Rapoo 9900M keyboard
Control your Mac, iPad, iPhone, TV…
The keyboard and mouse can be synced with up to four devices
£79.95 FROM Rapoo, rapoo.com FEATURES Multi-mode Bluetooth 3.0/4.0/2.4GHz keyboard, sensor adjustable from 600 to 3200dpi, rechargeable mouse battery
The big selling point of the Rapoo 9900M keyboard and mouse combo is the ability to switch between up to four different devices.
The peripherals are, in theory supposed to be able to intelligently connect to the working device. Great for switching seamlessly between a Mac and an iPad then? Well, in practice, the transition is not so smooth…
Let’s take a look at the keyboard first. The aluminium finish is smart and it sits well with the iMac aesthetic. The keyboard is functional with a fully fledged numeric keypad on the right-hand side. It’s a bit bigger than the average keyboard, but not too large. It is, however, missing both ƒ and ç keys (there’s a Windows key instead), which makes it a little more difficult to use, especially when switching devices. The keyboard would also benefit from a light on the Caps Lock key to indicate when this is enabled.
Using the keyboard is a pleasant experience though; the keys have a good amount of travel, without making too much noise, and the space between the keys is comfortable for typing.
The mouse is rather large and heavy, and its dual plastic finish looks awkward next to the aluminium finish of the keyboard, but we like the rubberised sides, which makes it easy to grip. The mouse boasts five buttons and two scroll wheels, which is great if you are a designer or gamer, as it gives plenty of control. The buttons are also well placed if you’re right-handed, and we found the mouse was comfortable to use even over long durations, though left-handed users might not get on with it so well. The mouse also comes with a cable for recharging its built-in battery, which is more eco-friendly than having to use single-use cell batteries.
Syncing issues
Syncing the keyboard for the first time proved to be a challenge. It took a while for the keyboard to be recognised by our iMac. The keyboard then appeared in the System Preferences > Bluetooth Devices pane multiple times – this is because it has Bluetooth 3.0, Bluetooth 4.0 and 2.4GHz radios on board, which is a bit confusing. Rapoo recommends connecting via Bluetooth 4.0, which uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE).
Unfortunately, switching between devices is not a seamless process. There is a switch at the back of the keyboard, but it shifts between the radios and not between paired devices. So we were forced to fiddle with the Bluetooth settings on iOS/macOS to connect both the keyboard and mouse. The mouse has a handy device switch button with a digital indicator showing the device it’s connected to – which we wish the keyboard had – but even then the mouse wouldn’t always automatically connect to the device we were working with.
Overall the keyboard and mouse are comfortable to use, and the concept is good, but we found that the initial syncing and device-switching feature did not work as expected. SRIVATS LAKSHMAN