Art.Lebedev Optimus Mini Three

The Keyboard In Action

The first thing I noticed was a high pitch whine being emitted from the device. Either I got used to the sound, or it was overpowered by surrounding noise. It simply did not bother me after a bit of use. Reports all over the Internet suggest that this noise is not an isolated problem, but occurs with all the Optimus Mini Three keyboards. The OLEDs are limited to 3 fps, making it impossible to show anything but small animations like scrolling text on them.

There are quite a few presets available in the software. The configurator also supports plug-ins, but considering that the device will never make it to a lot of households, there will most likely not be a lot of home brew plug-ins available. Above shows the "new, save & print" and the "copy, paste & clipboard" templates


The system information template shows the free memory, CPU usage and a clock with time, date and local temperature. You can also set separate buttons to be used as direct links, GMail login and iTunes player. The images on the right actually open a predefined website when pressed. A very nice way of going to techPowerUp.com every day.


The internet tools are for Internet Explorer but will not work for Firefox. The same goes for the email buttons which only work with Outlook.


The slots game is a nice addition. The user can press each screen and get the slots going. Then one after the other stops and you can see if you got three of a kind. There is no score or sound to it, so the entertainment value here is limited, but the media buttons work well with Winamp.