Gadgetory

I'm Scott Stein and this is the logitech solar keyboard folio for the iPad now I know what you're saying Scott why another keyboard case for the iPad it's true there have been a lot of these because there hasn't been a perfect solution and a lot of people take their iPads on the go too right well this one has a wrinkle which I kind of just revealed to you it's solar-powered and that means that you don't have to carry an extra USB charger with you in fact this doesn't even come with one but if you charge it on the back for what Logitech says could be as much as six hours or even faster you're gonna get up to two years of use if you type two hours a day now I haven't had time to review this keyboard case for two years I have however in the past few weeks found it to be very good at charging fast and so far it's been working great as advertised the keyboard here is a very high quality keyboard Logitech's really been going aces lately with their iPad cases and their keyboard solutions the ultra-thin keyboard cover was one of the best reviewed ones that we've had at CNET and Logitech's made a variety of them this one is a thicker larger keyboard really feels like a laptop keyboard maybe a little more plastic II definitely feels comfortable for extended sessions and what's nice about this case is it has a second viewing angle that's right if you move it down to this knotch it'll go into a video viewing mode and all these buttons down here will activate and turn into volume buttons and fast-forward buttons now there's something kind of automatic about this to use that word that this connects via bluetooth without having to turn it on or off the moment that you take this case and fold it over into this mode it begins the pairing process and when you deactivate it voila like magic it turns off that's really nice in terms of saving power and if in case you fold it up and accidentally press a key you won't be typing something crazy on your iPad now the drawback to this is that one it's $130 that's expensive but a lot of keyboard cases and covers for the iPad are pretty expensive but - even though it looks great trust me it doesn't feel as good as you'd expect now I'm not talking about the keyboard I'm talking about the case this is meant to be a folio case so you open it up like a book hopefully you can use it that way but between the heavy keyboard on one end and this sort of almost off the roll feeling upholstered strip that connects the whole case it feels a little flimsy and that's not something that I would have expected on $130 accessory now when you fold this up it does fold nice and flat and it feels very rigid and sturdy and this big tubular battery that's here you know I guess it needed to be necessary but when you close it sometimes sometimes it crashes up against the iPad cover and it makes for a little bit of hard negotiation to make sure you've nested it just right you can get past those elements and the fact that well this cover here for the solar part is a little flimsy and flexible feeling I don't know how that'll last over time we did get dust under the edge of ours it's a very good keyboard and if you keep it folded up in that mode when you're traveling you might really love the fact that you don't have to charge it I'm Scott Stein and that's a look at the illogic tech solar keyboard folio for the ipad and that's iPad 2 and 3rd gen iPad