I bought one of these a few months back and it has worked flawlessly with my Pi 3 and any computer I've tested it with. My model does not have the rechargeable battery nor does it have the back lit keyboard. I'm still using the same batteries that I started with. These units have a sleep function when turned on and not used and good range. Worth every bit of US $10 that I spent.
Thanks for a very helpful review. I received mine today. It is the i8+ model. Compared to the one in this review, I notice it uses microUSB (rather than mini-USB of the original i8) and has a non-accessible integrated battery. The keyboard has white backlighting, with three modes (off, dim, bright) that automatically turn off after about 30 seconds of not being used. There are many cheap imitations online which are probably the ones generating all the complaints. This is a comprehensive, lightweight and quality unit that I am very pleased with. Cheers.
I swear this dude is a time traveller from the 90's. Can you do a video of tech from the 2040 next? :D Would be fun to see if self-driving cars ever became a thing.
I have bought a VERY similar unit for Amazon for about £8 shipped. Mine is made by Caseflex, I use it for my media player PC because its at the other end of the room. Useful for media playback or youtube but not that good for typing intensive tasks. But I suppose that was the intention when it was designed. Great video Thanks :)
Q: Do you recall how long it took to charge up (fresh, new out of the box) ? A: I just found out. It only took about 45 minutes to fully charge. The red light stays on when plugged in and charging. The blue light stays on when it's charged. :) Thanks again.
Thank you, very helpful. I just bought a i8s, to work with a Frankenstein tower PC that's running Zwift. I was wondering what half of the keys were for! Also struggling to figure out how to scroll, click and drag, etc., but your video explains it clearly. Have also bookmarked your Web site!
This looks like a really great portable keyboard and as you have stated has all the keys that one might require. I think I will purchase one for my Pi. Thanks for another excellent review.
Hi and nice video! I ordered one backlit Rii i8 to go along with a tv box for a Christmas gift. I like the solid keys it looks like it would be easy to type on and not so small that its awkward to type on.
this is the first thing im writing with my Rii. I do wish they'd line up the keys a little better; they're all aligned in a perfect grid, which is not how keyboards usually are.. pretty sure this soft touch coating will eventually look super greasy!
Even though the dongle version of this device is wireless, it has one benefit that wired keyboards have. It uses the same drivers as the wired keyboard uses, so no need for any OS bluetooth support or configuration. Which comes in handy if you need to change a bios setting, have a multiboot menu or just need to configure bluetooth for your bluetooth keyboard and mouse. I bought the exact same one of those keyboards, as I didn't want to carry around a giant wired keyboard. I saw someone spill a little coffee on their laptop the other day, that caused a few keys not to work. If they had one of those, they could still have used their laptop. And for the super low price, why not have one as a backup.
I own this model and I love it. I have a desktop in my office connected to a TV on the other side of the wall. The dongle is in the PC and I can use the keyboard on the other side. Has never given me any issues. Maybe I am lucky.
This keyboard is functional and has a decent range. The only annoying thing is it takes long to reconnect so if you leave it on and then after some time start typing on it it will miss first few letters.
I have a device that looks very similar to it in the same shape but smaller with round keys. Mine has the track-pad under the keyboard and runs off 3 AAA batteries called the Measy GP800. I might just upgrade to that one though as it looks better than what I have.
That's the same one I have for my Pi 3. It's glitchy like most cheap Chinese products. But it does work well enough for my needs since my Pi is only being used as a media center.
VampierMSX yes, I am only young but still know a lot more about computers then my friends and wish to learn more about how computers tick. His videos really help and off-topic videos like this are still great
I enjoyed this. Even though I have no idea what Panda and Pi are. Do you have a video on navigating one of these mini keyboard units on an Android TV Box?? There are some aspects where I get stuck and cannot seem to move down a screen, etc....
Excellent and thorough as always. Suggestion. Could you make a self powered stand alone pc system? e.g. raspberry Pi, monitor, solar panel, 12v battery etc guide? Would this be possible? Keep up the good work!
