The iPad is a conundrum. On one hand, its main selling point is that it's not a laptop, that it's done away with old-fashioned, creaky technology like keyboards. On the other hand, every iPad user, no matter how proud, sometimes wishes the device were just a bit more, well, laptoppy.
It's like dating an outlaw biker – you might be thrilled by his freedom from society's rules and constraints, but you still wish he'd replace the toilet paper when he uses the last of it.
Luckily, you have any number of options if you want to type on real, actual keys with bumps on the F and J. Any Bluetooth keyboard will happily fill in, but the Logitech Fold-Up Keyboard is custom-made to make the iPad 2 a little less visionary and a little more practical.
The tablet – iPad 2 only, tough luck, early adopters – slips into the fold-up keyboard's form-fitting frame. It's easy to lock your iPad into place, but it takes a bit of patient effort to pull it out again. The frame is cleverly designed to not only allow access to all the buttons and jacks on the iPad, but to accommodate the Smart Cover as well.
At this point, you have a thicker-than-usual iPad case in basic black. But with the touch of a button on the back – and a bit of coaxing – the screen tilts up, and two sides of a full-sized keyboard slide in from the rear and fit themselves together jigsaw-style. It's such a clever bit of engineering, you want to make a Transformers "whooch-whooch-whooch" noise the first few times you do it.
The keyboard itself is Bluetooth and uses its own internal battery. The charge lasts for hundreds of hours of active use, and you can recharge it with a standard micro-USB cable. The case and keyboard seem pretty rugged. I haven't launched it from a catapult or anything, but I emptied most of a glass of water on it – on purpose, thank you very much – and it didn't complain in the least.
Downsides? It's landscape-only. The volume and orientation switches are difficult to reach when the keyboard is out, which is a pain if you had it locked in portrait mode. And fresh out of the box, the keys had a tendency to bounce and type the same letter twice, though that grew increasingly rare as I broke it in.
