Rii 2.4GHz Wireless Mini PC Keyboard Touchpad V2 Black

I don't normally write reviews of my purchases, preferring to leave them until I feel I can be really useful in a specific way, and I think I can do that with this product, especially for anyone who has, or is thinking of purchasing this for use with a Raspberry Pi, or anyone else who is concerned about potential issues with RF range, and the problems some people seem to be having with this remote control.

There are a 'lot' of poor reviews of this remote purely down to issues with poor RF range. I can confirm that 'out-of-the-box', and used as instructed, there are often issues with the little receiving unit not being capable of picking up a good quality signal. I have experienced this myself, and thought I'd bought something that was almost unusable in my intended way, to control my Pi from a decent distance across the room.

I can tell anyone that has had this issue, or is worried about this issue enough to warrant not buying the product, that using the small USB receiving unit on the end of a short USB extension cable will solve all issues that anyone is having with limited RF range. I bought a cheap-as-chips A-male to A-female USB extension cable, for literally 'pennies', and it's solved all my range issues at a stroke. There seems to be some issues with poorly screened PCB boards, of which the Pi seems to be guilty of, and the simple method of moving the USB RF receiver away from the circuit board solves any range issues at once. I can only presume that anyone having similar issues in other flavours of media-centres or other PC's are having similar issues that can be solved with the same method.

In terms of raw numbers, before the USB receiver was moved from the Pi my range was limited to about 1m, and it was fairly erratic even at just the 1m range. After putting the USB receiver on the end of my short USB extension cable, I can still have excellent RF control at the 5m range, which is at the limits of my room. It may work well beyond that, and there's no reason to think that it shouldn't, but the change in range and accuracy of the mouse-pad movement was dramatically better as soon as I began using the extension cable.

I wanted to put this solution here to help anyone already having this issue, but also to help stop people being put off from buying this absolutely superb product if this one issue was the reason for that. It's a brilliant remote, especially for the Pi, and for the sake of spending another quid on a short extension then it should continue to be seen as the great product that it is.

I hope this review is useful, and that it can help people out.

I bought this specifically to use with a Raspberry Pi so I didn't want anything expensive or big. This is working with raspbmc out of the box and it is the size of a standard remote control. Very handy.

Amazingly good quality-price ratio for real! 4.5/5

Was using it now for two days quite many hours, browsing internet, watching movies and playing songs from sofa - no problems at all. At least with the unit I got is model number RT-MWK01+ ([...])

Props:
+ driverless usage! No drivers needed with Windows 7 64-bit, Mac Lion, XP SP3 -tested.
+ well responsive connection (tested from 3-4 meters of PC) and very nice feeling buttons + well responsive touchpad (obviously not as smooth as nowadays GorillaGlass whatever but hey look at its price)
+ keyboard has all characters needed really (pound and dollar signs are there but not euro tho. F1 - F8 with 1-click F9 - F12 with holding FN button)
+ Fn+enter is Ctrl-Alt-Del nice shortcut :)
+ charging via mini-USB cable (got it charged in my car while driving from post office to home :)
+ very lightweight like 100g or similar, comfy to hold
+ RF receiver possible to carry within remote device, very handy
+ sturdy design really. Ok plastic used feels cheap but somehow well put together!
+ indicator for wireless connection, caps lock and battery.
+ back light is dimming itself when device not in use for a while, and the RF connection too (power saver)
+ On/Off button separately
+ Fn+touchpad = scrolling wheel
+ combo of Ctrl and + or - signs works just fine for zooming web pages (with Chrome browser at least)

Cons:
- no dedicated Win -button (it's via Fn)
- RF connection has an odd issue and it's because of holding left forefinger on a top left corner of the device -probably wireless receiver is in that area. Have to keep finger off top left corner then no probs.
- USB port is open to dust and trash to get in

Suggestion to Rii --> enhance browsing-from-sofa experience :) make some dedicated keys to improve on using ZOOM functions in browsers and windows explorer.. like Win key, or right side Ctrl key, or even separate scrolling wheel or FN button on a top of device to be able to use it more with one hand!
You know not everyone can afford big screens, all students has 19"-24" inches screens and you have to zoom every new page and also when searching for files in operating system.
- Horizontal scrolling function with touchpad -AGAIN you need it because you are sometimes zoomed into web page to see it better from your sofa.