Packaging and Accessories

Packaging here does not give off a great impression if I say so myself, with the "Free!" coming off like a late-night TV infomercial. Indeed, seeing that it actually refers to the software driver makes it worse since it better be free or else that would have been a major negative. That aside, the rest of the packaging used is fairly standard for the market, and I appreciate the lower profile used with a slim cardboard box to house the keyboard and mouse. The color print wrap shows the products on the front along with the company and product name, with specifications and marketing features on the back and sides. Two double flaps on the side help keep the contents inside in place.


Opening the box, we see the keyboard in a separate, larger compartment on the left with everything else on the right and cardboard pieces keeping them from hitting each other. This is good because there is a clear distinction of what goes where, and it also prevents scratches due to tumbles during shipping and handling. Genius also provides the requisite batteries, which was nice, and we get one AA and two AAA batteries. Given how nearly every battery tends to exaggerate its rating, I decided not to mention those at all to instead focus on battery life over the course of testing. The mouse, which for the purposes of this review is an accessory to the keyboard, comes in its own compartment and in a plastic wrap.


The mouse is on the smaller side of average, more in line with travel mice, and has a brushed gray finish on the top-front (plastic, not metal) and a glossy finish elsewhere. There are the standard left/right click buttons and a scroll wheel, which also acts as the middle mouse button when pressed inward. Turning it over, we see a cutout that houses the 2.4 GHz dongle which goes into an available USB port on your computer, as well as a cover for the battery compartment on the side. A 1000 DPI optical sensor helps with functionality here, and it is really a fairly basic mouse as it comes out of the box with software support we will examine later.


Underneath the keyboard is a quick start guide that goes over the pre-programmed functionality for both the keyboard and mouse, as well as how to set up this combo, which includes a guide on how to insert the batteries and pair both devices with the dongle if need be. They come paired to it already, so it should be a fairly simple plug-and-play solution.