Lenovo N5901 Media Centre Keyboard Remote Review
Saturday, April 24, 2010 at 10:59PM 
This is the keyboard that has finally made me abandon my hunt for the perfect Media Centre remote (for the time being). It's not a perfect device - but it's good enough, however there is still plenty of room for improvement. I bought it from USB.BRANDO.COM - they ship worldwide from HK for only $3! So the total cost (given exchange rates at the time of writing) is £43. It arrived on my desk at work the day after the volcanic dust cloud shut down any further UK airfreight - so I was very fortunate to get it when I did.
Lenovo have an unexpected hit on their hands with this device- it's been listed in their catalogue since December 2009 , but no one really noticed it in the accessories section and Lenovo didn't advertise it either. It was only when a couple of tech blogs spotted it that the device became a hot commodity among HTPC users.
After many false starts, the Media Centre or Home Theatre PC has arrived. Boxee and XBMC together with streaming video services paired with cheap low power PCs equipped with TV friendly HDMI sockets, wireless N and packing sufficient power to play back HD video, have led to an explosion in the numbers of PCs attached to TVs. The one missing link has been a suitable remote to control these devices from an armchair where a traditional keyboard and mouse just don't belong. A media centre remote needs to have a keyboard for internet browsing, a analog pointing device for application selection (mouse, trackpad etc) and be small enough to hold in one hand.
The Logitech Dinovo Mini was the first such device on the block and seemed ideal - but was plagued by reliability issues and is still prohibitively expensive. The Lenovo N5901 (previously know by its part number of 57Y6336) is the first serious rival to the Logitech (at half the price) - watch the video to see how it fares.
Reader Comments (2)
My Revo came with a wireless version of the keyboard. I find navigating boxee fine with just a keyboard, launching programs from the desktop is easy too, just hold the windows key and press 1,2,3 etc depending on the order of your toolbar!
Thanks very much for posting the link to where I could purchase one from. I had gone direct to Lenovo, but they stopped listing this item on their website. Now I have one arriving (hopefully!) in 7-10 days.
Thankx again! :o)