After having my iPad pro for some time, well since it first came out, I finally bought a keyboard. I had other keyboard that worked fine with it mind you, since as a Mac owner I accumulate bluetooth keyboards like they are going out of styler, but I had not gotten a dedicated keyboard for my iPad Pro. The last time I had gotten a keyboard was for an iPad 3 many many mooons ago, and it held up fairly well, but my key complaint with that one, also a Zagg, was that uncoupling the keyboard from the iPad was a chore. So while the family and I have gone through a few more iPads since then, no more keyboards.
This Zagg finally had me interested again, for two main reasons :
- Backlight Keys
- Simple iPad detachment from keyboard.
Now those reason may sound great in theory, but how do the keyboard work?
Well after about four days of testing, all I can say is the keyboard itself is great. Far better than my original Zagg, which was also great.
Unboxing the Keyboard
The packaging of a product can often be a setup, but bad packaging rarely is indicative of a quality product. The Zagg Slimbook however has very nice packaging. A simple cardboard box with magnetic method of opening and closing the box. It's nice to boxes that require little to no effort to actually open and get to the materials. This is also very much in line with the packaging style that apple customers have grown to expect considering how refined the iPad and iPad pro packaging is itself. After opening the box you will see you keyboard, and upon pulling it out will also see the paperwork, as well as the charging cable down a sleeve on the side of the box. A quick note, the charging cable is very very short, so expect to find a place very close by to put the keyboard where ever you plan to charge it, don't expect to use a mid tower desktop with no space close by as the charging cable is approximately 12 inches long.
Keyboard Resonse
I would say the keys are a little stiffer but basically have the same motion and usuage of my MacBook pro built in Keyboard. There is no noticeable lag between what I type and what is shown on the screen. All the keys are very nice and there have been no sticky keys. The row of functions keys is nice, and work great, it's nice to have the same function as The Backlighting is quite nice as well, though there is some light bleed beneath the keys. You can also customize it as there are 6 different backlight colors to choose from, honestly I like the ease at which you can change those colors, because at least for me (with rental sight issues) different colors sometimes are more helpful than others.
Battery Life
It also has a very large battery so you can type for quite some time before the keyboard needs recharging, Zagg states that if you only type for about 1 hou a day, and don't use the backlighting, you can go upwards of two years between each charge. I'm not certain about that, but In the four days I've been actively using it I have only just now remembered to turn off the backlighting, and yet I am still typing on the very first charge.
Overall
So overall I am very happy with the keyboard, and would highly recommend it. The fact that it detaches from the keyboard and gives you you iPad back is also great. Logitech' keyboard wasn't for me because of that problem.
