Last week, Elgato released an intriguing addition to its line of streaming automation hardware: the Elgato Stream Deck Pedal. As the name implies, it's a three-button pedal that functions as a foot-operated Stream Deck (sans the backlit display). As an avid user of the traditional Stream Deck for its unique and convenient productivity applications, I pretty much instantly ordered the Stream Deck Pedal if for nothing else but to check out the novel form-factor in the flesh, and discuss a bit why Elgato's continued hardware creativity is so delightfully uncommon.

Evie doesn't appreciate the Pedal encroaching on her usual spot.

Hard-Soled Hardware

The Stream Deck Pedal is an intriguing piece of hardware that follows Elgato's pattern of over-engineering in a market where under-engineering is the usual norm. PC peripherals (especially in the Windows world) are often cheap, flaky hunks of plastic that bug out from time to time and usually don't live up to expectations. Elgato is among vanishingly-few peripheral manufacturers that spring to mind when I think of "build quality" and "reliability" — and the Pedal lives up to their reputation. The first thing I noticed when the package arrived was how much larger the box was than I was expecting — the Pedal has a 10"x7" footprint and weighs a surprisingly-chunky two pounds, owing in no small part to the rigid steel sheet forming its bottom plate. The rest of the Pedal is made of hardy matte plastic with a pleasant texture on the top surface, so your (hopefully-socked) feet have something grippy to register on. One subtle yet essential design element in an otherwise-uncomplicated three-button pedal is the slight elevation of the left and right pedals over the middle button sandwiched between them — about a quarter-inch of tactile feedback that makes tapping the wrong button pretty difficult to do.

Customizing spring weight in a foot pedal reminds me of my mechanical keyboard friends, with ever-so-specific preferences about bottom-out force.

The Stream Deck Pedal also comes packaged with an assortment of springs with varying strength, which you can swap in to adjust the foot force necessary to depress a given pedal, as well as two stoppers to entirely disable the middle pedal and (in Elgato's own words) "...convert it into a convenient footrest." It would have never occurred to me to make the pedal's depression force adjustable (let alone include the kitting to make that happen), but it's a nice touch nonetheless.

All-Toe Automation

The actual process of using the Stream Deck Pedal is fairly straightforward, and will look pretty familiar to anyone with a Stream Deck. Just open the Stream Deck app, connect the hardware, and customize the three available buttons with the same extensive range of actions (and Multiactions) available for the traditional Stream Deck. I've covered the assortment of actions and plugins (plus the real killer feature: profiles) in a previous post, so I won't waste too much time here rehashing that here.

Configuring your Pedal is pretty much the same as configuring a traditional Stream Deck, just with fewer action slots.

I did play around with some specific use cases I could imagine for the Stream Deck pedal to see how well the software would accommodate them. For instance, I could see folks using the Stream Deck Pedal in racing games with in-game braking and acceleration hotkeys tied to a specific pedal. I confirmed that holding down one pedal simply repeats its designated hotkey until you let go again, and interestingly any additional pedal pushes (a virtual clutch?) are sent in parallel while the other pedal is being pressed down with no interruption. This opens up some intriguing possibilities; you could, for example, set one pedal to be a "push-to-talk" hotkey for recording a podcast with minimal background noise when you aren't speaking and simultaneously use Jason Snell x Dan Moren's shortcut for marking edit points while recording — even if you need to mark an edit point while holding the push-to-talk pedal, the Stream Deck software should handle both commands seamlessly. Of course, the distinguishing feature of the Stream Deck Pedal is the ability to run your usual assortment of commands hands-free — Elgato highlights examples like Twitch streamers changing scenes while busy playing a first-person shooter, but there are any number of situations where your hands might be occupied when you need to fire off an automation, switch on a light, or change audio tracks. I'm already imagining creative ways I can use the Stream Deck Pedal in my workshop while my hands are covered in glue or occupied while working on a piece (but that's a story for another time). Conveniently, the Stream Deck software also generates a virtual overlay of the active Pedal profile to remind you of what each pedal does at any given moment — especially useful if, like me, you rely heavily on the visual cue inherent to the traditional Stream Deck to keep all of your smart-rotating actions straight.

The floating "Action Bar" shows the currently-available actions on your Pedal, providing some useful visual feedback to a device normally operated by feel.

