A perfect iPad keyboard doesn’t exist
As a piece of hardware, the iPad is surprisingly un-opinionated about how you use it, it’s just a slab with software, so you can sit at a desk, use in one hand sitting in an armchair, watch movies propped up on a window sill and so on. We pour into it our use-cases and constraints and desires and workflows and quibbles. And so it’s no surprise that there is no perfect keyboard accessory for the iPad.
It was never so with a laptop. You had one option of how to interface with it and an entire culture and ecosystem built around that starting point. We knew what we wanted, it was what our fingers were trained to find.
So in the spirit of “first understand the problem”, I’ve listed as many of the issues as I can think of surrounding keyboard accessories for iPads. You might find it helpful in deciding which are important and what keyboard is the right solution.
Or at least the right-now solution, but we’ll get to that.
Price
This is the entry point. The range is staggering. You can get a cheap no-name Shenzhen folio keyboard case with accessory keys, separable keyboard, rainbow LED backlights and decent protection for around $€£30 from Amazon. Or you can get the Apple folio keyboard for $€£200.
There are many benefits of the Apple keyboard that just aren’t found in any other keyboard at any other price point. But that doesn’t make forking out 200 notes any less of a bitter pill to swallow.
I can’t tell you what you should value most to justify the price you’re willing to pay. Read the rest of this article and decide for yourself what you value in a keyboard.
Where you intend to use it
This is the next most important factor, which you could read as “how portable to you really need it to be?”
If you only type at one desk (or even one at home and one at work) and pick up the iPad when you leave, I’ll make it simple for you. Get a desktop Bluetooth keyboard and some way to prop or stand your iPad. Don’t compromise on your typing experience just for a portability scenario that may be illusionary. The onscreen keyboard is probably good enough the rest of the time (the new mini one in iPadOS with swipetype is very fast).
But most people have a more complex collection of scenarios, and the clashes between them result in the confusion over what is the right solution.
The classic scenario is airplanes. You want to prop the iPad on the tiny seat-back shelf, maybe to watch a movie, maybe to type up a document. Having never flown in any class above “cattle”, I know that limits the width (10.5” or 11” fit OK) and how deep your keyboard is. For example the Brydge is sometimes too deep to use comfortably because the screen is at the back of the keyboard and needs to lean backwards into where the backrest wants to be. Keyboards like the Apple Folio position the screen further forward, within the area of the iPad footprint, making it viable in shallower spaces like the seat back shelf. Or you could instead use it on your lap in which case the Brydge wins over the Apple keyboard (see lap-ability later).
But for most of us, airplanes are edge cases. We’re mostly talking coffee shops, waiting rooms, parks or even moving around the house or office. Then it comes down to distance, regularity and access to a writing-level desk space.
If you find yourself not travelling far, weight is not much of a problem. Coding that widget in the park or editing that blog post in bed puts lap-ability above carry-out weight. But even if you are just popping to the coffee shop, when you find yourself doing it often enough, weight becomes a problem again.
Desk space is the next problem. If typing on your lap is a likely scenario, most of the lighter folding folio style cases won’t give you a very steady platform. But if you’re more likely to be typing awkwardly on low coffee tables, having several useful angles for the screen is more important than lap-ability. Lastly, if good desk space is common, maybe think about not having a keyboard case at all — but a portable Bluetooth keyboard — as having the keyboard physically attached to the iPad becomes much less important.
Lap-ability
Lap-ability is often cited in reviews, rarely explored properly and yet experienced by almost everyone.
It’s a weird combination of needing an adjustable, but rigid, viewing angle, the ability to place it on an unstable platform and — wait for it — your legs.
Because it occurs to me that one reason I have a better experience With a 13” laptop than with my 10.5” iPad Pro is that the laptop spans my legs, but the iPad feels like it’s almost falling between them. This obviously differs for everyone, but if typing on your lap is a priority, a 12.9” iPad might just feel more comfortable for you, for reasons you didn’t expect.
