Logitechslipped a little surprise into the post-WWDC news rush last week: the Flip Folio, a two-piece combo that tries to give iPad owners the best of both worlds. Proper keys when you need them, and a naked tablet when you don’t.
It does the trick by turning the keyboard into a separate Bluetooth slab that snaps onto the back of the folio lid for travel but lives completely free the rest of the time. You don’t have to deal with things like pogo pins, dangling flaps, or… having to yank the whole case off just to sketch on the couch.
What Exactly Does The Flip Folio Bring To The Table?
A deeper look at the specs, build factor, and more.
The idea is simple enough: protect the tablet 24/7, let the keyboard come and go. The folio half is a rigid shell that hugs every edge of the new M4 iPad Pro and the updated M2/M3 iPad Air in both 11- and 13-inch sizes. A full-width kickstand folds out from the back and will hold the iPad in portrait as well as landscape, something Apple’s own Magic Keyboard still can’t do.
The keyboard half looks like Logitech’s standard laptop deck shrunken down: scissor switches, 1 mm of travel, a full function row for iPadOS shortcuts and three Easy-Switch buttons so you can hop between the tablet, a phone and a laptop without re-pairing. On the 11-inch model the keys sit on an 18- millimetre pitch; the 13-inch stretches to 19 millimetres, close to a MacBook.
There’s no backlight and no trackpad. I guess those are the concessions for making the board justseven millimetres thick and about 176 grams on the small version, 207 grams on the big one.
Power comes from four CR2016 coin cells hidden under a magnetised battery door. Logitech pegs life at roughly two years if you type two hours a day.
People are definitely going to have mixed reactions about the disposable batteries angle. Mocing on, the Bluetooth LE keeps latency low and also lets the keyboard pair with anything else that speaks the protocol.
Flip Folio lands in two sizes and four colours. Graphite and Black are now available for sale on the website,at $160 for the 11-inch and $180 for the 13-inch. Pale Grey and Lilac are on the backburner for now, but you do have the option to get notified once they go live.
Stacked against Logitech’s own Combo Touch, Flip Folio trades the Smart Connector, backlighting and trackpad for 140-ish grams of weight savings and the freedom to chuck the keys in a bag pocket. Now, if we go a step ahead and compare it to Apple’s Magic Keyboard, it loses the floating hinge and aluminum palm rest but gains portrait mode, a function row and $110 back in your wallet.
Who Is It For?
Long story short, if you’re someone who goes from writing in the morning, tosketching on Procreateafter lunch, and then wraps up with a nice comic in bed, Flip Folio’s detach-and-go approach is going to be your new best friend.
It protects your iPad like a normal folio, props it up for Netflix, and gives you a nice spacious keyboard when you need to throw on a cape and get typing. It also weighs less than any other keyboard case with real protection and costs far less than Apple’s offering.
Will it replace the Magic Keyboard for power users? Probably not. But if the Magic Keyboard always felt like overkill, and if you’ve ever cursed while peeling a stiff case off your iPad just to curl up and read, Logitech’s Flip Folio may be the sweet spot you’ve been waiting for.
