Review: Targus Bluetooth Presentation Remote

If you’re like me, you probably subscribe to either MacWorld Magazine or Mac Life.  Over the past several months, I’ve seen the ads for the Targus AMP11US Bluetooth Presenter for Mac from Targus.  In the ad, it’s a thing of beauty.  It seems to be designed to compliment the MacBook Pro and it has all the right features.  To date, I’ve been using the Keyspan PR-US2 Presentation Remote.  It’s a good remote.  It’s just that using the wheel to navigate through the slides didn’t seem intuitive, especially in those moments when I’d press the wheel by accident.  It was that much more annoying in off-site meetings where table-top space was at a premium and I had to have a USB transmitter sticking out the side of my laptop.  A Bluetooth remote would remove that need.

Would the remote survive a nuclear holocaust like the Twinkie?

With my curiosity and need for a better remote in hand, I ordered the remote.  Given the small size of the Keyspan remote, I figured that it too would be quite thin.  Instead, it is fairly deep and when I first caught glimpse of its profile, it immediately reminded me of a Twinkie.  That might be a bit of a stretch, but my mind works in mysterious ways sometimes.

With the initial visual impression aside, I did notice that it has a very different feel compared to other remotes I’ve used, including the Logitech device I was offered once at work.  The physical dimensions seem to put this in between the Keyspan and Logitech devices while the Targus remote has much more heft.  This extra weight can be attributed to AA batteries.  If this gives me longer battery life than my Keyspan remote, then I’m happy.  The Keyspan’s battery is so obscure, the only local store that carries it is Radio Shack.  Then again, what don’t they have?  It fits my hand perfectly, but if you have a smaller hand, then you might find it bulky.

Since I have a big presentation this week, I spent the past Friday working from home rehearsing over and over.  I also took the opportunity to put the Targus remote through its paces.

Setup was simple.  Turn on Bluetooth up in the Mac menubar if it isn’t already on and choose “Set up Bluetooth Device.”  Follow the prompts and you’re good to go.

I fired-up Keynote, hit the “slide show” button on the remote and got going.  I eventually got to a slide with a in-slide build and hit the next button.  It promptly took me to the next slide.

Rut-roh.

Apparently, the “Next Slide” button really means just that.  Next slide.  The only way to get the behavior I need is to switch it over to “mouse mode” and use the left button, which is what’s used for “previous slide” in presenter mode.  This is a serious flaw that I really hope Targus fixes.

There were a few occasions when the computer would lose its connection with the remote.  Whether this was a problem of my MacBook Pro (unibody 15″) or the remote, I can’t say.  I moved 20-25 feet away as I practiced my presentation and was still able to advance my slides, so distance wasn’t an issue.  If anyone has any insight into what’s going on there, I’d love to hear from you.

Over all, my experience with this remote was a mixed bag.  Even with the issues I encountered, I did have more confidence in this remote over the Keyspan remote for one reason:  I could reasonably trust that when I pressed the button, Keynote would respond.  With the wheel on the Keyspan remote, I didn’t have that assurance.  I did learn later when showing my wife how to use it that the Play/Pause button on the Keyspan remote can also control the slides, but their positioning is too far down the remote.  What’s worse is “Play” is “back” and “Pause” is “forward.”

Pros:

• Good feel
• Good range
• No USB dongle
• “Slideshow button”
• “Blank Screen” button

Cons:

• “Next slide” button skips build steps
• Occasionally lost connection