Gadgetory

welcome to my unboxing and first look at the type cover for the Microsoft Surface this is the English layout and it comes in a box that says it's designed for surface Windows RT and Windows 8 pro ok awesome and that's pretty much all the information there is on the outside so I'm gonna treat this as a bit of a comparison between the surface type cover and the surface touch cover you can see the touch cover is installed on the surface that's behind the packaging right here I love Microsoft's packaging for the surface line of products overall they've sort of taken a couple cues from from companies that do packaging well and implemented them not to sort of you know want anyone to run crying fouls in here we've got a little bit of documentation that covers kind of not a whole lot of information that could matter that much it should be pretty straightforward this is the type cover so what is the difference between the type cover and the touch cover they both attach to the surface using this magnetic and proprietary keyboard interface here Microsoft is allowing third parties to use this interface if they pay a licensing fee so that way Microsoft takes a little bit more margin out of it and other companies will be able to contribute their there additions to what they see is a vision for how it should work so the difference is this is pressure-sensitive so you press a button by like pressing a button there's no tactile feedback this is a very low-profile keyboard you can see that in actual thickness like in real terms they're not that different the the touch are the type what is it called that's good tight cover is not that much thicker than the touch cover and both of them are like significantly thinner than something like see an iPhone my usual iPhone thickness comparison very very closely would it help if I turn these on edge for you so you can see them a little bit better very very close now the overall feel of them is on this side where they have like kind of a dense sort of fabric cover that should be pretty durable it doesn't feel like it's going anywhere and then this one has kind of a almost like a microfiber each sort of cloth II feel to the inside whereas this one is just a keyboard now the keys are ever so slightly recessed around an edge of sort of a more rubberized softer feeling material here so that you're not going to end up scratching the screen and they're actual travel is all things considered there's a little bit of movement to the keys you see I can move them back and forth a little bit so because of the low profile construction there's only so much they can do to make it like the most rugged rage proof keyboard ever the layouts are very similar so there's not a whole lot of differences there at all and they use that they both use an acceptable layout there's layout sort of cardinal sins that drive me crazy and neither of them do but one thing that I'd say is gonna be a huge improvement improvement besides the obvious typing experience is the fact that the touchpad is a proper touchpad with a hard surface I did notice that with the with the touch cover this is a little bit harder to use than I'm that I'm used to with a touchpad because this felty material makes very small precise movements not as easy as they would otherwise be so to attach it to the surface is very straightforward all you do is kind of somewhat remotely align them up align them up line them up align them and it's a very very strong bond that finds its way into the right place sort of almost no matter what you do except the one time when I'm yeah there you go so you don't really have to do a whole lot of adjustments the kickstand is awesome now from my users perspective it almost feels like I'm using this more like a notebook than like a tablet except that I can sort of put my fingers all over my screen if I wanted and enjoy my computer use that way so let's just go ahead and well I mean all the usual Windows features are here so you've got arrow snap which I think they call modern snap or something I don't know what they're calling it but so let's have a look and see how typing is on this I did try out the touch already how are you today sir this is a much better experience than the touch it's a touch cover the tactile feedback is most reassuring sir so without any practice is my first time I'm actually able to type on this thing whereas with the touch cover it will take some getting used to it's very quiet unless you're really mashing on it with the exception of the backspace backspace has a bit of a sound to it spacebar has a bit of a sound these keys are all very quiet I think that's pretty much it I mean we can compare how it how it affects the overall profile of the surface the surface is still a pretty acceptable profile if you consider more like a notebook form factor and if you consider it less like a tablet at this point and more like a super duper ultra portable notebook that can then have its keyboard removed very easily and be used as a 100% tablet you signed in just like that and I think that pretty much covers it not much else to say thank you for checking on my unboxing and first look at the type cover for the Microsoft Surface don't forget to subscribe to Lions tech tips from our boxing's reviews and other computer videos