Elgato's Fascinating Footprint

The Stream Deck Pedal is another excellent addition to Elgato's eclectic offering of hardware products — from the original Stream Deck's unique niche as a dynamic macro pad, to their clever Multi Mount system of extensible boom arms and assorted attachments, all the way to their incredibly-specific Green Screen Mouse Mat tailor-made for game streamers. All of Elgato's products are, of course, marketed heavily toward content creators, gamers, and streamers — but what I think makes their products so compelling (beyond their quality) is how easily their features translate to other uses. The original Stream Deck was designed (as the name suggests) as a "deck" of quick actions you could fire off while in the middle of a live stream — but so many of its clever applications (and its best plugins) extend well beyond the arena of streaming and into everyday productivity and efficiency. The same can be said of the Stream Deck Pedal: a well-made product for a specific niche...with so many other possibilities. One of the first things that jumped to mind when thinking about unique uses of the Stream Deck Pedal was accessibility applications — folks with limited arm mobility or other upper body disabilities using the Pedal as an alternative method of interacting with their devices in a way that accommodates their needs (without breaking, or breaking the bank).

Few companies are putting out high-quality, opinionated products that fill a niche and yet readily spill over into other areas quite like Elgato — and frankly, we all benefit from a company releasing odd-but-clever hardware products that expand our imagination — and our reach — just a little bit further than arm's length.

At the end of March, Apple announced the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro, and iPad fans the world over rejoiced at the prospect of a first-party solution to their years-long productivity problem. Those of us who use the iPad as our primary device (the mythical “laptop replacers”) have longed for the ideal keyboard-case that brings it as close to the laptop form factor as possible without abandoning what makes the iPad an iPad. I received my 11” Magic Keyboard on Wednesday, and have been using it for the last two days to send emails, edit work documents, conduct Zoom meetings, watch Netflix, and write this post. Even in that short time, it’s clear that the Magic Keyboard is Apple adeptly striking the delicate balance between portability and performance...at an unfortunately uncompromising price point of $299.

Priced by the Pound

The most noticeable trait of the Magic Keyboard is its heft. Even before opening the slim and unassuming UPS packaging, it felt like I had received a plate of lead in the mail. It’s an incredibly dense device, with much of the weight concentrated in the keyboard‘s base to offset the weight of the iPad in it’s floating cantilevered perch. In fact, the 11” Magic Keyboard weighs more than the iPad Pro it is designed to hold by ~130 grams. My wife and I tried to compare her 2013 13” MacBook Air to my 11” iPad Pro + Magic Keyboard by feel and had a very difficult time determining which felt heavier (turns out, the Air is heavier by ~270 grams). I’ve definitely struggled to get used to the substantial increase in weight from just the Smart Folio to the Magic Keyboard encasing my iPad — however, given my current lack of mobility due to COVID-19, I find it hard to assess how much this will bother me. I think I won’t really know how I feel about the added weight until I am out and about with my iPad again.

The center of gravity on the iPad Pro + Magic Keyboard is so far back that the entire keyboard can float off an edge.

Other than the physical weight of the device, the overall build quality is excellent — a firm keyboard deck with essentially no flex, a sturdy hinge that almost takes too much force to adjust, and much stronger magnets securing the iPad than those found in the Smart Folio. The USB-C passthrough port on the barrel hinge is an excellent addition to this keyboard, finally allowing us to charge our iPads without unattractively dangling a wire from the iPad’s USB-C port — not to mention that it frees up the USB-C port on the iPad for a storage drive or other USB accessory.

The Keys to Success

The main draw of the Magic Keyboard is, well, the keyboard, and I’ll get right to the main takeaway: These keys are fantastic. Gone are the somewhat-mushy, fabric-covered butterfly switches of the Smart Keyboard Folio — these are full scissor switches with backlighting to boot. Typing on this keyboard feels almost more tactile than typing on other scissor switch keyboards in the MacBook line — I only have my wife’s somewhat-old 13” Air to test with, and the Magic Keyboard’s keys feel far more resistive and bouncy (though I admit this may be due to the age of our control group). The adaptive (and manually-adjustable) backlighting is an excellent addition to what is frankly an impressive keyboard for its size and thickness. I will say that some of the periphery keys feel too cramped and small to consistently hit — count how many dashes I’ve used so far and assume at least half of them involved me missing the tiny half-sized dash key. But even after just a short time of using the Magic Keyboard, I’m beginning to acclimate to those half-sized keys and my accuracy is improving rapidly.

