Gadget Review: Keyport Slide 2.0

Mesophonia. This is a relatively new condition describing people who have strong aversions to particular sounds. This goes beyond the shoulder-cringing reactions to nails on a chalkboard; we’re talking instant rage, snap anger and full panic attacks when forced to listen to one’s trigger sounds. I was thrilled to read about this as a real thing, because I found my low-level reactions to the sound of people chewing food (the most common Mesophonia condition) fit the description perfectly. At an even less intense degree, my wife’s trigger sound is keys and dangling objects bouncing around while driving.

And now, for those readers wondering where I was going with this, we come to this new product: the Keyport Slide 2.0.

The Keyport Slide 2.0 is a whole new way at looking at your keychain. In effect it turns that jingling, jangling mess in your pocket or purse into a slick, compact Swiss-army knife of efficiency. You can customize what goes into the slots with choices including an LED light, a USB drive, a bottle opener, a barcode holder, and many others in development. Oh, of course, don’t forget your keys. There are six slots for these customized and proprietary “blades” to fit into.

Once you order your Keyport, you get a form on which to place your chosen keys and take precise photos of them. You upload those photos to the company and their expert locksmiths and keymakers will choose the correct keyblanks to send you to match your personal keys. Next you take those blank blades and your own keys to your local locksmith to get the blades cut to fit the keys. Experience has shown you are better off heading to a small locksmith rather than a big-box hardware store, and the folks at the Keyport site have a list of compliant keymakers growing all the time, so just check with them if you’re not sure where to go. The last step is popping the demo or blanks out of the device and popping your new keys in, which is incredibly simple.

Then you’re all set. You can now approach all your usual doors like MacGyver.

I’ve used it for over a week now and what I first thought was a bit of a novelty has quickly become one of my favorite gadgets. It saves a lot of clutter in my pocket and made me really look at my old keychain and all the extra stuff on it I never used. The LED light has come in handy on many occasions already, and the USB drive is a great place to hold copies of my emergency documents (password-protected, of course). The customer service is also quick, courteous and icing on the cake of an incredibly well thought out and executed piece of tech.