I bought 2 of them! If you are not typing for 15 seconds it turn off and then it told 5 seconds to turn back on. Although the battery would last for months!
Fantastic! Love the videos. Could you do a unlocking your keyboards special functions video? Also how to program hot keys. Thanks for all the great work.
I wish sleep mode was adjustable. It goes to sleep quickly and your first keystroke is lost when you start to type, as that stroke does nothing but bring it back online.
if they removed the track pad and replaced whatever that thing is on the top right with an analog stick. allowed to adjust the sensitivity settings. and maybe make the device itself a but larger I'd say it was pretty good.
I was wondering if that battery was the same type as found in older Nokia phones? A few years back I had a cheap MP4 player that had a similar looking battery and it was the exact same form factor as my Nokia phone at the time. I could use its battery as a spare for my Nokia as the size and contact positions was identical and I have seen other rechargeable Chinese devices using the same battery.
Thanks. I battled to understand the mini keyboard, which is a Chinese clone of this one, but the instructions were'nt clear to me, as well as the videos I have seen. Thanks again.
The unit will go into sleep mode and disconnect from wifi after a couple of minutes. The unit has to be within 2ft of the receiver device to link. On my TV, I have to turn the TV off and on again wiith the keyboard within 2ft. to link. Either that or unplug the dongle from the back of a wall mounted 55" Smart-TV. A nuisance.
Chris, thanks for another great video. I scrolled through the comments, and searched Wikipedia trying to answer my own question, but did not reach a conclusion. So here is it: Why not the blue tooth version for your video? It looks to me it would be more flexible, allowing connection to smartphones and tablets. At first I thought it was because the Raspberry Pi had no Bluetooth connectivity, but Wikipedia proved me wrong: "The Raspberry Pi 3 and Pi Zero W (wireless) are equipped with 2.4 GHz WiFi 802.11n (150 Mbit/s) andBluetooth 4.1 (24 Mbit/s)... The Raspberry Pi 3B+ features dual-band IEEE 802.11b/g/n/ac WiFi, Bluetooth 4.2, ..." Please tell me the advantages of one vs the other.
Hey ExplainingComputers, I have a recommendation. Can you please make a video on the raspberry pi cluster? Your are one of my favourite youtubers and I would love to see how to do that. Thanks (:
It works fine on any PC. I've used this already to control a laptop while making a presentation, and while playing media files on a laptop connected to a TV when both were across the room. Obviously the Rii's keyboard and trackpad are small and hence a little slow to use compared to a standard keyboard. But you have all the keys and mouse functions available and can navigate around and control things very easily.
thanks, i might invest in one of these....beats having a large USB keyboard on my lap while in bed. i have laptop hooked up to external screen so find im best comfy using a external keyboard, but can prove to be annying at time....so this item is on my to buy list :)
Hello Sir, today I used it today for the first time on android tv box. It's really awesome. But one thing i cannot get is the right click. Specially when i am browsing the internet on Google Chrome. Can you please solve this problem ??
Greetings from the Future! I just got my RII with a backlight and no rubberized finish. Of course, I just blindly typed in RII and up came the home of Mr Scissors.
In the FUTURE, the i8+ will cost all of _seventeen_ dollars and fifty-nine cents *canajian*. Small flap where you hide your dongle, but batteryless. I bought it for the MyGica running the projector@@ExplainingComputers
The version shown might work if you have an iPad with a USB port to plug in the dongle. But there are others versions of this unit with Bluetooth connectivity, and those should pair and work with an iPad.
The mouse bit doesn't work with Kodi 17. I can see the cursor which is annoyingly offset by waaay too much, but the most irritating thing is that the mouse clicks do absolutely nothing now. Worked fine in Kodi 16 and still fine in SPMC so it's not the Rii itself.
Thanks for this, as you may know there are a number of identical devices, just with simply someone else's name on. This video is thus very helpful for a range of devices! I actually just bought one from 'eSYNIC' on Amazon and in the review tried to post a link to this video. Unfortunately one can't 'include URLs external to Amazon'. Sigh.
