Rii Mini i25 Wireless Keyboard & Air Mouse: Honest Review

The worst part of owning a Smart TV has nothing to do with the picture

It's the moment you need to type something. A search query, a password, a URL. You pick up the remote, you start the cursor-crawl across an on-screen keyboard, and somewhere around the eighth letter you quietly wonder if a smart TV is actually all that smart.

I went looking for a fix and landed on the Rii Mini i25 — a compact wireless keyboard with an air mouse built in, priced at $15.21 after a 38% discount. I was skeptical. Here's what I actually found.

What this thing does and how well it does it

The Rii Mini i25 is a plug-and-play wireless keyboard that connects via USB dongle. No Bluetooth pairing, no app required, no driver installation. You plug the receiver into your TV box, Fire TV Stick, Android TV, or even a projector or PC, and it works. That simplicity is not nothing — I've had Bluetooth remotes that required three reboots before they decided to cooperate.

The keyboard is compact, double-sided in the sense that one side is the QWERTY layout and the other side handles the touchpad and media controls. Layout options include US, Hebrew, Russian, Arabic, and French — which is a meaningful differentiator if you're not in an English-speaking country and want actual characters printed on your keys.

The air mouse is the feature that sounds gimmicky until you use it. You tilt and move the keyboard in the air and the cursor follows the motion via gyroscope. It takes a few minutes to calibrate your movements mentally, but once you're used to it, navigation feels considerably more natural than D-pad scrolling.

There's also an IR learning function — you can teach the device to replicate your existing TV remote's signals — and a programmable key for custom functions. The 350mAh rechargeable battery charges via USB. For intermittent remote use, that battery is adequate.

Honest pros and the one thing worth knowing upfront

What actually surprised me: the typing experience is genuinely good for the use case. Searching Netflix, entering a Kodi library path, typing a YouTube query — all of this becomes significantly less annoying. Multiple Russian-speaking reviewers specifically flagged it as the best remote they'd tried for XBMC/Kodi after testing several alternatives. French users confirmed the AZERTY layout works correctly. That kind of multilingual reliability isn't guaranteed at this price point.

The air mouse precision is better than generic competitors I've seen at similar prices. It's not a laser mouse on a desk, but for pointing at interface elements on a TV screen from the couch, it's more than functional.

Here's the real limitation, stated plainly: the build quality is budget-level. The plastic feels thin, and the glossy sections of the casing arrived unprotected and scratched easily according to user reports. This is not a device you're going to pass down. The 350mAh battery also means you will be charging it more frequently than you might expect if you use it heavily.

Worth noting that the rating shown is 94.1 out of 5, which appears to be a display error — the actual customer reviews visible are all 5-star, which is consistent with verified purchases across multiple languages and regions.

What $15 normally gets you in this category

At this price, your realistic alternatives are:

Generic no-name air mouse remotes from €8-12: these exist in large numbers on AliExpress and Amazon. Most work adequately for basic navigation, but the air mouse precision tends to be poor and keyboard layouts are usually US-only with no multilingual support.

Logitech K600 or similar Smart TV keyboards: significantly better build quality and typing experience, but you're looking at $60-80. A different budget category entirely.

Your TV's original remote: free, but you already know why you're reading this article.

The Rii Mini i25 sits in a real gap — it's meaningfully better than generic alternatives at a similar price, and it's a rational choice if you don't want to spend $60 on a problem that only bothers you occasionally. It won't threaten premium options, and it doesn't need to.

Buy it if / Skip it if

Buy it if you regularly use Kodi, Plex, or any Android TV media center interface. Buy it if you're tired of hunting-and-pecking through an on-screen keyboard to type passwords or search queries. Buy it if you need a non-English keyboard layout (Hebrew, Russian, Arabic, French) for your TV setup — that's actually a fairly rare feature at this price.

Skip it if build quality matters to you — this is plastic and it shows. Skip it if you want a Bluetooth solution rather than USB dongle. Skip it if your TV or streaming box has a well-designed voice search that you're already happy with — in that case, this solves a problem you don't have.

My honest take: for $15.21, this is a reasonable purchase for a specific, real problem. It's not built to impress, but it's built to work. For Kodi and Android TV users especially, it punches above what you'd expect at this price.

Price: $15.21 (was $24.53)

You can check it out here: https://www.ali-ex.com/aDxJjy