The viewing angle and — just as importantly — the rigidity of the angle (once set) is the next piece of the puzzle. Partly because of the awful ergonomics of typing on your lap, you’ll end up moving around, swapping from an armchair to laying on the sofa, propping yourself up in bed, resting the iPad on an armrest in a waiting room. With all that fidgeting you’ll need a viewing angle that adjusts with you and doesn’t suddenly flop the screen forward and trap your fingers when you enivitably wriggle around to put off that back pain.
Of course you shouldn’t type like this. In fact, try not to if you possibly can. But if you always did what the man told you, you’d still be sitting at a desk typing at an IBM PS/2. The iPad encourages you to do your thing wherever you are. You’ll slouch now and go to the gym later and straighten it all out again. Maybe.
The stability part is a tricky one. Most fabric or folio keyboards rely on a stable platform underneath them (ie, a desk) to give them rigidity, and that certainly does not describe your knees. So you type and the keys feel like mush and the screen bobs up and down. The latest Apple folio keyboard is better than the older origami style, but unsurprisingly, more weight helps.
If lap-ability is your goal, I can’t say much more than look at the Brydge. Because it offers you a laptop experience, and they’re not called “Laptops” for nothing, the form factor is quite literally named after this scenario.
Weight
Weight is important for several reasons. The most obvious is portability, ie transporting it. But it’s only one part of that, so I’ll cover that in detail later.
Next is fatigue, ie dealing with the weight whilst using it. If you intend to carry your iPad around all day between sitting down, you’ll notice the weight of any added accessory. You will definitely not want to wave around a 12.9” iPad with a Brydge in it’s “tablet mode”.
But also, there is that weird zone where an iPad becomes as heavy or heavier than a laptop. This isn’t just the practical side of “it’s too heavy”. This is the feeling that you’re not quite sure how to explain to your uber-thin laptop friends why you carry around this device that is heavier than their “fully featured” box of tricks.
If you don’t have a good answer for “why”, it might be best to avoid getting into this area at all. As with all escape plans, the best way is by spending money. No one questions the weight of the Apple folio case, despite the fact that it actually adds half the weight of your iPad on top of it.
About the Brydge. The heavier weight of the Brydge keyboards is always mentioned in reviews (Apple Folio 12.9: 407g, Brydge Pro12.9: 715g). It’s partly because it’s aluminium body looks heavy, and the material is generally blamed for the weight. Wake up. It’s specifically that weight because it has to be that weight — blame physics. The position of the hinge on the Brydge means that if it was any lighter, it would fall backwards as soon as you opened the screen, so the keyboard has to balance out the iPad. One more point; the Logitech Slim Folio 12.9 is 725g, heavier than the Brydge, even if it’s material might not suggest it (…but we’ll talk protection next, because that is a factor with the Logitech).
Portability & protection
Portability is about the ease of transporting your iPad and it’s keyboard.
This depends on not just you, but also what else you carry. Do you often take a laptop in your bag as well? In that case that keyboard case could well be one gizmo too many pulling on the your shoulder strap. But would taking an iPad in addition mean you could leave the laptop charger at home? Quite possibly, and that could be the trade-off you’re looking for to put the iPad keyboard back in.
It’s also about how it fits in you bag, if you can slide it in and out of luggage without annoyingly dislodging any piece of it or losing your pen. This is also portability.
Can you grab it in one go when you need to switch conference rooms, or do you need to clumsily scoop all your gear into a bag and sort out later? This too, is portability — and you can think of it as closing a laptop lid and walking away at one end of the spectrum and the other end as having to do an origami display with nylon flaps before refitting the iPad and looking for somewhere to stash the pen. Whilst apologising profusely to everyone who’ll listen (I’m English).
The Brydge is good for grabbing and going, and the Apple keyboard is by far the most portable in terms of weight — but neither is described as offering lots of protection. As soon as you want to travel further afield, people tend to want something more rugged.
