Zagg's Pro Keys 2 Is a Cheaper iPad Keyboard Case but It's Too Thick

I'm constantly testing different iPad cases. When I'm done, I always return to the Logitech Combo Touch. With an adjustable kickstand and a detachable keyboard, it has everything I need. The Zagg Pro Keys 2 mimics many of the capabilities of the Logitech accessory but at a lower price, so I was excited to try it, thinking I may have found a new favorite. Sadly, it falls short.
It's not completely identical to the Logitech case—it's a lot more protective, with a folio cover that doubles as a kickstand (with adjustable angles) and a detachable keyboard that sits in between. There's no trackpad—meaning I have to pack a mouse or constantly lift my finger to the screen—and the entire setup is heavy and clunky. At $150, it's one of the more affordable iPad Pro keyboard cases. But its flaws are annoying enough that the lower price might not matter. Protective but Chonky
The Pro Keys 2 I'm testing is specifically built for the 13-inch iPad Pro (M4, 2024), though you can also buy it for the 11-inch iPad Pro (M4) as well as both the 13- and 11-inch iPad Air (M2). It consists of two pieces: the case and the keyboard.
Click the keyboard into place using the magnets and you can use the iPad Pro like a laptop. The setup looks more modern than the first-generation Pro Keys, with square instead of round keycaps (which I prefer) and backlit—with the option to cycle between colors like green, blue, and red. There are lightbulbs under each key, so it's bright enough for typing in darker environments. But parts of the keyboard (like the side keys and function row keys) shine brighter than the QWERTY keys, so the lighting feels uneven. Adjusting the brightness with the backlight key didn't seem to make much of a difference. Zagg also added more surface area underneath the keyboard to rest your palms while typing.
Photograph: Brenda Stolyar
It's comfortable to type on for long periods (I used it to type this review), though a trackpad would have been the cherry on top, especially since there's plenty of room (the first-gen model has a trackpad version). Even though I've been using the case for a few weeks now, I still find myself accidentally reaching toward the middle to swipe an imaginary trackpad out of habit. The keyboard is Bluetooth-connected, so you'll have to pair it with the iPad (you can connect up to two devices) and charge it. Zagg claims up to one year of battery life, so you don't have to worry about constantly plugging it in.
The second-generation version has a slot on the side for the Apple Pencil rather than a flap to keep it in place. It's a lot more aesthetically pleasing, but I wish Zagg would've color-matched it to the case. Instead, it's made of the same clear rubber as the bumpers around the iPad and looks cheap. The bumper runs underneath the slot too, but it won't get in the way of wireless charging.
This case feels super protective, so much so that it feels like many of the rugged cases I've tested. In addition to the rubber edges, the rest of the case is made of plastic with a soft, matte feel. The folio cover can be folded back into a stand and adjusted at two angles. It was fine for watching TV (it was sturdy enough to stay upright on the couch without toppling over) and for use as a laptop. But it doesn't offer as many angles as a kickstand does.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

