Last week, I posted my first impressions of the new Magic Keyboard for the 11” iPad Pro, as well as a quick demo on Twitter of just how precisely balanced the Magic Keyboard is. What I largely glossed over, however, are some of the finer details that in many ways help justify the name of “Magic” Keyboard. Let’s take a moment to appreciate (or perhaps invent) some of the subtle hardware design choices in this device, and while we’re at it jot down some measurements for posterity.

Fantastic Details and Where to Find Them

Much of the focus in any review of an iPad keyboard-case will inevatibly fall on the keyboard and the form factor. Less attention is paid to some of the minor details worthy of appreciation. To correct that, I’ve assembled below my brief list of “Fantastic Details of the Magic Keyboard That I Assume Were Intentional Design Choices”:

• The USB-C passthrough port lies on the opposite side of the iPad Pro’s USB-C port. This is a super obvious choice, but still one that greatly improves user experience when trying to charge from a power supply on the left side of your device.
• Flipping the iPad Pro/Magic Keyboard combo 180° results in a preposterously perfect drawing angle (if removing the iPad is too cumbersome for you). This definitely wasn’t intentional, but I love it nonetheless.
• Pressing the volume buttons on the iPad doesn’t shake or move the device an inch — doing so with the iPad in a Smart Folio kickstand was a wobbly mess.
• The Apple logo  on the back of the Magic Keyboard is vertical while the iPad is in landscape orientation — which makes sense, since this keyboard is intended to only be used in landscape orientation.
• These two flat protrusions on the barrel hinge that seemingly only exists to protect your iPad from being scratched by the hinge (or vice versa) if it’s somehow detached from the magnets while closed. (If someone comes up with a better idea, please let me know)
• The barely-detectable ridge around the circumference of the keyboard deck that prevents the keycaps from smudging (or worse: scratching) the iPad’s screen.

I’m sure there are more small decisions and choices that I’ve overlooked that could easily be added to this list. Many of the items above may seem trivial, but ultimately I think that its the attention to detail in certain devices that end up setting them apart as some of the best in their class — and the Magic Keyboard is certainly the best iPad Pro keyboard on the market.

Angle Gauges, Dial Indicators, and Calipers, Oh My!

There are a lot of questions (and side-by-side comparisons) about the Magic Keyboard’s hinge angle — the most popular among them being “How far back does the hinge tilt?” Well, I grabbed a digital angle gauge from my wood shop (and some calipers and a dial indicator — more on that later) to answer that question. As it turns out, the 11” Magic Keyboard has a usable range of 77° to 127° of tilt angle. 77° is the angle of the initial hard-snapping point when opening the keyboard — technically lower angles are possible (at least with the 11” iPad Pro), but really anything lower than this point is untenable. And 127° is the maximum tilt angle of the 11” Magic Keyboard. I checked the maximum hinge angle of my wife’s 13” MacBook Air and it was 141° — meaning the Magic Keyboard is about 14° shy of the Mac laptop experience.

Turns out those magnets are good for other things too.

The keys on the Magic Keyboard, however, easily replicate the experience of typing on on a laptop — they are some of the most satisfying low-travel keys I’ve ever experienced. At my desktop I use a Ducky One 2 TLK mechanical keyboard with Cherry MX Brown swithces, so I am partial to a keyboard with a lot of travel and a pleasant tactile bump. Although the Magic Keyboard obviously comes nowhere near a full mechanical keyboard in either department, somehow it feels more responsive and bouncy than any other keyboard I’ve used in its size class. I don’t have a 16” MacBook Pro to compare the “type-feel” with, but I have tried out it’s keyboard when walking by at Costco in the Before Times™️ — for some reason, the Magic Keyboard feels better to me than the seemingly-identical scissor switches in the 16” MacBook Pro. My theory is that the thin deck of the Magic Keyboard somehow gives more spring-back to the keys when you bottom them out while typing, whereas the 16” MacBook Pro has the full thickness of a laptop to potentially dampen any such springiness.

