 I think I have found the perfect keyboard for the iPad mini. So stick around and I'll tell you all about it. Hello, welcome to Take One Tech, my name's Alec. Now I've recently acquired the latest iPad mini and I am in love with the iPad all over again. I did buy the first iPad mini when it came out and it was for me the perfect size. I'm a fan of the smallest iPhone and the smallest iPad and then pair that with the biggest computer. That is the way that I sort of work because the iPad I want is something that I can just sort of take out with me, still get stuff done on it but it isn't going to be too cumbersome for me to carry around. And just to give you a bit of context, what I tend to carry around is my daily carry. There is a thing every day carry, isn't there? And I'm not going to turn this into an EDC channel by the way, but I will just show you this nevertheless because I am in love with this bag, the Peak Design tech pouch. So it is a great little bag and I'll just show you this is what I carry around day to day. I'm not going to start pulling it out. I know there are channels that do this but this is not one of those as yet. But I do like the way that it is really hardy material, whatever the grade of nylon it is, but you just open it up like that and it's got all these different pouches in it for storing cables, various different things like that instead of headphones, got a little microphone in there, all sorts of different things. And it's just some really good sort of organization, little stretchy pockets and so on. Now what I used to carry around with that, and of course there are the obligatory pen holders there tucked away in the pocket in the top there. And what I always used to carry around in this was my Baron Fig Confident Notebook. These are my notebooks of choice, the DotGrid version in case you're interested. And so this fits perfectly in here and so that's what I used to carry around with me when I wanted to make any notes and I would obviously already have my phone with me and stuff like that. So when I got the iPad Mini, I was not surprised to know that it fit perfectly in here because actually the makers of the Baron Fig Notebook made it exactly to the dimensions of an iPad Mini, literally to the corner radius and everything with space for the pencil along the side there. So that is the dimension. So the iPad Mini does indeed fit perfectly into that bag. So then there is the potential now to get some real work done on the iPad Mini and as I say, with the iPad Pro, I just found that I wasn't really using it that much. It was too big and cumbersome to take out with me if I was going anywhere where I just wanted a small bag. If I'd got my laptop bag, I would invariably have my laptop in it and then just around the house, it ended up just getting used for, I guess, sort of content consumption, watching YouTube videos, things like that, I guess. But usually these are now cartoons that have been watched as my daughter has sort of acquired it from me for the past couple of years, in fact. Although I do still grab it and get it when I'm doing a telestration and things like that for meetings and so on while she's at school. In any case, I digress because we're talking about the iPad Mini. I am totally in love with the iPad Mini once again and with the whole iPad ecosystem really. I'm definitely in love with the paper-like feel that you can get for the, that was a bit of a messed up sentence, wasn't it? The paper-like screen cover that you can get that makes the screen of the iPad feel just like paper. It doesn't make it feel just like paper but it certainly comes a lot closer and it does feel that it feels more like you're writing on paper as opposed to writing on glass with a stylus. So I'm really loving that and I am using it a whole lot more for my note-taking and things like that. It has become my note-taking tool of choice over and above the old notebooks. So then, if I'm gonna do some real work on it then I also need to be able to type on it and this is the problem that I've always had with the iPad Mini or with iPads in general really is the fact that the keyboards that you can get for them are never really that good. I know that the latest Apple keyboard for the larger iPads is supposed to be very good. I've never actually used one myself because I don't have the larger size iPad but certainly the one that I had with the iPad Pro, the original iPad Pro, it was all right, it was good but it's not really the same as writing on a regular size keyboard. There are people who make keyboard cases for the iPad Mini or they'll make portable keyboards that are the same size as the iPad Mini so that you can still fit them in your bag and whatnot. But the problem about that is though, I'm back to my little cramped fingers on the typing surface whether it's a physical surface or the glass of the iPad and it's not really very manageable like that, is it? For me, if I haven't got a proper physical keyboard where I know exactly where the keys are then it's pretty much useless. I do like the fact that the iPad is something that you can actually hold like this and type so I'll often find myself doing that if I'm just taking, have just the iPad in my hand it is quite good for the odd occasional casual note and things like that or for searching on the web. But yeah, to get real work done, it's a bit of a problem. There are a number of folding keyboards on the market. I always have a problem with these though because it is the way that they fold. And if I just pop one up for an example this is the Microsoft Folding Keyboard. Really good build quality, really lightweight, good battery life, all these sorts of things. Sort of like a rubberized feel to the case of it and then hard keys in the middle. So it's certainly, I think that this is a better in terms of the functionality than the original Apple Keyboard case. However, it still has this big issue with the Folding Keyboard which is it has this big gap down the middle of it. And that is pretty useless if you are used to touch typing that everything is sort of slightly out of place. And so that is