New York Post

17 hours ago

• New York Post

This $450 iPad Pro is proof that you can have it all

Discover startups, services, products and more from our partner StackCommerce. New York Post edits this content, and may be compensated and/or receive an affiliate commission if you buy through our links. TL;DR: You do not want to miss getting this near-mint 3rd Gen iPad Pro for just $449.99 (reg. $849). Want the power of a laptop, the convenience of a tablet, and a price that doesn't make you flinch? Meet the grade-A refurbished Apple iPad Pro 12.9″ (3rd Gen, 2018)—yours right now for just $449.99 (regularly $849). This iPad isn't just about good looks (though with its edge-to-edge Liquid Retina display, it definitely has them). It's powered by Apple's mighty A12X Bionic chip, which means fast, fluid performance whether you're editing 4K video, sketching your next big idea, or breezing through emails. The 12.9″ display is seriously impressive, featuring ProMotion technology for up to 120Hz refresh rate, True Tone for more comfortable viewing, and a wide P3 color gamut that makes everything pop. Whether you're working on client projects, binge-watching your favorite series, or just admiring your own digital artwork, it all looks stunning here. And because this device is Grade-A refurbished, it arrives in near-mint condition—clean, tested, and ready to go. It's fully compatible with the 2nd Gen Apple Pencil (not included), has a 12MP rear camera with 4K video support, and weighs just 1.39 pounds—perfect for tossing in a tote and heading out the door. This isn't just a tablet. It's your 256GB digital sketchbook, mobile workstation, personal theater, and productivity sidekick—all rolled into one beautifully engineered package. So yes, you can have it all. High performance. Gorgeous display. Trusted Apple quality. And a price that doesn't come with monthly payments or heart palpitations. But like all good things, this deal won't stick around forever. Get a like-new iPad Pro for just $449.99 (regularly $849) while you still can. StackSocial prices subject to change.

