8 Bit Productions

Tag: Keyboard

  • Rapoo

    I’m doing tech support these days and I get to work on a lot of Microsoft Surface devices. Typically the SP7+ and SP9.

    Sometimes people come in with broken keyboards and I need to be able to type stuff anyway. Yes, I know there’s a touch screen but it’s so painful to use. Sometimes I’m setting up Windows from scratch and one weird thing about the Surface devices is that they can’t always talk to their own keyboards until after you run the software updates to get all the new drivers.

    Yes, a Microsoft manufactured Surface Pro device can’t talk to it’s own Microsoft manufactured keyboard. I don’t get it.

    Anyway, I got tired of this situation and bought a cheap Bluetooth keyboard and mouse combo that talk to the computer via a single dongle, leaving the other USB port free for … whatever.

    I bought the “Rapoo Bluetooth keyboard and mouse” combo (no I don’t have any associate links). Given that it was only $36AUD, it’s a surprisingly good setup. The keyboard far exceeded my expectations. It has a solid feel to it and the keys are nice to type on (I don’t like a lot of travel in the keys) and they aren’t noisy. It reminds me a lot of my Logi keyboard, which I note I bought almost exactly one year ago (and I still use happily at home).

    The Rapoo is smaller, and the keys are closer together, but that doesn’t seem to be much of a problem. The only thing that irks me is the position of the cursor keys, being squashed in under the right shift button, but I get that it’s because they were trying to save space.

    The Bluetooth has been great. It connects quickly and has no dropouts.

    Basically I’m very happy with this keyboard.

    What I’m not so happy with is the mouse. It really does feel cheap. The weird thing is that this keyboard/mouse combo has an underwhelming mouse, but a champion of a keyboard. I guess they balance out, and given the price, it’s a good deal. If I had to buy this again, I’d buy the keyboard separately and find a better mouse to go with it.

    On a side note, quite a few of my customers are buying the “Rapoo XK200 Bluetooth Microsoft Surface Pro Keyboard” (again, no associate links) when their Surface Pro keyboards die. This Rapoo keyboard is only compatible with Surface Pro 7+ or lower because it magnetically connects via the plugs at the bottom of the Surface device. Microsoft changed the connection style in the SP8 and above. This keyboard is Bluetooth so it doesn’t talk to the Surface device through the plugs at the bottom like the native Microsoft keyboard does. I’ve played around with them a bit when people come in with them and they seem good. It’s why I tried out the bigger keyboard that I bought. For around $60AUD, this off brand Surface Pro keyboard sure beats the Microsoft branded keyboard (Typecover?) which is around $200AUD.

    For a budget brand, I’m quite impressed with Rapoo. I can’t speak for their longevity yet, but I’m happy so far.

  • Logi

    This post is not sponsored by Logitech, but if they would like to support me, I’d be happy to oblige 😀

    A year or so back I needed a new mouse for work. Work only supplies crappy cheap mice but since I work on the computer all day, I knew I needed something better. I looked around online and discovered that the Logitech MX Master 2 had good reviews so I bought one. It turns out one of the people I work with had also bought one for himself at the same time I did quite independently of me purchasing mine. We both fell in love the mice straight away.

    The Logi mouse felt right straight out of the box. It has a good weight to it, and the programable buttons do exactly what I expect them to. The free-spinning scroll wheel is awesome. It’s one of those things I didn’t know I needed until I used it. The long scroll of doom was a thing of the past.

    My MX 2 started to take a bit of a beating getting carried back and forth to work and home, so I ended up buying two more MX mice: one to keep at home when I was working there, and one for my personal computer at home. The work one just stayed at work. Actually I bought another one for my son and he loved it too. The new ones were the MX Master 3 because Logitech had upgraded the model. So yeah, I guess I became a bit of a Logitech fanboy.

    I previously had a gaming mouse with a bunch of numeric buttons on the side, which were great for gaming, and this is something the MX 2/3 doesn’t have, so I wouldn’t recommend it for hardcore gamers, but for work and casual gaming, it works great.

    Now that I had my mouse situation under control, I turned my attention to my keyboard situation. A while back I bought an Aukey mechanical keyboard. It was a proper clickety-clack keyboard that made a lot of noise when you used it. I tried to like it, with the nostalgic clunky keyboard style, but I never could love it. Apart from my wife complaining that it made too much noise when I was working at night, a huge frustration for me was the lack of the command key. I use Macs at home and at work, and on a standard Mac keyboard there are two Command buttons, one on each side of the space bar. On the Aukey keyboard there was one “Windows” key that did the job of the Command key, but it was in the wrong position. I was constantly frustrated switching between my work computer and my home computer, which are both Macs, because the keyboard buttons were in the wrong place on the Aukey keyboard.

    So the other day I bought a new Logitech (Logi) full-size wireless MX Keys keyboard. The first thing I noticed was how heavy it was, but I guess that’s a good thing because it doesn’t slip around. The keys have a nice feel to them. It’s a joy to use. It’s got all the right buttons for Mac (and Windows). The Bluetooth connection is strong and I haven’t had any dropouts like I have with other older Bluetooth products although it can be sluggish making a connection if the keyboard hasn’t been used for a couple of hours. And since it’s wireless, it frees up one USB port anyway.

    I hadn’t intended to go all in with Logitech devices, but I’m happy I have because I’m finding them all to be well-built, reliable products.