iPad keyboards: 3 scenarios, 3 solutions
UPDATE: some realistic weights of two keyboard options — at the end.
And after I wrote a tome on iPad keyboards, what happened next?
Well, here’s my 2019 iPad keyboard collection — you could say I’m listening to my own advice that one solution is not the right solution.
My old faithful Brydge. When you need to perch a typing machine on your lap, it’s the one. The typing is still so-so (and forgive me, I still think that’s mostly just the size of the 10.5" keyboard — not simply the mechanism), but you never once need to think about it. It’s always solid, always pointing at you, never falling apart like a clown car, as so many origami flip cases would.
For Sofa, bed and the occasional trip, the minor weight penalty is well worth it if I’m not sure I’ll get a desk to sit at.
The three-piece. These two cheap gadgets can be thrown in your bag for less weight than half an Apple Keyboard Folio. Just add one table. The Moko stand is not quite credit card sized, but not far off, and it lets you stand your iPad at six different angles, landscape or portrait.
The Jellycomb keyboard turns on when you snap open the magnets that hold the clamshell together. The keys are roughly 13" laptop size, and they feel surprisingly good. The ergonomic angle doesn’t take as much getting used to as the gap between the two halves. Plus that skinny number row means the backspace key is occasionally a devil to find. Of course you can get used to it — if you use it enough. Oh, and it’s English layout or nothing — so for me it does mean digging around in the hardware keyboard settings to swap between keyboards (and it doesn’t appear that I can do that via a nice clean Siri shortcut).
There are plenty of other portable keyboards, it’s just that the really good ones tend to be the heavier ones. And this one has been in my bag for a fortnite and I barely notice it until I need it. But find your own happy trade-off.
The Fintie wrap plus an Apple Magic Keyboard is a quiet revelation. It shouldn’t be any surprise that a big name full-size desktop keyboard is a better experience then any laptop keyboard, but when it’s attached to this thin little tablet screen it’s almost shocking how much better typing feels than my daily driver MacBook Pro 2014. Much like good audio components, it’s so good it tends to highlight other deficiencies instead — I’m suddenly realising that the 10.5" screen size is the next limiter on productivity (among other things).
Having an actual physical switch on the keyboard is rather nice, most iPad Bluetooth keyboards turn on automatically and then sleep to preserve battery when not in use. But with the Magic keyboard, when it’s on, it’s on, there’s no frustrated tapping at it to wake up the sleeping Bluetooth pairing. Of course that does mean you have to remember to turn it off too — and maintaining the constant connection does seem to burn some battery in the iPad.
In use it’s almost elegant. The Finitie case is made of either leather or at least a particularly classy vinyl, and it comes together with two flaps holding magnets that seem to almost assemble and disassemble themselves at the required moment. It sounds daft, but of course magnets tend to to find their own way to the end goal.
The magic keyboard has some — but not all of the accessory keys an iPad user would want. I wish I could map the Expose keys to something useful, but there are a bunch of keyboard shortcuts that can get you 99% of the way there, and usefully, the eject key pops up the software keyboard — ace for us multi-language users.
In terms of weight, the keyboard only weighs 230g, the Fintie much less, so the combo is actually lighter than the reigning lightweight champion, the Apple Keyboard Folio 12.9" (407g) (UPDATE: fake news, see end of article). Of course it’ll never excel in the places that the Folio will be good, but if you have a bag and a stable surface, it’s pretty unbeatable. And you can use it in portrait. And you can hang-on to it when you upgrade your iPad. And together with a new genuine Apple keyboard it’s half the price of the Folio. And it lets the iPad be an iPad when you don’t need a keyboard. Oh, and you can, of course, get any damned keyboard layout that Apple sells.
It’s a keeper.
