Apple iPad Pro Smart Folio is the best damn keyboard on the go

Essentials Week spotlights unexpected items that make our daily lives just a little bit better.

When Apple unveiled its Smart Keyboard Folio alongside its latest and priciest iPad Pro models in late 2018, the peripheral barely registered on my radar. Little did I know it would become my constant companion, one of the most loved and most essential Apple products I’d ever bought. 

Sure, I’d been a huge iPad fan, and a sucker for the latest model, ever since nabbing the first model the day it launched in 2010. And yes, I was forever hunting for the best not-on-screen keyboard solution for my iPads. I’d long been jealous of Microsoft Surface users, who used keyboard covers to turn their tablets into tiny ultraportable laptops. But Apple’s version seemed more like a full-on keyboard case, which often name themselves Folios. I had no need to protect the back of my iPad (c’mon, Apple, it’s pretty durable) so I dismissed the option out of hand. 

I’d tested dozens of third-party iPad keyboard cases since 2010. Their flaws fell into two categories. Firstly they were unnecessarily bulky, requiring you to either tuck the whole iPad inside a leather compartment, or squeeze it into a plastic sleeve, or, in the case of the Brydge, put your precious tablet inside folding metal clamps. Secondly, their keys never quite felt right, mostly through no fault of their own: squeezing a full keyboard into the 10-inch space afforded by most tablets is one of the greatest design challenges of our time. Hitting the wrong key was just a matter of time. 

At the time, my setup consisted of a 2017 10.5 inch iPad Pro with a Smart Cover and a $10 transparent gel case that held the always-easy-to-lose Apple Pencil. I was loath to get rid of that, and to trade TouchID for FaceID, so I decided against an upgrade. Then fate forced my hand: my iPad Pro was stolen alongside my late, lamented Rose Gold MacBook. So back I went to the Apple store. 

I bought the 11-inch iPad Pro, rejecting the larger 12.6-inch version (still too much bulk for me, even with a slimmer bezel), and one of the new magnetically charging Pencils (definitely superior to the Pencil 1.0). I’d planned on a new Smart Cover too, but none of the colors appealed. On a whim I decided to buy the Smart Keyboard Folio, figuring I’d probably return it in a day or so, just like all those prior Folios. 

No one was more surprised than me when I fell for the Smart Keyboard Folio, and fell hard — to the point where my iPad Pro is now my main writing device away from my desk. I’m writing on it now, in fact. I only use my new MacBook Pro when I absolutely must, for example when I need to enter this text into Mashable’s secure content management system. It’s the iPad Pro-as-Surface Pro dream, a tiny laptop that significantly lightens my working load.  

What made the difference? One word: magnets. (How do they work? Amazingly.) 

The Smart Keyboard Folio clicks into place on the back of the iPad Pro, where magnets connect and charge it automatically (meaning there’s never any need to fumble around with Bluetooth or a charging cable; this is one keyboard that is always on and always ready.)  The whole cover comes off instantly if you lift the iPad from the end opposite magnets — no more fumbling with leather, no plastic cover to squeeze awkwardly over the volume and power buttons — but if you don’t, it is securely locked into place. 

Same goes for the ridges at the top of the keyboard that provide you with two viewing angles. (One I think of as the “lying on the couch” angle, which is closer to 90 degrees; the other works fine for every other circumstance). These ridges are magnetic too, and lock into place with a really solid, satisfying BMW door-like “thunk.” (That’s why it’s hard to accidentally slip the cover off; the ridge is where you have to lift it to shed the whole thing.) 

It’s all so securely locked, in fact, that I even feel comfortable typing on my knees while squished into a tiny seat on various forms of Bay Area public transit, the ultimate test of any iPad keyboard setup. I also feel comfortable typing on my chest on the couch when the cat has decided that I’m not going to move him off my legs just yet. There is literally no situation it doesn’t work well and securely; as Hamlet put it, I could be “bound in a nutshell and consider myself a king of infinite space” with this setup. 

The Folio itself turns out to be incredibly slim and light; at a mere 10 ounces, it adds little more weight than my old Smart Cover alone. And unlike previous versions of Apple’s Smart Keyboard case, the keyboard sits flush with the screen instead of producing an annoying bump. 

Indeed, I often found myself struggling to remember which side the keyboard was on. That was solved with the judicious placement of stickers ($7 for a pack of space and sci-fi stickers on Amazon), which in turn makes the Folio feel less corporate and more fun. Stickers seem to blend into the cover of the case very well, much more so than on a laptop with metallic sheen.

The sci-fi stickers turned out to be highly appropriate. There’s an odd TARDIS-like quality to the keyboard: it seems bigger than it actually is. When you’re just using it as a reading stand, you almost forget it’s there — exactly the effect you can’t get with a larger laptop-style keyboard. This makes the iPad/Folio combo ideal for lunchtime reading, alongside the fact that the keys are seamless and waterproof. 

Once you start typing, the keyboard feels really substantial. The keys have a wonderfully tactile sensation that’s hard to explain, sort of like very tiny ridges; all I can say is that I really like resting my finger pads on these keys even when I’m not typing. The keys also “travel well”, as keyboard lingo has it, pressing down a greater distance than the butterfly keyboard on the MacBook. 

The keys are so far apart from each other, in fact, that I think some reviewers have assumed that the keys are therefore small and not for those with fat fingers. Well, my fingers are far from slim, and I almost never make mistakes on this thing (or more accurately, my error rate is pretty much the same as on a regular keyboard). 

I’m not exactly a touch typist, but something about the concave shape of these keys seems to draw my fingers towards them, as if they too are magnetically drawn into place with a satisfying “thunk.” When I get into a good writing flow, it starts to feel transcendent, almost a religious experience.      

For reading or using the Pencil on the iPad in portrait orientation, you simply fold the keyboard around so it ends up on the back of the tablet. This seemed a little weird at first, until I realized that Apple had designed it so that the keyboard is automatically turned off when folded back like this. Now I actually enjoy absent-mindedly pressing the keys while reading, because again, they’re sturdy enough to handle it, and there’s just something incredibly satisfying about the way they feel. 

The Smart Folio Keyboard isn’t perfect, but only in one respect: the keys don’t light up. It can sometimes be hard to see the letters in a dark room. Two things help here: making the screen brighter (unfortunately, this involves shedding my beloved Dark Mode) and moving the screen to the back ridge (the “reading on your belly” one) so that it is shining more directly on the keyboard. 

Then again, most times you find yourself typing in a dark room for too long, it’s probably a sign that you should avoid the siren lure of the iPad and go to bed instead. With this Folio, plus the Pencil, it is way too easy to stay up late reading, writing, drawing and doing everything.