So instead, you might want one a case that offers a keyboard whilst protecting your investment. The Logitech Slim Folio Pro and multiple cheap Amazon cases do a good job of adding bumpers to the corners of your iPad and offering space for your pen (or flaps to at least secure it). You can travel securely in the knowledge you’ve done what you can to protect your livelihood (or your toy).
At the same time this all adds bulk, weight and plastic. A lot of it. An 11” iPad starts to become the same size package to carry as a 12.9”. On the bigger iPad, a rubber bumper here and a groove for your pen there can add up to feeling like you’re carrying quite a large Macbook Pro. It’s not only hefty, it’s often ugly into the bargain.
But I’m not too tempted by having a do-it-all protective case anyway.
It’s not the same as using a smartphone case where at any point it could fall out my hand whilst walking at speed on a concrete pavement and atomise instantly. iPad use cases are generally more controlled — iPads are more at risk when the you’re not in front of them, that sickening klunk when you drop your bag on the floor, or squashing and bending it without knowing in your luggage on the train.
So manually swapping between different levels of safety is fine for me. I’ll use it uncased in the armchair, lightly-cased when using the keyboard and in a rugged sleeve when it travels in a bag. At least until I drop it and re-assess my life choices.
Even lighter and more portable than having a keyboard case is having an iPad, with or without a protective case, and a separate Bluetooth keyboard. Foldable keyboards are of massively variable quality (that’s a post for another day), but good ones are cheap, light and don’t add to the iPad’s bulk, they just add the slight annoyance of carrying one extra item in your everyday carry.
One last point on ruggedness. If the Apple butterfly keyboard nonsense shows us anything, it’s that dust, sand, crumbs or liquids can really ruin your day. Weirdly, that means Apple’s own keyboard folio with it’s sealed fabric keyboard is the most contaminant resistent (and beach friendly) iPad keyboard out there.
Key layout
So I’m a brit living in Sweden, and I still shudder at remembering the time it took to shake that UK keyboard layout muscle memory off and get used to the Swedish layout. So this is my muscle memory now. There are a lot of people like me that have to start with an incredibly limited selection of keyboards in their preferred layout, or have to compromise by using an English layout.
I own a 10.5” Brydge nordic (not exactly off-the-shelf stock). The recent 3rd gen iPad Pro Brydge keyboards aren’t yet available in a nordic version, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they never are. French and German layouts are more common, and Logitech do a wide varity of layouts, but the cheap Chinese keyboard cases are in English and that’s pretty much it.
I’m lucky, I could make the jump if I wanted to, but as ever the first accessibility problem in the tech world is simply moving away from (American) English.
Accessory and function keys
Most keyboards offer a core of extra accessory keys that allow you to control volume, playback, brightness, lock (which most people hit more by accident – and then curse it), home button and software keyboard. Why would you want to toggle the software keyboard when you have a hardware one? Oh, not only to use the emoji keyboard, but more importantly for me and half the world, so that you can switch the auto-correct between English and the other languages you also type in.
The combination of accessory keys varies a little, so if you’re keen on having that Siri key, you might want to check which keyboard is for you. Desktop keyboards like Apple’s Magic Keyboard can also use their accessory keys with the iPad, but as it’s made for a Mac, you might need to learn which icon is which when it comes to your iPad.
The one stand-out is the Apple iPad keyboard, which has never had accessory keys. Courage.
Keyboard feel
The illusive and totally subjective one. And the most frustrating, because apart from that two minutes in the Apple store with the default Keyboard Folio, most people have no idea what it’s like until you shell out your money and open the box.
Firstly, if you’re looking at a 10.5”/11”, you might have to accept that what you term as “feel” is mostly just “size”. After two years I’m still not sure if this Brydge 10.5” misses keystrokes occasionally or if I’m just miss-typing on this small keyboard – but I suspect the latter.
