I bought the ZaggFolio keyboard the day they came out, I had been waiting for them to be released to go along with my iPad Air. This was a week or two after the original Air was released. It’s a good keyboard, and I used it for over a year, and still do from time to time (Gotta love those backlit keys!) But now I have a new darling: The Logitech K480.
It’s a full-size keyboard with slightly rounded keys that actually move when you press them, so it’s pretty responsive. The keys also make a little click as you press them, so that’s a nice feedback feature. At first I thought the rounded keys made it look cheap, but with use, I can see the benefits– Why do we need square keys with corners on a keyboard when we have round fingers?
Anyway, it has all the usual keys in all the usual places, so there’s not really much need for searching to find the ALT key or anything like that. There is an added row of keys at the top, which do double-duty as function keys (F1-F12) as well as controls for playing music, volume up and down, taking a screen shot, doing a spotlight search, Undo, making the onscreen keyboard appear and disappear, and a keyboard version of the iPad’s main HOME button. This thing will work on any bluetooth device, but it was built for tablet use.
The most obvious and visually striking feature of the keyboard is the big slot in the back. The slot is very wide, and can accommodate both a tablet and smartphone at the same time. What convinced me to buy the keyboard in the first place was a video I watched where someone was switching back and forth between writing on their iPad and messaging someone on their iPhone. I’ve included a link to that video, and it really does work like that.
Above the keyboard is a dial with three settings. You just set 1,2, or 3 to each of your bluetooth devices (Phone, Tablet, and PC for example) and rotate the knob to switch between them. There is room for an iPad in landscape mode or an iPad in portrait mode next to a phone. Android and other tablets will be fine to, and even a mix of OS’s will work. There’s a pair of buttons used to program it for either Android/Windows/ChromeOS or iOS/MacOS, so it has pretty much all the popular OS choices.
Setup is very easy. It doesn’t even come with a book, it has a sticker that shows the five steps needed to make it work; it’s about as simple as it gets.
I like that I can use it to write in either landscape or portrait mode. Most other keyboards with force you to use landscape or require you to use your case to hold the iPad up. With this one, you just rotate your device.
There are a few drawbacks to this model:
The keyboard isn’t really big enough to sit on a lap alone, so I also use one of those padded “beanbag desks” when I want to relax and write. It obviously works perfectly well sitting at a desk or table. I suppose being small isn’t really a “con,” since the typing area is full-size.
There isn’t an off switch. Actually, there is one on the bottom, but the keyboard will wake up with the press of any key on the front, so it’s very easy to accidentally turn it back on. Added to the fact that there aren’t any LEDs or visual indicators, and you could have a problem. That said, I’ve typed on this keyboard for over a month now, and I’m still using the batteries that came with it, so it’s certainly not a power hog. The auto-on-at-any-press-of-a-key situation makes it less portable than some other keyboards, which is why I haven’t given up my Zaggfolio totally. Still, I prefer the feel and the practicality of the K480 in most circumstances.
One final thing to note is that the tablet slot is big enough for iPads, Nexuses, Samsungs, or what have you in the tablet market, but it’s not really big enough to hold a tablet in another case. It might be able to hold a tablet in a case if you rotate it just the right way, but just believe me when I say it works better with the device out of its case. If your protective case of choice doesn’t come off easily, you may want to think twice about this keyboard. If you don’t use a case, or your case comes off easily, it’s not really a big deal.
Links to Amazon:
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