But it’s not something that happens often. For example, when I want to tap the Send button in the bottom-right corner of the Messages app, it takes a smidgen of finger gymnastics to touch precisely the right place. (The shell remains perfectly usable despite that crack, and the shell, like the Zagg Cover, holds the iPad securely.)īoth cases make it a little difficult to tap the very bottom of the screen, as the hinge “lip” can get in the way of your fingertip. And that rear cover on the Folio is a bit flimsy-our review model developed a tiny fracture in the thin plastic surrounding the iPad’s volume buttons. Its hinge groove grasps the iPad snugly and securely, and it adjusts to a wider variety of screen angles on a tighter hinge. In practice, though, I slightly prefer the Cover. My expectation was that I’d prefer the ZaggKeys Folio, since it provides more protection for your iPad mini when you fold it closed, and because I thought the iPad itself would feel sturdier when attached more-permanently to the keyboard. Each is, of course, limited to holding your iPad in landscape orientation. You may get a slight shimmy with the Cover when you tap the top of the iPad’s screen, but each model keeps things plenty stable. In my testing, both models kept my iPad mini at the angle I positioned it. The Cover actually angles back even farther, to roughly 35 degrees from horizontal.
The Folio can rotate back to an angle about 45 degrees from horizontal. The Q key serves double duty as the tilde (~) key (when pressed in tandem with the Fn modifier), and Caps Lock and Tab merge into a single half-width key in the Caps Lock key’s standard position immediately to the left of A. Several keys get shrunk down to half-width: the numeral 1, semicolon, apostrophe, and open-bracket ([) keys all get that fate. Of course, as with all keyboards shrunk down to this size, there are some key challenges (or perhaps we should call them “keyportunities”). The keys aren’t full-sized, but they’re close, and-most important-you can type well on them. As I mentioned, both models uses the same keyboard. You tuck your iPad mini into a groove on the hinge and then fold the keyboard flat against the iPad’s screen as a, well, cover.īut it’s what the two new Zagg keyboards have in common that sets them apart from the other offerings we’ve tested. The Cover, on the other hand, consists solely of the keyboard and a hinge that holds your iPad. The difference is that the Folio can actually hold your iPad: Attached to the keyboard is a thin, black-plastic shell you snap your iPad mini into. The Folio and Cover cost $100 each, are each roughly the same size as the iPad mini, and sport the same keyboard. Zagg recently unleashed two additional keyboards for the iPad mini, the ZaggKeys Folio for iPad mini (available in black or white) and the ZaggKeys Cover for iPad mini (available in black or silver), and this time around the company got things mostly right. But the Mini 7’s odd key layout made it difficult to type on, and the Mini 9 achieved “typability” by using a keyboard-and, thus, an enclosing case-considerably larger than the iPad mini itself. Zagg’s first two attempts at iPad mini keyboard cases, the ZaggKeys Mini 7 and ZaggKeys Mini 9, were among the better options on the market, with large, high-quality keys. Yet as frustrated as he and I have both been by the available options, we’ve kept hunting for a good iPad mini typing solution. And while even great keyboard cases for the full-size iPad involved tradeoffs, keyboard cases for the iPad mini accentuate those tradeoffs: You want full-sized keys, good key action, and all the perks of a regular keyboard, but you want it to fit nicely with your iPad mini. Quick bursts of texts are manageable, but if you’re angling to type out long-form prose, the virtual keyboard on Apple’s smaller tablet proves frustrating.
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