There’s no doubt about it that the iPad is a fantastic product built to do a variety of different things from listening to music, to browsing the web, to watching movies. However, a certain faction of us do far more things online than just casual viewing and browsing. We need a little more out of our online experience than a virtual keyboard that pops up on a screen when you need it and a flat screen. For those of us who need more from the experience, there’s the Logitech Keyboard Case by ZAGG for iPad 2.
This is the same case you saw MC Hammer promoting when he was on the Oprah Winfrey Show. While he was known in the ’80s for his baggy balloon style pants and a song taunting us not to touch “this,” he’s become quite the techno geek since. When he made an appearance on Oprah updating fans in regards to just what he’s been up to since his music career died out, he touted the Logitech iPad case. He explained the inventors of the case came to him wanting his help in promoting it. Oprah, a huge fan of the iPad, took one look at the case and declared, “I want it.”
So what makes the Logitech case so great? Everything. It not only keeps the iPad safe, it turns it into a small laptop. The case is made of sturdy aluminum on the outside, and has a cushioned interior. It’s hard to really call it a case, however, as it’s really only one-sided. More than anything else, the part of an iPad you want to keep most protected is the screen. This design allows you to place the iPad face down inside it. While you would think it wouldn’t be safe, the case actually grabs onto the iPad and holds it tightly. You can turn it upside down and it doesn’t fall out. I still wouldn’t drop it intentionally, but I feel much better about its chances should it happen to fall.
Yet the protective aspects of the Logitech case are really a minor benefit. The case also doubles as a stand. It has a small easel at the back that allows the iPad to stand in either portrait or landscape mode. It’s great for listening to music and watching videos. It has a couple of different positions. The easel flips up when you’re using it, and when you’re done, you simply have to flip it down. When the iPad is placed face down to store it away, it automatically goes into sleep mode, and when you take it out, it automatically wakes up.
The best feature of the Logitech case, however, is the keyboard. Built into the base of it is a full keyboard. It’s slightly narrower than a standard keyboard on a laptop, but it doesn’t take that much to get used to it. If you do a lot of typing, it can be very hard to do that on an iPad. Not just because of the stand, but because of the virtual keyboard that makes it hard to tell if you’re hitting the right keys or not.
You can “feel” the keys, which puts you back in touch-typing mode and out of the thumb-typing texting method. Additionally, it has all the special keys that you miss from a regular computer keyboard, such as Caps Lock, Tab, Command, Option, Control, and iPod controls. It has some iPad-specific keys such as Lock, Home, Search, Photos, and a button to bring up the virtual keyboard should you want to work with that. There are also some additional function keys for editing with Cut, Copy, Paste, Undo, and Redo. But really the best addition is the arrow keys. That’s something I always miss when typing with my iPhone, the chance to move through the copy with the arrows.
With the keyboard on the case, it makes the iPad truly just like a laptop. It makes having an iPad the best of both worlds. Not only do you get the ease of using an iPad, you get it along with the parts of a laptop that are hard to do without. Although there are still one or two things I can’t do on the iPad, the Logitech case makes it so that I rarely have to use my laptop. I can do almost everything on the iPad. In fact, with a lot of help from the Logitech keyboard, I wrote this entire article.
Logitech Keyboard Case for iPad 2.
Laura has spent nearly 20 years writing news, reviews, and op-eds, with more than 10 of those years as an editor as well. She has exclusively used Apple products for the past three decades. In addition to writing and editing at MTE, she also runs the site’s sponsored review program.
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