a specific page, I can just go ahead and, you know, do a three-finger swipe to go backwards or to go back forwards while I’m navigating. And that’s just so handy. you know, when you’re having one of those lazy days, you just want to have the keyboard.
You don’t want to keep reaching for your mouse. You can do all of that right on this keyboard. Again, we have the left and right click on there, but you know, just doing a double tap is going to pull up that kind of contextual uh right-click menu. Anyway, so you have full functionality right from the keyboard. Let’s demo copy and paste. So, I’ll double tap on the touch area and then just go ahead highlight everything. Now, to copy, I’ve set it in the touch on keys app. So, if I swipe up with three fingers, that’s going to be copy. I’ll just t uh enter down, swipe down, and it pastes. And if I just do a swipe over, it’s going to open up the task view here. I could jump into Photoshop, use my three-finger swipe to zoom in and zoom out.
So you can see once you get very learned and adept at using this, you know, you never really need to take your hand off, you know, to use your mouse unless you’re doing really fine adjustments. But you can really get a lot done, really improve efficiency and, you know, kind of overall productivity just by learning this type of gesture system with the
Auto-Switching
default settings on the keyboard, no AI learning. Let’s see how quickly it switches from typing to gesture control. So this is example text. Now I want to see my desktop. see my desktop. I’ll go back on here. Easy to switch. Now I want to see task view. And you can see it’s very quick in terms of switching from typing to gesture controls even without using the AI learning feature. I’ve cut
Disable Auto-Switching
the lights to show the LED indicator light on the space bar. Right now it’s green, meaning that it’s ready for me to do gestures. Now notice that as I start typing, it’s going to actually switch from green to blue. So that’s how you know you’re in typing mode. And then once I stop typing and I just kind of start swiping around on the screen, it’s going to switch to green. Now, if you know you don’t want any gesture control, say you’re, you know, just going off typing, you know, kind of very focused, you can hit the type button here and you can just keep typing and no matter what you do in terms of gestures, it’s going to stay blue because you’re locked into
Keyboard Shortcuts
typing mode. The keyboard has a ton of shortcut buttons, which is handy. So, if you press the AI button, you could cycle through from level one through 9 or anywhere in between to change the sensitivity. And you could see it on screen in the app. Now, if you press the battery icon, it’s going to actually show you the battery level. So, you can see right now it’s at zero. So, basically, I’m at 100% battery life. We also have the buttons at the top to switch from wired mode to any of our three connected Bluetooth devices. And you could cycle between having your right hand or left hand be dominant. We
RGB
have shine through RGB key caps, which is a nice touch. And you can see as I run my fingers along the gesture control area, there’s a light trail, which is a
Gesture Experience
nice touch. Let’s talk about the actual gesture controls on here and if getting a keyboard like this will actually make you reach for your mouse less. And surprisingly, I actually found that I would reach for my mouse less depending on the activity I was doing. Obviously, if I’m doing, you know, video editing, or I’m in Photoshop, I will still be using my mouse for fine controls. But for just general browsing, you know, websites, switching between windows, if you’re just kind of reclined back in your chair, it’s really handy just, you know, being able to use the keyboard to do everything. And I really like some of the gestures I’ve set up on here, like swiping to show my desktop or swiping to copy and paste. And of course, you have a ton of customization options in the software.
I really think it’s going to come down to, you know, how well you can build up that muscle memory instead of always reaching for your mouse. Because sometimes when you’re really zoned in typing, so you’re working on a document, you’re editing a web page, you know, you can just do a lot of those controls right on the keyboard as long as you get used to it. So yeah, it’s completely realistic that you can actually reach for your mouse less. It’s not a marketing gimmick having the gesture controls on here. And I’m actually going to make this my daily driver.
And as much as I love the typing experience coming from basically just using mechanical keyboards, I will take the slight, you know, kind of step down to using this kind of low profile type of keyboard because I really like just how efficient and how much it speeds up my
Battery
workflow. Now, this is rated for about 40 hours of battery life if you keep the backlight off. And if you’re a heavy user, that’s really not a lot of time at all. So, I do think it would benefit from being a thicker keyboard. they could fit a larger battery in here. But for me, I’ll probably be using this in wired mode since I’m heavily on my keyboard. I don’t want to keep charging it, but I feel like a lot of users wouldn’t mind a slightly larger keyboard if they can have prolonged battery life.
Recommended?
So, can I recommend the Clevatura CLVX1 gesture keyboard? And I highly recommend this keyboard if you have the mindset that this is not meant to replace your mouse. You still will need your mouse for a lot of fine control, but this is meant to complement it to make your workflow just a little bit more efficient and a little bit quicker instead of always reaching for your mouse when you can do a lot of those activities right on the keyboard. So, if you’re interested in picking up your very own Clevura CLVX1, whether you’re using a Windows computer or a Mac computer, I’m going to leave links down below for you to learn more or to get your very own. And if I have any type of coupon codes, I’ll leave those down below as well.
If you found this video helpful, maybe consider checking out this video next. And if you really need to have that kind of mechanical keyboard typing experience, check out some of my other tech reviews. I review a bunch of different type of mechanical keyboards, mice, monitors, laptops, headphones. Really something for everyone. And I really hope you’ll join me in my next video
Please note that some of the links in my video descriptions are affiliate links where I earn from qualifying purchases. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
