Trust Lyra Keyboard & Mouse Review

And now for something a little different, and a little behind the scenes. Here at the Tavern we’re fortunate to be able to check out games and hardware galore, but for this review, we’re more looking at, well, what we’d use to write these very words. That’s not to say we can’t plug it into an Xbox – we can – but for those of you out there looking to pen your own words, you’ll need something decent to rely on. The Trust Lyra mouse and keyboard is one such choice.

The Lyra is a compact set, with a reduced sized keyboard and lightweight mouse included. Starting with the keyboard, and we’re used to mashing away on chunky mechanical keys, whereas this uses more laptop-style buttons. They are nicely responsive, only taking a small adjustment to our usual clattering affair to get words on a screen. You’ll need a flat surface (obviously) though we only mention it as our usual working table has a slight dip in it which caused the keyboard to flex slightly under the typing action (though again, we’re used to being a bit heavier handed).

Due to the reduced size we lose the number keypad on the side, as well as the ease of use buttons like Page Up/Down etc. There are keyboard shortcuts for everything naturally, though we must admit to being a bit stuck at the day job which makes heavy use of these buttons, meaning we found it easier to resort to our chunky keyboard instead.

For Xbox Tavern purposes though, the Lyra keyboard has been nothing but brilliant. Fat finger errors aside, we’ve written the last few reviews on it, as well as many private messages and emails with little issue. In fact, our old mechanical keyboard has been gathering dust completely these past few weeks such is our fondness of using the Lyra.

It also helps that the Lyra is a fully wireless keyboard. Not only that but we can actually have up to three devices assigned to its memory, easily swapped between by pressing the buttons at the top of the keyboard. One requires us to plug in the included (and very tiny) USB dongle, but the other two are simple Bluetooth connections. Getting back to the gaming for a moment, we actually left the dongle plugged into our Series S, ready for a quick round of Fortnite when the writing gets too much. In term of gaming ability the Lyra isn’t going to win many awards for control feel – dedicated gaming keyboard are a thing for a reason – but in a pinch games like the aforementioned Fortnite were perfectly playable.

We don’t even need to worry about the built in battery crapping out on us mid-sentence either, lasting a reported six months on a single charge. Obviously we can’t test this yet having only had it for a few weeks, but considering it only takes a reported two hours to charge this means when the times comes we’ll have very little in the way of inconvenience.

Much of the above can be echoed for the mouse too; Bluetooth on up to three devices, six month battery life, reduced size, and nice feel under the hand. It also comes with the slight caveat that the feature set outside of the above is reduced. There’s no side buttons for forward/back browsing, and not really much in the way of customising. DPI goes through 800/1200/1600, though the large jumps can make it hard to nail down a preference. We’ve left it set to 1600 which is slightly faster than we like, but the 1200 is far too slow for us. Still, that’s more personal preference really, and it wasn’t too big a deal for us to get used to the faster speed for the most part. It’s also designed in a way that allows for ambidextrous use, so lefties and righties will be just fine here.

Conclusion

 Overall, we’re pretty taken with the Trust Lyra keyboard and mouse set. It’s lightweight and compact enough to carry about with us, and has freed up the sole USB slot on our aging Surface, letting us type up all of the internet’s Best Gaming Reviews™ for you lovely lot. Whether you need something for work, or fancy trying your hand at this writing lark, this Lyra set is a solid starting point.

Hardware provided by the manufacturer for review purposes.