The Magic Keyboard is hands-down the best portable keyboard for the iPad Pro on the market.

The trackpad of the Magic Keyboard is as excellent as you’d expect from Apple — though a bit shorter than I’d prefer. The trackpad clicks mechanically across the entire surface area — no haptics, actual clicks. And the substantially improved cursor support in iOS 13.4 paired with the fluid gestures built into the hardware makes navigating iPadOS a breeze. My only complaints about the trackpad are its size (which I can get over), and that some of my most-used gestures require three fingers — like swapping quickly between recent apps. Would some customizability in the system gestures be asking for too much?

My previous iPad keyboard of choice was the Microsoft Universal Foldable Keyboard — obviously optimizing for portability. The scissor switches of the Magic Keyboard are infinitely more pleasant than the chicklet style keys you may recognize from Microsoft’s Surface line, and the complete lack of key spacing on the Microsoft foldable keyboard means the 2.75mm of key spacing found on the Magic Keyboard feels almost luxurious to me. And considering the Magic Keyboard also comes with a trackpad too, it’s really no contest. Apple‘s recent struggles with keyboard problems seem to be blessedly behind them; much like the new keyboard in the 16” MacBook Pro, this keyboard feels like a return to the durable and reliable keyboards of years past.

A Pivotal Component

The keyboard is excellent. The weight may tilt the scales, but it’s too early to tell. Now to consider the hinge. As previously mentioned, it is an impressively stiff mechanism — I almost wish less force was needed to adjust the angle of the iPad between minimum and maximum tilt. That said, opening the iPad from closed to almost the maximum tilt angle is possible with one hand (though a little jiggling is necessary to get the keyboard to flop open). Unfortunately, that max tilt angle seems just shy of what I would consider ideal for some of my go-to workspaces. It’s adequate in most positions, like on a lap and even most desks — but I’m fairly tall and also like to use my iPad while standing at counters and other places where more tilt range would be appreciated.

The integral USB-C passthrough port is a welcome addition to the Magic Keyboard’s feature list.

I have found that the lower screen angles (even at the < 90° angle the barrel hinge snaps to before tilting) have been useful when watching shows in bed with my wife. The Smart Folio has been decidedly mediocre in this task, so having a way to suspend the iPad screen at an acute angle is actually more useful than I previously thought. In fact, I think what I’ve appreciated most regarding the hinge so far is it’s overall improvement in stability compared to the Smart Folio. It seems obvious, given that the Magic Keyboard has a much larger base to rest on than the triangular origami tent of the Smart Folio, but that extra stability has really made a difference. The Magic Keyboard’s powerful magnets, heavy base, and rigid hinge make tapping on the screen or adjusting the volume feel like pressing on a wall.

The Bottom Line

It’s pretty apparent that this is the best iPad typing experience on the market that still preserves the iPad’s portability and flexibility — switching from “laptop mode” to “tablet mode” is as easy as grab-and-go. The set of tradeoffs presented with the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro are, in my estimation, a precise threading of the needle. It’s heavy, but not too heavy. The iPad remains solidly grounded when typing, yet fluidly freed when needed. And the value added by the backlit scissor switch keyboard far exceeds the cost of weight, thickness, and managing form-factor transitions...

...However, I’m not sure the value exceeds the monetary cost of the Magic Keyboard. Retailing for $299 (+tax!) in-essence means this keyboard case is worth nearly 50% of the iPad it holds, and almost twice as much as the Smart Folio Keyboard it ostensibly replaces. My purchase was largely rationalized by Apple’s currently-extended return policy due to the COVID-19 pandemic (and I seem to have persuaded others with this logic), but I’m still unsure if I plan to keep the Magic Keyboard or not. In my opinion, this product should have retailed at $199 and the Smart Folio Keyboard should have slid down to $129 — the price floor to have an excellent typing experience on the excellent iPad Pro is just too high. This is a fantastic keyboard, and very nearly every aspect of its design and function is praiseworthy — I just wish that it came with a less discouraging price tag. Since the debut of the iPad Pro, many have discovered how capable and enjoyable the "iPad lifestyle" can be — Apple should prioritize reducing the monetary barrier to entry to what I consider their highest-potential product line.