Logitech MX Keypad review: nine tiny screens, one very specific superpower

Some desk accessories make you faster. Others make your desk look like you might be faster. The Logitech MX Keypad tries to do both: it’s a palm-sized pad of programmable buttons that can launch commands, fire off macros, and change its face depending on which app you’re using.

Despite the name, it’s not a keyboard. Think of it as a little command centre parked beside your actual keyboard. However, at its price, it feels like a rather niche luxury. Which brings the key question: do you have enough repetitive work to give those nine buttons a proper job?

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Tiny enough to disappear, bright enough to get noticed

The MX Keypad measures 91.7 x 77.9 mm and weighs 96 grams. In other words, it takes up less room than a drink coaster and doesn’t demand a desk rearrangement. It sits neatly beside a keyboard and mouse, with the understated MX-series look: compact, tidy, and more businesslike than gamer spaceship.

The main attraction is a 3 x 3 grid of LCD keys. Each one has its own display for an icon, label, or both, so a button can tell you what it does instead of asking you to remember a mystery symbol. Two mechanical buttons below the grid cycle between pages of shortcuts. Logitech allows up to 15 pages per profile, which makes for a theoretical 135 actions per app. In practice, the nine you can see at once are the stars; the rest live behind the page buttons.

The chassis feels solid, with no obvious creaking, and the matte finish is less eager to collect fingerprints than a glossy gadget has any right to be. The graphite model uses 64% post-consumer recycled plastic. In the box, there’s also a detachable angled stand weighing 61 grams. It has rubber padding and a slot to route the cable, which is a small detail that does useful work. Without the stand, the pad sits low and feels a little awkward to reach; propped up, it’s easier to see and tap the buttons.

The biggest physical letdown is the button feel. These are soft, squishy presses rather than crisp, clicky switches. That’s not a dealbreaker for a command pad, but it does take some fun out of pressing them repeatedly. They’re also not buttons for blind typing: the point is to glance at the screens, find the right action, and press. Turn the LCD brightness up for long stretches and the top panel can feel a little warm. It’s a minor quirk, but it joins the cable in the list of things wireless-desk enthusiasts may grumble about.

The software is the whole point

Plug the keypad into a computer with USB-C, and it gets power through the same cable. There’s no battery to charge and no wireless option to worry about. There is, however, software to install: Logitech’s Logi Options+ app, available for Windows and macOS.

Options+ is where the keypad stops being nine illuminated buttons and starts becoming useful. You can assign keyboard shortcuts, app commands, system controls, text strings and multi-step actions. Set up profiles for different apps, adjust brightness, choose icons and organise actions across pages. Logitech says there are 11 built-in function categories, giving you plenty to tinker with before building anything custom.

The clever trick is “Adapt to App.” Switch from VS Code to Photoshop, for example, and the keypad can change its assignments and displayed icons to match. That context switching is more useful than simply having a shortcut pad with nine permanent jobs. Your leftmost button can mean “open terminal” in an IDE and something entirely different in an editing app. Logitech also offers ready-made profiles through its Marketplace, so you may not have to build everything from scratch.

For developers, Logitech pitches native integrations for VS Code and IntelliJ IDEA, alongside controls for GitHub Copilot and tools including Claude Code and OpenAI Codex. You can set up prompts and repeat commands with a tap, while the three-month GitHub Copilot Pro+ trial is a welcome bonus—just check its redemption terms before counting it as part of the purchase value.

There is room for creativity beyond the presets, too. Multi-action macros can chain commands together, and text-string insertion can save you from repeatedly typing the same prompt or boilerplate. But the setup isn’t magic. You need to decide which actions belong on the pad, and that takes time. If you’re expecting a simple record-a-sequence-and-walk-away macro recorder, you may find the process less intuitive than you hoped.

Compatibility is another important catch. Logitech’s official Options+ support is for Windows and macOS; there’s no official Linux support. Windows laptops with ARM processors are also listed as incompatible. That’s an awkward exclusion for a product aimed squarely at developers, a group not exactly known for using one operating system.

A friction remover, not a shortcut trophy

The MX Keypad makes the most sense when the action you’re mapping is repeated often enough to be annoying, but complicated or infrequent enough that it hasn’t settled into muscle memory. For instance, simple copy and paste doesn’t need a dedicated screen. A build command, debugger sequence, prompt template, or a buried menu action might.

For a developer, that could mean opening a terminal, launching a build, toggling the debugger, or sending a familiar prompt to an AI assistant. For a video editor, it might be a one-tap command to add a node in DaVinci Resolve or apply a colour preset in a creative app. Logitech’s app-aware layouts help when you move between programs and want a different set of controls for each.

It can also handle general productivity chores: system controls, app launches, Zoom or Slack toggles, text snippets and basic OBS scene changes. But streamers who spend most of their time managing broadcasts may find dedicated broadcast hardware more direct. And if your main creative task is scrubbing a timeline or adjusting sliders, this pad has no dial; Logitech’s MX Creative Console is the better fit for that kind of control.

Logitech MX Keypad: Should you buy it?

At Rs. 15,999, the MX Keypad had to work hard to justify itself. However, it is currently available for Rs. 10,995 on Amazon, which makes it a more tempting experiment, especially when established alternatives such as the Elgato Stream Deck MK.2 often sit around Rs. 15,000 in India. The Logitech is compact, visually clear, and flexible enough to serve developers, creative professionals, and power users who already know where their workflow snags are.

Even at that price, though, the MX Keypad needs setup, Logi Options+, and a compatible Windows or Mac computer with USB-C. Its keys feel soft, it’s wired, and shortcuts buried on extra pages can be easy to forget. At the end of the day, it’s worth it if you already know which commands you’ll use every day; otherwise, this tiny command centre may end up with very little to do.

Editor’s Rating: 8 / 10

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