why I've never been a fan of these. So this is the problem that I was looking to solve and I have actually found what I think is almost the holy grail and it's this. It is a folding keyboard that in my mind actually works. Now, first of all, let's have a little look at the size of it. In fact, let me bring the iPad back and I'll show you the size of it next to the iPad. So there you go. It is a bit thicker than the iPad, not quite double the thickness, maybe one and a half times as thick, something like that. But you can see it's nowhere near as long or not quite as long and not quite as wide that there is in terms of size. So how does this function in terms of an actual keyboard? Well, check this out. This is in fact a full size keyboard. So here is my Apple keyboard and this will fit exactly over the top of it because it is an identical match in terms of the size of the keys. It's amazing. It is a work of art in my mind. And how they've achieved this is by the folding mechanism. Can you see how there is no sort of almost, I mean, there is a visible join, but there's no obvious join because the way that it folds is, as it folds in, some of them fold under and some of them fold over, if you like, I guess. And so although there is a single line of a pivot point, which is down here, the actual joining edge is not straight. So it sort of zigzags around all of the keys. And that means that as you fold it, everything tucks up nicely away. You've got this protective edge around here that sort of covers all of the edges. So as I'm folding it in, that just sort of locks it in place. And it is a work of art, an actual full size keyboard. The thing that I had an issue with some of the other folding keyboards that I've tried, because I've tried quite a few in the past, was that they were either made of plastic, so not very good, or they were made of metal. But in any case, there was often some slippage, shall we say, or there was no strong mechanism to actually fix them in the middle. So I had one that folded out, there was plastics, we used to slip all over the place. But also the issue was that there had to be sort of a physical locking mechanism to try and hold it flat. But when you lock that, it never felt really strong. Well, the thing about this one is, the main central part is the actual body of it, so there's no central fold. You've got these two folds at the edges, but then also you just have these two little feet that fold down. And what that means is that when it's folded flat, it sits on the little feet at the end, and then these two parts here, and then the folding foot at the other end. But the other thing is the folding feet have little rubberized ends to them. So when it's sitting on the desk, it actually doesn't move around. And when you are typing, there's no slippage. It's not just sliding all over the desk. At a push, you can also just use it on your knee as well because the fold, there's two folds either side. So you can actually just rest it on your knee and type with it like that if you wanted to. I'm usually sitting, I don't know, in a coffee shop, on a plane, or wherever it is. And so it's sitting on a hard surface. But because of the way that it folds, you could actually, it doesn't physically lock in place, but you could actually just rest it on your knees and type with it. I've done a little test just to see that it works and it does. I won't be doing a lot of work like that. But when it's on the desk, I really could get a whole load of work done on it. So as well as being full-size keys, the other thing that I really like about it is that it does have literally the full keyboard. So just like you would get on your laptop, perhaps obviously not an extended keyboard like this one with a number pad and whatever. But it does have the number keys and then also the function key row as well. The other thing that's great about this is it will pair with up to three devices, Bluetooth. It's Bluetooth 5.1, so it's the latest Bluetooth. So you're not gonna have quite as many potential connection issues because that's also another bit of a bugbear with some of these Bluetooth keyboards is you sort of dropping letters and things like that. So this is gonna have a good connection and you've got these three different Bluetooth devices and you just hold down the function key and you can just switch between those. It has obviously got things like, obviously if you're using with iPad, then you can go to the home screen and all these sorts of shortcuts. Once you use a regular keyboard with an iPad, it's a bit of a game changer anyway if you haven't done this already because it does open up a whole load of things like, you know, keyboard shortcuts that you would use on the Mac. A lot of those translate over into the iPad as well. But if you are really paranoid about the Bluetooth and have issues with using Bluetooth keyboards, well, guess what? There is also a, quite a long cable actually, a regular keyboard length cable, I would say. I don't know exactly how long it is, probably about a meter. And it's got a little charging socket on the bottom so you can charge it up. By the way, the battery life is around about, I think a hundred hours, something like that. So you're not gonna worry about the battery running out. But if you plug this into the back of it, I'll plug it in the right way round, it's a USB, a micro USB rather. So this is how you charge it. However, you can also plug this into your computer or if you, like I've got in my bag, have got a micro USB to USB-C, you can actually just plug it directly into the port on the bottom of your iPad mini or into your computer or wherever your laptop. And then as well as the three Bluetooth options, you also have a wide option there as well. So you can just press the function key and that and then it was literally just a wide keyboard. So while it's charging as well, you can just use it as a wide keyboard. So if you have got any concerns or issues with using a Bluetooth keyboard with your iPad, you can just plug it straight in. What more can I say about this? Well, I can tell you what else I can say. I bought