The IT Nerd

When the topic of Apple products comes up, one of the things that comes to mind is if it’s worth it. Some things are. For example my 16″ MacBook Pro is absolutely worth it because of the speed and power that it has. Other things from Apple… I’m not so sure.

This is a review of one of those other things.

This is the Apple Magic Keyboard with Touch ID and Numeric Keypad. And it is $229 CDN in black which is what you see in the picture, or $209 CDN in white. In other words, if you want the black colour to match your setup or to hide dirt, you’ll have to pay Apple $20 more. And that is the start of why this keyboard might not be worth it for you.

Let’s touch on the fact that this keyboard doesn’t have backlighting. Which to me is completely bizarre as many lower priced keyboards do have backlighting. I’m sure that Apple will say that it has to do with battery life seeing as this is a wireless keyboard. But that doesn’t make sense to me because competing keyboards that cost way less than this one will connect wirelessly like this one does, and go weeks if not much longer on battery while having backlighting. And there are even a few keyboards that will do all of that and self adjust the backlighting on the fly using an ambient light sensor. Apple does this with the Magic Keyboards that are built into their MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models. So you have to wonder why they haven’t done it here. Having said that, battery life is one month on a charge. And I can confirm that I can go five to maybe six weeks between charges.

Incline adjustment is something else that’s missing from this keyboard. As in you can’t adjust the incline if this mostly flat keyboard doesn’t work for you. Now this keyboard as is happens to work for me, but it won’t work for everyone. I know that because I often get emails from people who buy desktop Macs and can’t cope with this keyboard. Thus they reach out to me for advice on what to replace it with. Now if you’re someone who doesn’t want to buy a new keyboard, and needs a bit more incline from their Magic Keyboard, this product might help you. I base that on feedback from clients who have tried this product and reported back that it helped to put the keyboard at an angle that works for them. But the fact that this product exists at all shows that maybe Apple needs to reconsider this design.

Finally, there’s this.

Why on God’s green Earth does this keyboard have a Lightning connector for connection and charging purposes? It’s 2024 and Apple should have moved this to USB-C by now. It’s not as if a USB-C connector wouldn’t fit in this keyboard. The bottom line is that this decision not to have USB-C on this keyboard is baffling to be honest. But on the flip side you get this:

Apple serves up a woven USB-C to Lightning cable in the box that’s colour matched. It’s a nice touch I suppose.

So this keyboard sucks right? Not so fast. A big plus to this keyboard is the inclusion of Touch ID. That’s handy for those who rely on Touch ID for anything from Apple Pay, to simply getting into your Mac, to using it for authentication purposes. There is a catch though. Touch ID only works with Apple Silicon Macs. If you have an Intel Mac, you’re out of luck. And in case you are wondering, no third party keyboard has Touch ID, likely because Apple won’t allow that for security reasons I am guessing. So if Touch ID matters to you, this is your only choice.

Sidebar: If you want to unlock your Mac and you own an Apple Watch, these instructions will help you to set that up. Which means that you won’t need Touch ID to unlock your Mac. Which by extension means that you may not need to buy this keyboard for that use case.

Another plus is the typing experience. I have to admit that despite the fact that I learned to type on a typewriter back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, which in turn made me gravitate towards mechanical keyboards, the typing experience on this Magic Keyboard is quite good. Key travel is decent, it doesn’t take a whole lot of force to type on it, and it doesn’t make a whole lot of noise. I have no issues typing on it, likely because it mimics the experience of the built in MacBook Pro Magic Keyboard.

The looks this keyboard are another plus because it fits in with the Apple look and feel if that’s what you’re looking for. It also means that you will get a clean desk setup if that’s what you’re looking for. It also doesn’t take up a lot of real estate, and the build quality is very premium. Plus setting it up was laughably easy. I took it out of the box, turned it on, went to Bluetooth settings and clicked connect. Done. Have a nice day.

So, I have to come back to this question: Is this keyboard worth it? Well, if you care about Touch ID, or you want a keyboard that is fully within the Apple ecosystem. It might be worth it. If you want a very good typing experience that is similar to a MacBook Pro for example, it might be worth it. But the thing is that there are keyboards out there that cost less money that do most of what this keyboard is capable of. Which begs the question. Why do I have one? I am in the midst of redoing my desk setup and I wanted a wireless keyboard that occupies less space as I am now moving towards using my MacBook Pro in clamshell mode. So that combined with wanting Touch ID as some of the apps on my MacBook Pro use it made it worth it for me. But honestly, I had to really think long and hard about the “worth it” part before I took out my credit card to pay for this at the Apple Store. Or to put it another way, 95% of you reading this review shouldn’t buy this keyboard and instead you should look to options from companies like Logitech, Keychron, or Matias who are my go to recommendations for Mac keyboards. Chances are those keyboards are going to be worth it for the 95% of people who need a Mac keyboard as you get features like incline adjustment and backlighting which are strangely absent from Apple’s offering for way less money.

This entry was posted on May 4, 2024 at 8:39 am and is filed under Products with tags Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.