Atlantic

18 hours ago

• Atlantic

The Perverse Pride of Having Never Owned a Smartphone

This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here. Unlike nearly 98 percent of Americans under the age of 50, I don't have a smartphone. Actually, I've never had a smartphone. I've never called an Uber, never 'dropped a pin,' never used Venmo or Spotify or a dating app, never been in a group chat, never been jealous of someone on Instagram (because I've never been on Instagram). I used to feel ashamed of this, or rather, I was made to feel ashamed. For a long time, people either didn't believe me when I told them that I didn't have a smartphone, or reacted with a sort of embarrassed disdain, like they'd just realized I was the source of an unpleasant odor they'd been ignoring. But over the past two years, the reaction has changed. As the costs of being always online have become more apparent, the offline, air-gapped, inaccessible person has become an object of fascination, even envy. I have to confess that I've become a little smug about being a Never-Phoner—a holdout who somehow went from being left behind to ahead of the curve. How far ahead is difficult to say. I think I've avoided the worst effects of the smartphone: the stunned, preoccupied affect; the social atrophy; the hunched posture and long horizontal neck creases of the power scroller. I'm pretty sure my attention span is better than many others', based on the number of people I've observed in movie theaters who either check their phone every few minutes (about half) or scroll throughout the entire movie (always a handful). I will, by the way, let you know if I witness you engaging in similar behavior: If you look at your phone more than once an hour, I will call you an 'iPad baby'; if you put on an auto-generated Spotify playlist, I'll call you 'a hog at the slop trough.' Being phoneless has definitely had downsides. The pockets of every jacket I own are filled with maps scrawled on napkins, receipts, and utility bills torn in half to get me to unfamiliar places. I once missed an important job interview because I'd mislabeled the streets on my hastily sketched map. At the end of group dinners, when someone says, 'Everyone Venmo me $37.50,' the two 20s I offer are taken up like a severed ear. And I'd be lying if I said I didn't occasionally get wistful about all the banter I'm probably missing out on in group chats. Still, I've held out, though it's hard to articulate exactly why. The common anti-smartphone angles don't really land with me. The cranky 'Get off your darn phone!' seems a little too close to 'Get off my lawn!'—a knee-jerk aversion to new things is, if not the root of all evil, then the root of all dullness. The popular exhortations to 'be fully present in the moment' also seem misguided. I think the person utterly absorbed in an Instagram Reel as they shuffle into the crosswalk against the light, narrowly saved by the 'Ahem, excuse me' double-tap on the horn that bus drivers use to tell you that you're a split second from being reunited with your childhood dog, is probably living in the moment to a degree usually achieved only by Buddhist monks; the problem is just that it's the wrong moment. Read: Why are there so many 'alternative devices' all of a sudden? Mostly, I think the reason I don't opt for the more frictionless phone life is that I can't help noticing how much people have changed in the decade or so since smartphones have become ubiquitous. I used to marvel at the walking scroller's ability to sightlessly navigate the crowd, possibly using some kind of batlike sonar. But then, on occasion, whether out of a vague antisocial impulse (not infrequent) or simple necessity (as in navigating a narrow aisle at the grocery store), I'd play a game of chicken with one of these people, walking directly toward them to see when they'd veer off. A surprising percentage of the time, they didn't, and after the collision, they'd always blame me. Eventually, I realized they're not navigating anything; they've just outsourced responsibility for their corporeal self to everyone else around them, much as many people have outsourced their memory to their phone. You're probably saying, well, at least they're on foot, and not driving a car. But many people look at their phones behind the wheel too. At a four-way stop, oftentimes the driver who yields to the crossing vehicle will steal a half-second look at their phone while they wait. At red lights, I see people all the time who don't look up from their phone when the light turns green—they just depress the gas when the car in front of them moves. Less hazardous but somehow more disturbing are the people I see scrolling in parked cars late at night. When I glance over—startled by the sudden appearance of a disembodied, underlit face on an otherwise deserted block—these people typically glare back, looking aggrieved and put-upon, as if I've broken a contract I didn't know I'd agreed to. I try to give them the benefit of the doubt; maybe they share a bed with a light sleeper, or have six annoying kids bouncing off the walls at home. But it happens often enough that I've come to think of them as the embodiment of contemporary alienation. Twenty-five years ago, we had Bowling Alone; today, we have scrolling alone. Of course, a phone is just a medium, no different on some level from a laptop or a book, and the blanket 'phone bad' position elides the fact that people could be doing a nearly infinite number of things on them, many of them productive. The guy hunched intently over his phone at the gym might be reading the latest research on novel cancer treatments. But probably not. Once, a guy at my gym, whose shoulder I looked over as he used the stationary bike in front of me, was talking to an AI-anime-schoolgirl chatbot on his phone. She was telling him, in a very small, breathy voice, how she'd been in line at the store earlier, and when someone had cut in front of her, she'd politely spoken up and asked them to go to the back of the line. 'That's great, baby,' he said. 'I'm so proud of you for standing up for yourself.' This is more or less typical of the stuff I spy people doing on their phone—self-abasing, a devitalized substitute for some real-life activity, and incredibly demoralizing, at least in the eyes of a phoneless naif. Many times, I've watched friends open a group chat, sigh, and go through a huge backlog of unread messages, mechanically dispensing heart eyes and laughing emoji—friendship as a data-entry gig you aren't paid for, yet can't quit. I have a girlfriend, but one of my friends often lets me watch as he uses the dating apps. Like most men (including myself), he overestimates his attractiveness while underestimating the attractiveness of the women he swipes on. 'I guess I'll give her a chance,' he'll say, swiping right on a woman whom ancient civilizations would've gone to war over. As long as this friend does his daily quota of swipes, he's 'out there and on the market,' he tells me, and there's 'nothing more he can do.' Yet we go to the same coffee shop, and several times a week, we see a woman who seems to be his perfect match. Each day, he comes in, reads his little autofiction book, then takes out his laptop to peck away at a little autofiction manuscript. Each day, she comes in, reads her little autofiction book, then takes out her laptop to peck away at what we've theorized must also be a little autofiction manuscript. Sometimes they sit, by chance, at adjacent tables, so close that I'm sure he can smell her perfume. On these occasions, I try to encourage him from across the room—I raise my eyebrows suggestively, I subtly thrust my hips under the table. After she leaves, I go over and ask why he didn't talk to her; he reacts as if I suggested a self-appendectomy. 'Maybe I'll see her on the apps,' he says, of the woman he's just seen in real life for the 300th time. I don't blame him. He's 36 and has only ever dated through apps. Meeting people in public does seem exponentially harder than it was just 10 years ago. The bars seem mostly full of insular friend groups and people nervously awaiting their app dates. (Few things are more depressing than witnessing the initial meeting of app users. 'Taylor … ? Hi, Riley.' The firm salesmanlike handshake, the leaning hug with feet kept at maximum distance, both speaking over each other in their job-interview voices.) I often see people come into a bar, order a single drink, sit looking at their phone for 20 to 30 minutes, and then leave. Maybe they're being ghosted. Or maybe they're doing exactly what they intended to do. But they frequently look disappointed; I imagine that their visit was an attempt at something—giving serendipity an opportunity to tap them on the shoulder and say, Here you go, here's the encounter that will fix you. Witnessing all of this, I sense that a huge amount of social and libidinal energy has been withdrawn from the real world. Where has it all gone? Data centers? The comments? Many critics of smartphones say that phones have made people narcissists, but I don't think that's right. Narcissists need other people; the emotional charge of engagement is their lifeblood. What the oblivious walking scroller, the driving texter, the unrealistic dating-app swiper have in common is almost the opposite—a quality closer to the insularity of solipsism, the belief that you're the one person who actually exists and that other people are fundamentally unreal. Solipsism, though, is a form of isolation, and to become accustomed to it is to make yourself a kind of recluse, capable of mimicking normalcy yet only truly comfortable shuffling among your feeds, muttering darkly to yourself. I know that my refusal to get a smartphone is an implicit admission that I would become just as addicted to it as anyone else. Recently, my girlfriend handed me her phone and told me to put on music for sex; a few minutes later, she leaned over to see what was taking so long. I had been looking at the Wikipedia page for soft-serve ice cream. I have no idea why I was looking at that or even how I'd gotten there. It's like the sudden availability of unlimited information had sent me into a fugue state, and I just started swiping and scrolling. I guess I looked into the void and fell in. I won't lie; it felt kind of nice, giving up.

