Rapid Typing 5 – Review

Rapid Typing 5 is a free tutorial for Kids, Adults and Students

Image of Rapid Typing, a free program to improve speed and accuracy. A review.

Speed is still one of the essential criteria for purchasing their computer hardware. The underlying goal is to complete routine tasks in the most effective way. Being able to type quickly is no different, and to improve our skills, we search for tools such as Rapid Typing to learn and practice.

However, don’t worry, if you think that your speed is slow, and it will be difficult to change that. Rapid Typing has been a popular typing software tutor for many years and improved the keyboarding skills of thousands of users. And, it is free of charge. Here is our brief review.

Rapid Typing 5 – Overview

Rapid Typing is a free program that will teach you the concept of touch typing as well as correct hand and finger positions. It will furthermore help improve your speed and accuracy. Rapid Typing is easy to use and delivers a great variety of exercises and drills to develop muscle memory and improve overall performance.

Being suitable for kids and adults alike, the exercises are categorized by difficulty grade, whereas drills become more challenging when leveling up. This way, everyone can start their current skill level. You will also learn to type accurately and fast without looking at the keyboard.

Core features include:

  • Beginner and expert courses
  • Virtual keyboard layouts: Qwerty, Dvorak, Colemak
  • Animations such as moving hands
  • Create lessons with own material
  • Suitable for classroom use
  • Home, top, bottom row and numpad exercises
  • Progress tracking
  • Online games

Rapid Typing Download

Keyboard screenshot images of Rapid Typing Tutor

This tutor is available for free. You can download Rapid Typing 5 from their website. It will be ready to use once you have installed it on your Windows system.

Set-up – There is no need to configure your system or the tool itself in order to make everything work. However, it is only available for Windows systems and not compatible with Mac, Chrome or Linux. However, it seems to work on Ubuntu systems.

Licensing – Furthermore, it is free for personal and corporate use with unlimited usage. No registration will be required. There is no internet connection needed while using the program, however, there are some online features only available on the website, see further below. The portable version can be run from a USB flash drive instead of from a computer installation.

Rapid Typing Zone – Features

Screenhost image of Rapid Typing - Exercises

Testing – To know where you stand, Rapid Typing Zone offers an online test that will assess your current speed and accuracy. There are some basic settings to customize it, and the results can be seen on a scoreboard.

Virtual keyboard – Rapid Typing does offer a virtual keyboard showing how you should place your fingers and hands to hit specific letters, symbols, or other functional keys. The keyboard is available for QWERTY, QWERTZ, AZERTY, Dvorak, Colemak and other layouts. There is support for the numeric keyboard as well.

Moving Hands – In synchronization with the feature just mentioned, you will see virtual hands moving along the keyboard. The hands provide visual advice on which keys to press next, and also provide support for users with left-hand priority.

Classroom support – Teachers can use Rapid Typing in their classroom once it is installed on the school’s local server. The essential administrative features include assigning students to learn groups and levels, student statistics or progress tracking.

Animation mode – By default, it comes with an animation mode activated. If you think this animation is not required you can simply disable it by unchecking the respective box in the options menu. There are also other options to further customize it.

Tracking – At the end of each lesson, Rapid Typing provides statistical information and visual charts. These charts include information about the number of characters and words typed per minute and the accuracy you have achieved during the exercise. You can also compare the results with the set goals.

Difficulty levels – After completing a lesson you will be taken to the next level of exercises which aim to be more challenging. Progress charts, analysis and statistics will also help re-frame your strategy in learning to type faster.

Easy To Use – While the design and interface may certainly look a bit outdated, it is still visually appealing to get engaged and motivated to use all features. Especially for kids, the calm and relaxing aquatic background can help them to keep practicing and learning. Kept simple, Rapid Typing is easy to use and fun to work with.

Rapid Typing 5 – Lessons

Screenshot image of Rapid Typing - Beginner course

Courses – There are various lessons and levels available to teach you essential skills separately or to further advance them. The introduction course will teach you all the characters available on a standard keyboard. The beginner course will focus on hand positions and activities to master the different rows. The expert course in Rapid Typing aims to smooth those skills further and also speed you up.

Creating lessons – Using the lesson editor, you can create your very own classes if you wish to practice with your own material (txt, rtf files) or specific topics. If you have any challenging words you struggle with, you can also preload those words into your customized lessons.

This option will help you or your family develop the expertise needed to process any type of text, material, or copy. During an activity, Rapid Typing will display the words on the screen you are supposed to type and practice.

Tip – Check out the tool’s library to discover more courses that are not automatically loaded in your regional setting. From the library, you can then insert courses into your daily training plan.

Timer – There is also a timer you are free to set for each task. It will appear in the top screen area of each lesson. The bottom screen area will show three boxes with parameters providing more detail about exercise progress, mistakes done and current speed.

Rapid Typing Games

One of the fun benefits of Rapid Typing is games. You will need to play them online as the offline version does not offer games. They target different goals, skills, or performances.

FastTyper 2 and Snow Typer will challenge you on speed while Word Mountain is a travel game where you climb mountains and related words or phrases. Albarn’s Attack is more about learning essential skills, and Magic Spells focuses on accuracy and spelling.

We found Horse Racing fun to play as well or QuickType which will challenge your reaction rate. You may also want to try TypingArcaniod or Farm Defender.

Rapid Typing Review – Verdict

Screenshot image of Rapid Typing - Progress Tracking

If you look for a simple and free program, Rapid Typing is certainly a good place to get started. It offers all the important functions, lessons, features, and exercises to help push your current skills to a higher keyboarding performance.

Pros

  • Free and easy to download
  • Numerous courses and lessons available
  • Create own lessons
  • Progress tracking and statistics
  • Rapid Typing games and tests
  • Various keyboard layouts

Cons

  • No videos or in-depth tutorials
  • Audio or beep sounds can be little annoying.
  • Interface and design look outdated
  • Expert course not available for all layouts and languages
  • No Rapid Typing online version, just download. Portable edition available
  • Not compatible with other systems than Windows

What are premium alternatives?

If you look for professional tutors, Typesy or KAZ Typing are popular choices. Please click the links if you wish to read our in-depth reviews.

Are there any free alternatives?

Of course, there are many other options available that come for free. At the time of writing, we found 10 Fast Fingers, TypingMaster, KidzType or RataTying good alternative choices.

Can you use Rapid Typing in classrooms?

Yes, this is possible. You will need to install Rapid Typing on the local server choosing a folder location all students can access. Students will then be able to practice lessons and activities on all workstations. Furthermore, administrative features allow teachers to track a student’s progress and create individual and common classes.

What keyboard languages are available?

The tool supports many languages among them are:

Rapid Typing – Testimonials

We have summarized some of the user reviews from the website. Since it is free, it can be used by educational institutions across the globe. For example, the USAID-funded Technology for Improved Learning Outcomes (TILO) project recommends this tutor to be used by teachers and students in Egyptian schools.

Another user praises both the online tests and games as well as the offline exercises to increase accuracy. Furthermore, the drills are powerful when it comes to overcoming weaknesses or boosting existing strengths.

Feedback: What is your experience with Rapid Typing? Would you recommend a different tool? Let us know in the comments below.

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