Rii is a well-known brand in the mini keyboard space, with the popular Bluetooth-enabled Rii i8 Mini Bluetooth keyboard often recommended for Amazon Fire TV users.
GeekBuying have now listed the Rii X8 which caught my eye for two reasons – the inclusion of what appears to be RGB backlighting and the addition of a scroll wheel for navigating pages.
As with other popular keyboard remotes, the Rii X8 features a pretty impressive array of features:
- 2.4GHz wireless connectivity via the included USB dongle
- A removable rechargeable battery
- Full QWERTY keyboard
- Compact touchpad (with support for scrolling gestures)
- Suite of Android and Windows keys
- Volume control keys
This makes it the well-suited accessory for an Android TV box as having a touchpad or air mouse massively improves your Android TV box experience.
There’s also a number of Windows-specific features such as a Windows Key and even a CTRL+ALT+DEL shortcut for accessing the Windows menu.
Of course, with its USB dongle and standard keyboard layout, the Rii X8 should be compatible with a wide range of devices, including HTPCs, Macs, Linux, Android TV boxes and more.
There’s not much info on the RGB lighting setup, though it appears that you can choose 5 different colors (aqua, red, green, blue, purple). No word if you can have a gradient effect like the marketing info suggests however.
The scroll wheel is also an interesting inclusion. Whilst I’m still a massive fan of the scroll gesture for simplified browsing, I can definitely see the benefit of a tactile dial for quick navigation through web pages and the like.
If you’re wanting to check it out, the Rii X8 is available from GeekBuying for around $29.99 including free shipping.