You can watch as many YouTube reviews as you want, but you just won’t know for sure. The problem with reviews are often that you see the unboxing of a product, and then the reviewer immediately proclaims if it has good or bad feel. This doesn’t leave you with much confidence. But if you watch enough reviews, you build an idea of the keyboards that most reviewers dislike in aggregate, leaving the others that might be worth a try.
The Zagg keyboards often get good typing feel marks, and even folks that hate the Apple butterfly keyboards often enthuse about the fabric covered Apple iPad keyboards.
If you’re serious about keyboard experience, try not to compromise and have a full-size desktop keyboard at the places that are common work stations, or even carry one with you. The Studio Neat canopy or the Fintie wraps allow you to carry around an Apple Magic Keyboard and then prop up the iPad wherever you find any desk. As portability goes, it’s a heavy, clunky and a very non-lap-friendly solution. But in terms of travelling and being genuinely productive on any flat surface in the world, it wins big. Plus I get to choose which damned language layout I like.
iPad being iPads and transforming between modes.
There’s a serious point about letting an iPad be an iPad. Making it thicker and heavier removes a lot of the benefit of it’s portability, but also it’s tablet-ness. If you have an iPad that is wrapped in heavy, bulky cases, your requirements might be better served by a laptop. This transformation from svelte iPad to Frankenstein keyboard monster often happens without intention and isn’t obvious initially.
The Apple keyboard is the closest to letting an iPad stay an iPad. Not only does that Apple logo and special connector keep that Apple “it just works” feeling, but the thinness and lightness allows you wrap it around the back of the iPad and still not feel like you’re carrying a child’s iPad 2 bumper case.
But don’t forget one of the core ideas behind adding a keyboard to an iPad. It’s transitory, not fixed. One moment you have a keyboard attached, the next you could be holding the unadorned thin piece of glass and metal in one hand as easily as if it was a paperback.
If this ability to change forms is important to you, ie, you like the iPadness of reading one-handed on a sofa, then the ability to get your iPad in and out of a case might be a consideration.
Wrap-around protective folio cases are generally the most fiddly to add and extract – for good reason, they wouldn’t protect if they easily fell off your device. The Brydge is excellent at swapping between “laptop” and non-keyboard forms in seconds. External Bluetooth keyboards always allow the iPad to be naked or cased as you fancy, becoming a typing machine only when you find a desk and a stand.
But if you intend to leave the keyboard on and are not bothered to remove it, the faff of adding and removing a cases should be of no concern at all to you.
Of course, if you’re hardcore iPad, you won’t accept anything but the touch of onscreen keyboard. But those folk wouldn’t read this far anyway.
Portrait and landscape.
I listen to many podcasts that talk about the iPad as if it was a purely landscape device – not least I suspect because the iPads in question never leave their Apple keyboard cases.
But I genuinely enjoy the portrait form factor. The feeling of a long page, not a narrow letter box is one of the reasons I was attracted to the iPad in the first place. The web looks different on a portrait screen in a good way.
What has this got to do with keyboards? If you enjoy the portrait form factor as I do, you need to remember that choosing a keyboard comes with a risk that you will gradually stop using it in portrait. Either you have a keyboard that is light and foldable enough to use handheld in portrait tablet mode, or you have to deal with a certain amount of faff to transform between keyboard form and tablet form.
And even if you could transform between the two states quickly, you might find yourself just not bothering – having a keyboard attached (even if only for the convenience of travelling with it docked) tends to mean you prop the iPad on a desk and don’t have a crushing need to remove the case. So you don’t.
This will strike you as odd, but this is one thing that brings me back to the Brydge. Sometimes I can’t be bothered to carry it, and it’s very quick to remove, so I leave it at home.
In a strange way, it forces me to enjoy the iPad keyboard-less and think about what situations I genuinely prefer to use the Brydge with. It’s almost as if that slight inconvenience of added weight makes me reject it just enough to keep me mindful that I don’t need it all the time and other options exist. It also makes me appreciate the keyboard when I need it.