1mm of key travel seems to be the sweet-spot for Apple devices going forward.

In addition to bounce-back and springiness, key travel and key spacing both play a big role in the typing experience of any keyboard — so I borrowed a page out of Marco Arment’s playbook and measured the key travel and spacing on a few keyboards to compare with the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro. (Full disclosure: I was unable to measure every device in the graph below — measurements marked with an asterisk were taken from Marco’s 16” MacBook Pro review, which is really worth a read).

The Magic Keyboard’s 1mm key travel is a continuation of Apple’s course-correction first seen in the 16” MacBook Pro.

I think Apple has probably found 1mm of key travel to be the Goldilocks Zone of maximum thinness and adequate key travel for a good typing experience. I expect most Apple keyboards will stick to ~1mm of key travel for the forseeable future.

Key spacing on the Magic Keyboard has been perfectly fine for me, even for someone accostomed to a spacious mechanical keyboard.

I’ve seen some folks on Twitter saying that the key spacing on the Magic Keyboard makes the keyboard too cramped — especially on the 11” iPad Pro. But based on my measurements the spacing itself is fairly comparable to the 16” MacBook Pro. I think the cramped feeling stems from the half-sized peripheral keys (including the dash key I use so overzealously), and the fact that the Smart Keyboard Folio has more key spacing than the Magic Keyboard (although, it paid for this with smaller keycaps). That said, it’s taken very little time to acclimate to the size constraints of the Magic Keyboard; though I do look forward to testing out the 12.9” Magic Keyboard when we’re able to go to stores again.

The Sum of More Than Its Parts

After a week and a half of using the Magic Keyboard, the experience has only grown more positive — the pleasing subtleties of the details above have added to the list of rationalizations for why this device might be worth $300...even though I still think it’s still a bit over-priced. That said, I’ve felt all of my usage habits with my iPad Pro shift over the last week and a half to fully-embrace the Magic Keyboard as part of my workflow. It’s really been wonderful to be able to type wherever I want to, with a keyboard that feels exactly how I want it to. My return window for the Magic Keyboard hasn’t closed yet, so nothing is set in stone...but I think I’ll end up keeping it after all. It fits my needs well, and the price will be easier to bear once I resell the other keyboards I’ve accumulated to get “real work” done on an iPad Pro.

Today I saw this post on r/iPad from /u/jdayellow — in it, they’ve plugged one end of a USB-C cable into the iPad and the other end into the Magic Keyboard’s USB-C passthrough port (thus: “unlimited power”). As it turns out, Apple considered the possibility users might use the two USB-C ports to create a universal connector ouroboros and included a warning on the Magic Keyboard’s support page:

This warning is very reassuring.

I’m not entirely sure what the consequences of doing this would be, considering the wattage output from the iPad Pro is substantially lower than most chargers that you might plug into the Magic Keyboard’s USB-C passthrough port. Anyway, finding this support page also turned up this .gif of the Magic Keyboard being opened (sped up with some Shortcuts magic):

Satisfying.

When the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro was announced, many users (myself included) were disappointed at the lack of hardware media keys — especially ones to manually control the brightness of the long-awaited backlit keys. Alas, the only way to currently do so is to navigate to Settings > General > Keyboard > Hardware Keyboard (or a bit faster using Federico Viticci’s shortcut workaround). However, it seems plainly obvious that a backlight brightness slider should live in Control Center. I present a simple mock up of what that might look like:

Adding a keyboard brightness slider as a long-press option to the system brightness slider is a no-brainer.

Barring a complete overhaul of the main Control Center dropdown when a Magic Keyboard is connected, I think the long-press menu of the system brightness slider is where an additional slider for backlight brightness should live. Swipe down, long-press, adjust brightness, and you’re done!

Call me, Tim Apple.

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.