Unfortunately you have not tested all those special keys I had once an early model of Logitech keyboard with extra buttons- they would work for Media Player Classic but not in Winamp
This make of small keyboard is just OK. Saying this because the battery life, even after a full charge, is nothing to write home about. I find, one has to always remember to turn off the keyboard after each use, no matter how little the keyboard's been used, because the battery just drains like a sieve -- literally. To be fair, the keyboard has been programmed to switch off by itself should it be left on unintentionally. But no matter, you'll still find that this keyboard is for a "tickling" keyboard use.
It does, in fact I think it has two. Can you direct me to other alternatives to this keyboard? I think the size of it will be too small for my taste ☺️
I just got one of those and the biggest problem I have with it is I would like to use all those mouse buttons on the sides and not like accidentally click on things. So it would be great if there was like a fn click or something so it no longer issued mouse button commands from the touchscreen.
some mouse/touchpad settings in the control panel has a "tap to click" option that is on by default. Make sure the mini keyboard is connected so the option is available for you to disable
Hi, volume buttons aren't working on Amazon Firestick ... almost everything else seems to work ... anybody else have problem with the vol buttons on amazon firestick ? Any way it can be fixed so the volume buttons work on the firestick ? thanks.
So I picked up an older Rii And a thrift store for four bucks .... no dongle But I can probably get one of those for about another four or five dollars but since they sell on Amazon for $14 and I'm out 8 or $10 not such a good deal.... Still it might be fun to have a little keyboard that you can work from the couch. I think mine is the rii i 6 it looks a little different than the one in this video
Hi I was given one of these a few years back but have never really needed to use it before. My problem is that all my chargers will not fit the remote? I lost the original connectors that came with it but thought standard connectors would work. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
I recently bought the mini wireless keyboard model number RT-MWK08. Is this a Bluetooth device and if so can you tell me how to pair it to another device or at least tell me where the Bluetooth button is? thank you
i have a similar one but the trackpad is crappy , cursor skips a lot and it’s not very precise , i wish there was something portable with a quality touchpad like the ones on mac book pros but smaller
While my keyboard isnt a Rii i8 it looks just like it and has all similar keys... the problem I'm having is when i turn it on the power light would be on and the yellow light will blink 3 times before the power light turns off while the power knob is turned on. Due to this I'm not getting a response on my android box anf only the backlight will come on on the remote. It was working fine when i purchased it and this just started happening this morning but last night it was fine. So i dont know if something was pressed my mistake or what. Can you help? Thank you
seems i got a ripoff version the site claims this is a RII one but a different model i informed them and they asked me u can send it back on a full refund... but i think ill keep it for my raspberry and laptop :( sad it wont work on a phone
do you still like the feel of it has it got sticky yet because I'm going to buy one and I don't know whether to buy the silicone one or the hard plastic one
Mine is still going fine -- no problems with stickiness. Though I increasingly favour hard plastic surfaces because -- as you say -- the softer plastics all eventually go.
leslietzy I don't know! :) I just thought this was the best background they provided with Pixel. I think they are all images taken by the development team.
Awesome video. Shopping sites like Wish and Ebay is littered with "counterfeit" Rii i8 wireless keyboards. Unfortunately I bought a counterfeit and it looks exactly like the real i8 except it doesn't have a rechargeable battery (it uses 2 x AAA). I'm leaving a comment because I want people to spend that extra $5 for a real Rii with the a real Logo; this counterfeit's track pad is malfunctioning (it doesn't scroll vertically anymore). Until today I didn't even realize there was brand called Rii, I noticed this when I tried troubleshooting this device. Seems the Chinese steal intellectual property from each other.
Hi, thanks a lot for your detail review, could you please tell me what is the other function of the space bar where there is a blue touch pad sign. As far I know it will function with the Fn key but i didn't find anything by pressing Fn key and space bar together.