Gizmodo

3 days ago

• Gizmodo

Apple iPad 11-inch With A16 Chip Hits Its Lowest Price as Amazon Clears Out Top Tablets

We're about to have huge wave of humidity hit all across the United States. That means its the perfect time to just stay inside, playing Fortnite on an iPad, or streaming the new season of Love Island. Amazon right now has the Wi-Fi only model of the Apple iPad with the A16 chip on sale for $50 off as part of a limited time deal. The brings down the tablet to just $299 from its original price of $349. See at Amazon Liquid Retina Display The Apple iPad is an 11-inch tablet built for the everyday user. It's thin, but powerful thanks to the A16 chipset. The screen uses a liquid retina display with a resolution of 2360 by 1640 pixels that show accurate, stunning color thanks to True Tone which can adjust the color temperature based on its surroundings, making it comfortable to view in any lighting conditions. The Apple iPad Air comes in a handful of color options. You can choose between silver, blue, pink, or yellow to best match your sense of style. The iPad is equipped with a 12MP rear camera as well as an ultra-wide 12MP front camera. You can FaceTime or hop into Zoom calls with your friends, family, or colleagues with ease. Center Stage This is an Apple feature that using built-in intelligence to watch as you move within the frame to recenter yourself. This way you and anyone else in the room with your on camera stays optimally in view for everyone else on the call with you. Additionally, the rear cameras uses True Tone flash which makes it capable of scanning documents. Take your iPad even further with some additional accessories. The Apple Pencil can turn your tablet into a drawing canvas or handwritten note-taking device. The Magic Keyboard Folio is a versatile two-piece detachable keypad that also serves as a protective back panel to the iPad. Keep your iPad secure with Touch ID. It's built into the top button so you can just use your fingerprint to unlock your iPad as well as to sign into into apps or authenticate payments using Apple Pay. With support for Wi-Fi 6, you'll be able to access all your files and cloud-saved photos fast and stream your favorite TV shows and movies seamlessly in high-quality. For a limited time, you can scoop up the 11-inch iPad for a $50 discount. It's normally priced at $349, so with the Amazon deal, you'll be getting the Apple tablet for only $299. See at Amazon