If I had bought a good keyboard like the Slim Folio Pro, I’ve little doubt I would almost never remove it and would carry on using the iPad on a desk in landscape mode most of the time.
Lit key caps
Having a keyboard that lights up is a little hyped in terms of how often the use case usually comes up, but when you need it, you know you need it.
Living in the dark north where “cosiness” (ie, I can barely see who I’m talking to) is an adjective people actively seek out, I often find times at home or in coffee shops when it comes in useful. If you live in sunny LA, it might not ever be used, so don’t get swayed by those funky multicolour lights under the key caps. It does drain batteries, but let’s be honest, your keyboard will still need charging less than any other device in your house.
Style
Way down the list for no good reason except because there are just so many other reasons, style is – of course – subjective. You might feel that that animated rainbow key caps backlight is stylish. Of course you’d be wrong, but you might be a teen gamer in which case your whole peer group is also wrong.
Lack of bulk, lack of ornamentation, nice materials and frankly a good dose of snobbery (as I’ve just displayed) all count towards style. If you want to play it safe, go with the Apple keyboard. Apart from that big ugly blank slab of nylon, you’ll never look like you cheaped-out on getting a “fake” case.
But those thinking that would also be wrong.
Battery and charging
If you live the USB-C lifestyle with a new 3rd gen+ iPad Pro, the shape of plug on the side of your keyboard might be important to you. The big names all do USB-C charging for their latest cases (Logitech, Brydge), whereas the cheaper unbranded variants mostly still use micro-USB.
But practically, it doesn’t really matter. Most keyboards run for weeks at a time – and if you don’t have a draw full of short micro-USB cables so that you can throw one in your pocket to charge for ten minutes off of any USB-A socket, you’ve been living under a rock for too long.
Of course, if your keyboard supports Apples smart connector, battery is of no concern. And the list of keyboards that support that connector is… one.
Long-term reliability
One thing that reviews never get to talk about in this fast moving world is reliability. You want your accessories to last and not be thrown away, partly because it’s your money paying for it (not the reviewer’s VC) and partly because we all buy and throw away too much crap already.
Going with the big names gives some hope, not least because the amount of products they ship means that there is a lot of scrutiny of them in the press. And they usually offer warranties.
The Apple folio keyboards have been shown to rip and wear over extended periods if they are carried sleeveless (ie sliding around) in a bag, but your mileage may vary.
The smaller no-brand stuff is harder to talk about. It’s almost assumed by the public that there is a trade-off in reliability that is built into the low price. Which is both a wild assumption considering the world runs on quality Chinese goods and a damning judgement about the amount of wasteful trash we‘re willing to accept.
Have your way, every way.
If you’ve had the stamina to make it this far, you’ve probably had the same two thoughts I had.
The first is that it’s obvious that could never be a perfect iPad keyboard, and at least the default Apple keyboard makes sense in that it has qualities in most of the above areas.
The second is that trying to find the perfect keyboard is completely the wrong way to go about this. The transformable nature of the iPad means we are crazy to limit ourselves to one ideal keyboard mode, one perfect case design. Instead, we should be looking for a way to easily swap between our use-cases. OK, maybe not by throwing money at every keyboard out there, or fiddling with cases each time we leave the house, but at least not having to live with the compromises of picking a single solution that is supposed to cover everything.
I’m sticking with the Brydge for its lap-ability and all-round performance – mostly around the house and the occasional coffee shop stint. But I’ll be leaving it at home more often and dropping in a foldable bluetooth keyboard in my bag instead. I’ll also be considering a Swedish layout Apple Magic Keyboard and a Fintie for those less casual, more productive blocks of time, mostly at my desk. And I still imagine using the onscreen iPad keyboard without any accessories the rest of the time.
The right keyboard is the right one for each job.
non-studio shots, where uncredited, were from unsplash.com
