The 12.9 Max Plus is Brydge’s best iPad keyboard yet
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Reported today in The Verge.
The 12.9 Max Plus is Brydge's best iPad keyboard yet
Brydge has been making iPad keyboards for nearly a decade now, and while the iPad itself has changed a lot over that time, the company has largely followed the same formula: design a keyboard that makes the iPad look like a MacBook Pro. The key design element has been the company's trademark rubberized hinges, which the iPad slots into to form the other half of a laptop-style device.
Now, Brydge is trying something slightly new. The 12.9 Max Plus, which starts shipping this week, is a keyboard case for the iPad Pro that does away with the hinge clamps and instead makes use of magnets for a sleeker and more convenient experience. The product also leans hard into Apple's recent addition of cursor support to iPadOS, with a huge trackpad that's comparable in size to what you'd find on a MacBook Pro.
At $249.99, this is a premium product aimed at heavy iPad Pro users, and it's only available for the biggest iPad size. Apple's own Magic Keyboard is clearly formidable competition. But Brydge is able to undercut Apple by $100, and in some important ways, I prefer the Max Plus to the Magic Keyboard.
Huge trackpad
Convenient magnetic design
Good, full-featured keyboard
No Smart Connector
Trackpad isn't quite as slick as Apple's
Somewhat bulky
The most obvious difference between the Max Plus and other Brydge keyboards is the magnetic plate in which you rest the iPad. This offers protection for the back of the iPad without having to attach the snap-on magnetic cover that Brydge included on prior models, and more importantly, it's far less fiddly to attach and detach the iPad than it was to squeeze it into the old-style hinge clamps.
The tradeoff, of course, is that you're adding a few millimeters of