Razer Pro|Type Keyboard iPod Dock Review
Pros
The keyboard is attractive and comfortable. The media controls -- music as well as photo -- all seemed to work out of the box with little problem. The music controls include a button to start iTunes (or whatever you use to listen to music), general shuttle controls (play, fast forward, etc.), a shuffle button, volume and mute. On the photo side, you get rotate, zoom, and a 100-percent button. All the buttons worked on our Mac setup after a relatively painless driver installation.
The iPod dock also works as advertised. The computer immediately recognized the iPod as if it were directly connected -- charging and disk access and all.
Cons
While the ProType seems to clean things up a bit by consolidating your iPod and keyboard, it's a bit curious that Razer chose to use two separate USB lines coming out of the keyboard -- one for the keyboard itself, and another for the iPod. This means that the keyboard sucks up two USB ports. While this is somewhat alleviated by the fact that the keyboard has two USB ports on it, the 6-inch cables that split off the main cable are so short that we had to use a USB extension cable on our MacBook Pro in order to reach both ports.
So Should You Get It?
We must admit it's nice to just plop the iPod in a keyboard and hit the iTunes button and be up and running. For iPod users with computers under a desk or far away, this keyboard is a great solution and we recommend it highly. For the rest of you, at $129.99 retail, the Razer Pro|Type is a bit pricey when you can get Apple's own iPod dock for $39 -- and that one has video out for playing videos on a TV direct from your iPod.
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