Kinesis Form Review

If you look at the usual online retailers, you’ll find plenty of keyboards with built-in touchpads, so when Kinesis (maker of the wonderful Freestyle Edge RGB) enters this particular market, you’d naturally expect it to have something special. And at $199, the Kinesis Form has to be special.

At first glance, it certainly stands out from the usual crowd of all-in-one keyboards. The chassis is made from two pieces of milled aluminum and uses low-profile, low-maintenance Gateron mechanical switches. The keys are divided into two groups, providing a degree of ergonomic comfort for the arms, and between them sits the so-called Windows Precision touchpad. There’s even switchable white LED backlighting and dual-profile Bluetooth connectivity.

Let’s break it all down, starting with the body. Kinesis, forgoing the norm of using ABS plastics in the body, opted for CNC-machined aluminum, and it’s incredibly hard-wearing. That makes it a bit heavier, but at just 2 pounds, you won’t notice. It certainly makes it easier to stuff the whole thing into a bag if you need to work on the go.

The downside to this approach is that the flat, low-profile form factor means there’s no room for tenting, which is a necessity for my everyday keyboards. That’s a real shame, since tenting is Kinesis’s signature strength. Perhaps if the Form proves successful, the next iteration could achieve that.

I’d also like to see some means of providing a bit of tilt. The Form is as low-profile as you can get for a mechanical keyboard, so it’s not like your wrists are going to be overextended when you’re sitting at a desk. But if you prefer to work at a standing desk, it’s not ideal.

However, typing on it is a pure pleasure. The Gateron KS-33 Red switches require only 50g of actuation force, but offer 3.2mm of travel, so the feedback is really very positive. The switches are also very serene, with only minimal clicks.

I’m not a huge fan of keycaps, but that’s entirely subjective. The ABS material is something of a grease magnet, and the matte black color really shows where your sticky fingers have been. While Kinesis doesn’t plan to make any improvements to the keycaps, many of the keycap sets for customary mechanical keyboards will fit and work with the low-profile switches.

The star of the show is of course the touchpad. Measuring 2.5 x 4.5 inches (63.5 x 114.3mm), it’s quite enormous, but I feel it would be better if it were a tad wider, perhaps by about 10mm. The portrait orientation makes scrolling through web pages and documents a breeze, although the relatively narrow width means that making wide mouse movements across the desktop becomes a bit tricky at times.

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With a Windows 10/11 PC, you can get the full range of finger and gesture controls, and connecting it to my Asus ROG Ally proved to be the perfect application for the Form – using the portable for more than just gaming. The vertical nature of the touchpad does limit its usability in games, though – Baldur’s Gate 3 wasn’t too bad, for example, but playing any first- or third-person shooter was no fun at all.

Part of this is due to the lack of a button mechanism under the mouse pad. Mouse “clicks” are performed solely by touch (one finger for the left mouse button, two fingers for the right), and there’s no feedback to confirm that the mouse pad has been pressed. Outside of gaming, this isn’t really an issue, and I suspect the low profile of the case limits what kind of touchpad the Kinesis can apply.

The same goes for the vertical layout — the touchpad could be placed at either end of the keyboard, but that would make the design much less compact (it’s 16 inches/406mm wide) and the space between the keys would be wasted.

When it comes to connecting the Form to your device (be it a PC, console, tablet, or even TV), you have two options: Bluetooth low energy for wireless freedom, or the long USB Type-C/Type-A cable that’s included in the box. The first lets you switch between the two profiles using a compact switch on the back of the case, and it’s a snap — jumping between ROG Ally and another PC was a piece of cake.

Not every device supports gesture recognition, so depending on what device you connect the Form to, you’ll either have full touchpad control or fairly constrained mouse action. That’s something that’s beyond the scope of the Kinesis, so it’s strenuous to criticize the Form for that.

I’m glad Kinesis has constrained the backlighting to a subtle white LED rather than offering the usual RGB to please gamers. It may be a bit too subtle, but it’s enough to apply the keyboard in a darkened room. The lighting does reduce battery life (Kinesis claims two to three months without lighting, one to two weeks with lighting on), but by pressing the appropriate keys a few times, you can dim them, or even turn them off completely.

So what do you think of the Kinesis Form? I’ve been using it daily for a while now, as a “normal” keyboard, and in various situations, such as streaming my computer to the bedroom TV and controlling it while lying down. If it had a tent, I’d be using it all the time, it’s so nice to type on, but the flat format doesn’t suit my elderly and slightly battered wrists.

This is obviously a niche keyboard, and I don’t mean that in a negative way, but that goes some way to explaining the rather high price tag. At $199, the Form is bordering on boutique keyboard territory, and since all such items tend to be sold in compact quantities, Kinesis can’t rely on mass production techniques to keep costs down.

It could have an all-plastic casing, but then it would lose much of its durability and be no different from the mountains of other all-in-one keyboards you can buy these days. CNC-milled aluminum isn’t affordable, but its apply in the Form gives it a quality feel.

The Kinesis Form is one of those keyboards that if you think it’s right for you, you’ll probably love it. I think I’ll wait for the Form 2 (Kinesis tells me they’re already thinking about the next one) and if it has a tent or the option to buy a tent case and has a touchpad with haptic feedback, I’ll be first in line to try it out.