Xunfei AI Mechanical Keyboard T8: The sensible keyboard can already type by itself

When you see the two keywords of desktop PC and voice interaction put together, I believe many friends will think of Mr. Luo's "Long Live Sister Li" that night five years ago.

Standing today, let’s look at TNT’s voice interaction again. Some people think it’s a joke, while others still have a little bit of injustice and feel that Lao Luo is a pity.

Objectively speaking, Lao Luo wants to use voice interaction to revolutionize the life of PC. This is indeed a bit outrageous idealism; but voice interaction has never been useless without prospects—from WeChat’s voice intercom to Siri’s voice Assistants, and then various voice-to-text conversions, show that users are not against using voice in appropriate scenarios.

But who gave Luo Yonghao confidence back then?

It is iFlytek of the "China Artificial Intelligence National Team". This company has been deeply involved in voice for more than 20 years, and has continued to make continuous efforts in artificial intelligence and other fields. Its strength is so strong that Lao Luo thought that they had handled the basic services. There will be no more worries... Since then, many domestic manufacturers have also cooperated with Xunfei to build Xunfei input methods or use Xunfei's technology to empower voice interaction.

As a leader in the field of speech recognition in China, iFLYTEK is of course also researching how to better combine voice interaction with PC interaction. The smart keyboard and mouse integrated with AI voice technology is the answer. Let's take a look at this iFLYTEK AI machine Does the keyboard T8 improve your productivity.

The packaging box is composed of an outer cover and an inner packaging box. The overall design adopts a simple white design. The product name of "T8 AI mechanical keyboard" with bronzing and depression treatment on the front of the cover and the reflective cross diagonal stripes add a sense of quality and high-end. The upper left corner of the University of Science and Technology Xunfei Logo, the upper right corner is the biggest selling point of the product in one sentence, "input 400 characters in one minute".

Is it possible that this keyboard can also increase typing speed?

Turning to the back, most of the middle and lower areas are printed with the main visual stick figure of the keyboard, and the corresponding parts are marked in gold, and the logo, product name, and main features are on the top.

More detailed product information is displayed on the side, and the inner box is pure white and will not be displayed any more.

The accessories in the box include instruction manual, key puller, and data cable.

The data cable is USB Type-A to Type-C, the outer braided material, about 1.6 m long, with a cable tie, but it is a bit difficult to tie it back after disassembly.

Looking at the keyboard, the shell is dark gray, the keycaps are mainly dark gray and white, and orange is the accent color.

The keyboard is designed with an 87-key layout, without a numeric keypad area, but it is not so compact, which well controls the space occupied by the desktop.

But this 87-key is not the same as the traditional 87-key. The three orange-yellow buttons above the function area are unique, which are smart screen capture, smart search, and smart record.

In addition, there is also a distinctive orange voice key between the Fn key and the Ctrl key on the right.

Compared with many keyboards, the F and J keys have "_" long-line protrusions for easy recognition of positions by touch typing, while T8 has "." dot protrusions, but it does not affect typing at all.

All keys are made of PBT sublimation technology. After my actual measurement of using PBT keycaps on other keyboards in the past year, compared with ABS keycaps, it can indeed achieve the effect of not oiling, not wearing out and not losing characters.

Use a key puller to remove the keycap, and you can see that the T8 uses the Jiadalong G Pro switch. I have a red switch, and there are yellow switches available.

The overall feedback of the red axis is weaker, but the noise is smaller and the triggering force is lighter, which is suitable for long-term coding in the office.

The black area between the ESC key and the F1 key on the upper left is the indicator light. There are three wireless device indicator lights arranged from top to bottom, corresponding to three different wireless devices. One is 2.4G, and the other two are Bluetooth. Use Fn + F10/F11/F12 to switch.

The rightmost part is raised slightly upwards. There is a golden metal roller on the top, with concave and convex textures on the surface, and the workmanship is very exquisite. Scrolling up and down can adjust the volume, and clicking can mute the sound with one click.

I still like the design of this scroll wheel very much. When using a computer, it is often necessary to adjust the volume frequently according to the content of different sounds. The volume of different video contents is different. When playing music, the volume is often higher, and when talking with others, the sound is lower. Most keyboards without scroll wheels require Use the Fn shortcut key to complete.

In the middle position is the left and right power switch and three indicator lights, which are the power indicator light, the upper and lower case indicator lights, and the voice indicator light.

The bottom part is the most special part: an independent S1 voice folder, above is a golden button with CD pattern, with CNC chamfering and trimming on the edge, a circle of indicator lights on the outside, and a signal sign of voice waveform below.

The S1 voice clip is magnetically fixed in the groove of the keyboard and can be removed for use. There is a protrusion at the bottom for easy removal.

The clip on the back is made of metal frosted material, and there is iFLYTEK logo on the top. There are four metal contacts on the top for connecting and charging with the keyboard.

Viewed from the left side, in addition to the natural slope, the height of the buttons is also different.

The relatively less used F keypad at the top and the row of keys at the bottom are lower in height; the middle letter input area is relatively higher. The overall design has a certain radian, which is more natural and close to the hand.

There is a USB Type-C interface for wired connection and charging on the side near the ESC key on the top.

Turning to the back, there is a decoration similar to the reflective crossed diagonal stripes on the packaging box. The product name of the T8 AI mechanical keyboard is marked in an inverted triangle above the intersection, and there is a long foot pad at each of the four corners.

There are two-section feet on the left and right sides of the rear, which can provide three different angles for the keyboard.

There is a groove with a cover in the upper middle of the foot support.

Slide open the top cover, and you can see that there is a storage slot here, where two replacement keycaps for Apple Mac users and the USB 2.4G receiver are hidden.

