iPad Pro Magic Keyboard hands-on videos show off hinge and trackpad
A series of videos featuring Apple's newly launched Magic Keyboard for the iPad Pro have surfaced on YouTube. The hands-on videos show multiple aspects of the new keyboard accessory, including the sturdiness of its hinge, its trackpad, how the settings work on the iPad, and more. The videos come ahead of the shipment of the Magic Keyboard to customers who have preordered it.
The new videos were spied by various Internet users over the weekend and recently aggregated by 9to5Mac; they come from two different users, with one set of videos in English and the other in Thai. Both show off the Magic Keyboard with the 11-inch iPad Pro, including its floating hinge design, the trackpad, keyboard backlighting, the USB-C passthrough port for charging, and more.
Though some details are hard to gather from the videos, the hinge looks very sturdy and stiff, enabling the user to position the iPad Pro at the angle they need, then kick back and use the keyboard in their lap without any catastrophic shifts or collapsing. Users can adjust the brightness of the keyboard's backlight using the iPadOS Hardware Keyboard menu, where auto-capitalization can be toggled on and off.
The Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro features a scissor-based key mechanism with 1mm of travel; it's difficult to tell from the video how well this compares to a laptop, but the typing experience does appear to be substantially more robust compared to the folio-based keyboard. As Apple promised, the iPad magnetically attaches to the floating portion of the Magic Keyboard, which can be adjusted to specific screen angles.
The USB-C passthrough port on the keyboard is used for charging the iPad Pro, which means the port on the tablet itself is free to use for things like attaching USB thumb drives or hard drives and similar. It's unclear how many people who preordered the Magic Keyboard are getting it early, but it seems Apple is on the ball with getting shipments out. The Magic Keyboard for the 11-inch iPad Pro is available to order from Apple now for $299 USD.