First, I'll start with the bad. If your considering buying this because the description says it is also a laser pointer, don't because as far as I can tell this device does NOT have that capability. This product is made by Riitek, you can goto their website it's simply wwwdotriitekdotcom. After poking around there I found that the company DOES make a product that includes a laser pointer. but this isn't that. This is the RT-MWK06. The model that includes a laser pointer is the RT-MWK01. It's also unfortunate that a lot of similar devices on amazon also seem to market theirs as having laser pointers and I'm not sure they do.Anyway, for me it's not really an issue because I didn't need a laser pointer, but truthfully if I had I'd be pretty upset right now and angry that I would have to be returning the product to try and find one that actually included the functionality they claim it does in their product title!
So, the good... As far as the keyboard/remote are concerned so far I have to say I'm pretty happy with this. Granted I've only had it for a day so far so I can't yet answer things like longevity or battery life, but having read other reviews on amazon for the same product under different sellers it seems the battery is pretty good.
Overall comments:
1. The device is small, even after looking at the pictures, It still blew me away how small it is. It is literally the size of an iphone 4, only say 1.5 inches longer, otherwise that should give you a good idea of it's size.
2. The keyboard. Is surprisingly good. I wouldn't want to type up a long document on this, but for basic usage it is more than adequate. I am using a Mac Mini running OSX Lion and while it could not identify the keyboard type when I first plugged it in, it seems to be working just fine. Some of the keys don't seem to work; there are volume and playback keys avail, which I imagine would work in Windows, but don't on my mac, but the keys that matter do work. Tabbing between Windows on mac (cmd-tab) is acheived by hitting fn-ctrl-tab, a bit akward but it works. I did set my mac to use the f5-f8 keys for launchpad, app windows, show desktop, show dashboard which make things easier with this keyboard, so despite it not working 100% with a mac, it's definately good enough.
3. The trackpad. Again, it's damn small, but honestly it gets the job done. I did have to tweak up the sensitivy a bit, but otherwise it works just fine. I will say for more advanced tasks like drag/drop it might get old if you have to do too much of that at once, but I found no problems using it, just have to recognize that as a very small trackpad and buttons it is a tad awkward trying to hold down the left mouse button as you drag with your finger.
4. The Remote. There is no way to enter codes into it to program it. You need to use your existing remotes to teach it each key, which in a way is actually better (unless of course you've lost that remote). Overall this too gets the job done for me. What I REALLY needed was a way to turn the volume up/down on my stereo and turn my tv on/off I was able to program it to do all of that. I don't see being able to replace a remote if you have more advanced needs, like a DVR. It would have been nice if they'd included a few additional buttons, like rewind/pause/stop/play/forward etc so you could do basic controls of things like DVD/BlueRay/DVR devices. I suppose with a blue-ray you could largely acheive that, but with a DVR you really can't as the nav buttons are separate actions from playback control. It's unfortunate too because the remote "side" of this device is mostly just unused space, they could easily include more buttons to be programmed without adding to the cost too much.
5. Range. My room is not huge, I probably sit about 8 feet from my TV, give or take a foot, but I've so far had no problems with the range. This specific model comes with a USB 2.4 Ghz dongle you plug into a USB port in your computer. The good thing about these is they aren't directional, so you don't have to point this device at your computer for it to work (the remote side IS directional, but that's par for the course). I was seriously on the fence between the USB 2.4 Ghz and the Bluetooth version, but after reading a couple of reviews for the bluetooth version and people complaining about connection issues, I deciided to play it safe with the USB 2.4 Ghz. I've had an Adeso USB full-size wireless keyboard for a while now and have had no issues with connectivity.
My final comment is with regard to how it works as a media-center controller, specifically in my case XBMC. In this area I would say it falls in the middle. It DOES work, so that much is good, but I was surprised to find that the left mouse button does not behave in XBMC as an "enter" or affirmative action, but seems oddly in most cases to be more akin to a backup or cancel action. So I have been forced to use the arrow keys and the enter key, but it's something I'm willing to live with, and one could say I'm even splitting hairs.
So, overall I think for the price I paid for this device it was well worth it and it gets my fullsize keyboard off my coffee table, which definately makes my wife happy, plus this lets me go from 2 remotes down to 1 remote most of the time.
No comments:
Post a Comment