The bottom of the storage slot is printed with detailed product information, and there is no option to print it directly on the keyboard, which can make the design of the keyboard more concise.

The 2.4G receiver is small in size and has the iFLY logo printed on it.

Such a unique appearance endows the product with impressive functions.

As mentioned above, Xunfei has demonstrated its advantages in AI artificial intelligence to the fullest on T8.

First of all, we need to install the corresponding driver software on the PC desktop, which provides two platforms of Windows and Apple Mac, and does not support Linux for the time being, but the official website has already given "Stay tuned".

In Bluetooth mode, if the computer needs to use the voice folder, both the keyboard and the voice folder need to be connected to the computer via Bluetooth; in 2.4G mode, only a built-in multi-link receiver is required to connect.

The first is the basic experience for voice to improve productivity - voice input.

Just press the button on the voice clip, or the voice button on the keyboard, and a floating window of speech recognition will pop up in the upper right corner of the computer. At this time, you can speak to the voice clip, and you can convert the spoken words into text. Enter on the computer.

This is what Xunfei said on the packaging box of "input 400 characters per minute". For friends who are not proficient in typing, it can easily reach the normal input speed, and for friends who are proficient in typing, it can also help you to speed up.

There is also a scene that is extremely suitable for voice input-e-sports games.

When playing games, both hands are often occupied by intense operations, which is inconvenient or impossible to turn on the microphone. When you need to input on the public screen, the quick voice button on the keyboard + Xunfei’s powerful voice recognition can help the game communication, support automatic sending, let You save the inconvenience and score efficiently.

Voice input not only supports Mandarin and English, but also can choose Sichuan dialect, Northeast dialect, Henan dialect, Hunan dialect, Cantonese, Hebei dialect, Guizhou dialect, Gansu dialect, Ningxia dialect, Yunnan dialect, Shandong dialect, Shanghai dialect, There are 24 dialects including Tianjin dialect, Nanjing dialect, Wuhan dialect, Hokkien dialect, and Hefei dialect, and 66 foreign languages ​​(the Mac system also supports 17 dialects). Friends who speak dialects can also have a high recognition rate.

For friends who use the intranet environment in the office, you can choose the offline mode in the PC-side software, and the experience will be slightly inferior. For example, the recognition rate will drop to a certain extent. Recognition results, but still a decent level.

Double-click the voice button to switch to voice translation mode, and click the voice button again to start voice translation input.

The voice input recognition language supports Mandarin, Cantonese and English, and the output text language includes more than 100 languages, and you can easily chat with friends in every corner of the world.

There is even classical Chinese. Wouldn't it be great if you could have a conversation with other people in such a sophisticated language.

Long press the voice button, or click the smart search button above the function key area, you can wake up the smart search, which can also be understood as a voice assistant.

It must be admitted that as an app-level voice assistant, it is still a bit behind the voice assistants such as Xiao Ai on domestic mobile phones, but it has almost no rivals on the PC side—the PC-side voice assistants of manufacturers such as Xiaomi are also Apps. Level, the limitation is very high; and the Microsoft Cortana and Apple Siri, which are integrated into the system on the PC desktop, have localization weaknesses.

Xunfei's smart search can currently realize the following functions.

Tested Jingdong to search for products, and opened it almost as soon as I finished speaking.

HKUST Xunfei has many customers from enterprises, and HKUST Xunfei is also a leader in toB services.

Press the Smart Transcription button in the function area to quickly call up the voice transcription function.

It can record voices of no more than one hour at a time, and provides transcription services. It can play a big role in the scene of meeting minutes. It provides you with text and voice at the same time. You can quickly locate, double-speed playback, fast translation, and one-time translation. button to export and share.

Press the smart screen capture key above the function key area to directly select the screen capture area.

Different from the regular functions of most screen capture software, Xunfei’s smart screen capture also provides office artifacts such as text translation, text extraction, and form extraction.

When you see a large piece of text on the picture, you don’t need to find a special OCR recognition software, let alone type it out one by one. After selecting the text in the screen capture box, you can directly convert the text.

Don't be afraid of incomprehensible English, just translate it directly.

How to copy the form on the picture and modify it? No cell-by-cell identification, copying, and transcription, directly table extraction!

Sometimes, we also need to provide real-time subtitles to the audience and participants.

The subtitle on-screen function is similar to voice transcription, but it will recognize the live voice into text in real time and display it on the screen in a larger font size.

As the name suggests, this function is relatively common and has many usage scenarios, so I won’t repeat it here.

As a leading Chinese national team enterprise in the field of artificial intelligence, whether it is toB or toC, Xunfei has always been striving to make artificial intelligence serve the public.

This in-depth experience content is completed by using the Xunfei AI mechanical keyboard T8 with the voice clip S1. At this stage, voice input still has some shortcomings in letter case recognition, but no one says that voice is the only answer. , Combining multiple interactive methods is the magic weapon to improve productivity. I will use it through voice input and keyboard and mouse correction.

Although the title says "a sensible keyboard can already type by itself" is a bit exaggerated, and the current technology is not yet able to achieve what you want, but you can almost get what you say.

1550mAh电池容量几天使用下来续航还不错，可以参考一波官方的数据：单独使用T8键盘续航达70天，T8键盘 & S1语音夹续航达50天，单独使用S1续航达1.5天；T8完整充电时间达5小时，S1完整充电时间达1.5小时。

There is still one imperfection, the current Mac adaptation is still not elegant enough, and the independent Mac mode is missing, but it can be solved by manually modifying the modifier keys in the Mac system.

For text workers with independent workspaces and gamers with high communication needs, Xunfei AI Mechanical Keyboard T8 can be regarded as a killer of auxiliary input productivity; friends who work in ordinary offices can also use it to complete meetings Minutes, fast translation, improve work efficiency.