the wrong one. I didn't really buy the wrong one, it's just that the right one wasn't available. So this is the iClever BK20 Special Edition. And this came out, I don't know exactly how long it came out, but it was a later model that came out, but they have now released one, which is the iClever BK05, which is exactly the same as this. This was almost like I suppose the prototype for that. The difference with the BK05 is it's exactly the same, but it has got backlighting on it as well. Obviously you're gonna sacrifice a bit of battery life if you have that switched on, but the beauty is you don't actually have it switched on. So let me just quickly show you this because it is amazing. And obviously you're probably wondering, this is gonna cost quite a lot, isn't it? I think you're gonna be pleasantly surprised by this. Let me just come over to this view for a moment. There we go. It is the iClever BK05 is the one you want. And if I just come onto here, you can see you can choose between red backlighting, green backlighting, and blue backlighting. I mean, that's a really nice touch actually. Certainly if you're on planes and things like that, the red in the very dark environment, if you're on a night flight and you're working through the night, the red certainly works well, but it's nice to have these three different colors actually. Like I say, I can't demo that because I got the other model because this one sadly wasn't available in Thailand. I did look at it actually to get it from Amazon, obviously. But what I noticed was there was quite a lot of shipping and import duties to allow for it to come in. So you can see that it's almost one and a half times as much as the product itself is for shipping to Thailand, which is where I am. So I figured, and as well, not knowing how well it was gonna perform, I figured I'd just get the one that I could get locally, but now I might be looking to, might be looking to get this one, but I don't really do much night flying these days. In fact, I don't really move that far from the house. I'm either in the house or in the coffee shop. Now, one thing to be aware about if you are, I'll leave a link to this one in the description below, but when you are looking for these, there is an easy mistake to make. So this is the iClever BK05. There is an iClever BK03. This is actually the first model that they bought out quite some time ago now. And as you can see, it looks pretty much identical from these pictures. However, what you'll see is when you look at it closer up, it has actually only got the number row and the function keys are, literally you have to press a function key first to activate them. And it's much, much smaller as well. It is one of these sort of micro keyboards, if you like. So you can almost see I guess where this guy's hands are. It is really tiny. So if you are looking for a much smaller folding keyboard, this is, I think when it's folded up is about the width of a plus size iPhone. Then this is another option. There is another one that they make, which is interesting, which basically combines this keyboard, but they've actually built in a trackpad to it as well. But again, you are on this really tiny size keyboard. And so if you've got some serious work to do, I'll leave it up to you as whether you can do that on a small keyboard. But the prices of these are all pretty similar, actually. The one with the trackpad is about the same as the one that I'm using, or at least the backlit version of the one I'm using. And then the teeny tiny one is a little bit less. I'm really happy with it. I've only been using it for a little while now, but I will be doing a sort of full in-depth review, I guess, after I've been using it for a couple of months because, yeah, see how it works sort of in the field as it were, but certainly my first impressions of it, I've been using it for a few days are very good and it's working exactly as advertised. It feels sturdy as well. It does also, if this is an issue, not an issue, if this is a selling point, it does come with a little sort of velvety bag. So when it's all shut up, it does just fit in that and then that fits perfectly in my bag. It also just is instant on and off. So when it's closed, it's off. And then when you want to get to work, you literally just open it up like that and then that's it, it's on. The pairing of it is pretty simple. You've got the function key down here and then you've got a little pairing button there. So you just select the particular one, two or three Bluetooth that you want and then select pairing and it will come on. You can also check the battery level by pressing that. It will just flash to tell you how full the battery is. But like I say, I don't think you need to worry too much about battery. I think with the backlight on, then battery life is more like about 10 hours, something like that. Don't quote me on that. But certainly without the backlighting, then even if you're using the backlit model, but just with that function turned off, then yeah, it's something like 100 hours or something. So I'll give this a full test and see how long it lasts. But yeah, certainly the build quality feels great. The functionality is great. And I think I have now just made myself that much more productive in the coffee shop. Maybe I'm just looking for an excuse to go to the coffee shop more now that things have opened up a bit. I'm not too sure, but in any case, it's a really great product. I'll leave a link to all three models down in the description below, obviously. And if you found this useful, then while you're down there, obviously don't forget to hit the like button, subscribe and turn on notifications. And if you're really feeling like you've found it useful, then you can also head over to my Buy Me A Coffee page buymeacoffee.com slash take one tech. So I've just got distracted. Somebody's just come into the room. How rude, nevermind. For now, that is all for the micro keyboards or folding keyboards, but I'll leave a link to some more great content over on the right hand side. So don't go anywhere, stick around and I'll see you in the next video.