New Apple Magic Keyboard with USB-C and Contact ID evaluate

The brand new Apple Magic Keyboard, up to date with USB-C, is a tremendous choice if you’d like Contact ID and should you like laptop-style membrane keyboards. It’s not my most popular typing expertise. It additionally, sadly, solely is available in a restricted variety of colours and solely two sizes.

It’s the inventory keyboard that comes should you order an iMac. It’s additionally obtainable if you’d like an exterior keyboard in your Mac mini, Mac Studio or a desktop-docked MacBook.

The Magic Keyboard is the one option to get Contact ID on the Mac, which is a fairly wonderful expertise. You simply should pay the relatively excessive worth for it — and the even larger sacrifice of giving up on a clicky mechanical keyboard.

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Apple Magic Keyboard evaluate

Desk of contents: Apple Magic Keyboard evaluate

1. Design
2. Contact ID
3. Key feeling
4. Compact format
5. Full-size format
6. No multi-device pairing
7. Do you have to purchase an Apple Magic Keyboard?

Design

The Magic Keyboard is a chameleon. It completely matches the scale of the Magic Trackpad you will have sitting close by. The blacks look precisely the identical, regardless that the keycaps are plastic and the trackpad is glass. With an iMac, it is available in six color-coordinated hues that match the colour laptop you get.

The typeface is San Francisco, the system font used on all Apple platforms since 2015. It’s a wonderful font that’s extremely legible. The symbols and icons on the modifier keys and performance keys are attractive as effectively.

Even the on-off swap is superbly machined with a implausible click on motion to it.

Pairing it with a Mac is straightforward; simply flip it on and briefly plug it in. And you may plug it in with the great braided (and color-matching) USB-C cable it comes with; ditch the Lightning cable out of your desk.

Contact ID

The optionally available Contact ID key makes signing into your Mac, autofilling a password in Safari, signing in with a Passkey and shopping for merchandise with Apple Pay a lot simpler. Simply maintain your finger on the particular key (or you possibly can click on it, should you desire) and it’ll immediately authenticate. You too can click on the button at any time to immediately lock your Mac — a lot sooner than the Command-Management-Q keyboard shortcut. The Contact ID key has a special swap than the opposite keys; it takes extra pressure to press so that you’re much less more likely to click on it by chance.

With out Contact ID, you will have a Lock key as a substitute. Which is definitely extra helpful in 2024 than the CD Eject key that was as a replacement earlier than. You too can pair your Mac with an Apple Watch, and get all the identical options — although the interface is rather less elegant. It’s a lot simpler urgent your finger on a key (the place your palms already are) than it’s reaching over and double-clicking your Apple Watch’s facet button to verify.

The combination of whether or not Contact ID is out there and which colours include what’s complicated. The compact format comes each with and with out Contact ID, however solely in white (or, if bought with an iMac, six colours). The total-size Magic Keyboard comes each with and with out Contact ID, though solely the Contact ID mannequin is available in black — and, black prices $20 further.

Key feeling

Because the snootiest of mechanical keyboard snobs, I’m now not impressed by the typing feeling of the Magic Keyboard.

It’s the most effective, so far as laptop-style membrane keyboards go. The keys are very steady and don’t wobble. There’s a fairly sized hole between every key. There’s a noticeable click on feeling with a quiet however audible sound with each key press. It’s nothing you aren’t used to and nothing about it can shock you.

However I nonetheless discovered myself making extra typos. The keys aren’t curved, so except your fingers hit the very fringe of the important thing, you don’t understand how near the middle you’re hitting. I like a keyboard with extra journey, the place the keys should be pressed down additional to register.

Folks say that solely “a nasty workman blames his instruments.” And it’s normally true {that a} professional gaming chair gained’t make you a greater gamer, an costly knife set gained’t make you a greater prepare dinner, a pair of racing gloves gained’t make you a greater driver. However as somebody with a examined typing pace of 83 phrases per minute, I can confidently say it’s completely true {that a} dangerous keyboard will maintain you again.

Compact format

The compact format saves area in your desk. Personally, I desire compact keyboards. I don’t want a full quantity pad; I’m not an accountant. I additionally like having a brief journey between the alphanumeric keys and my trackpad.

The largest draw back is the arrow keys. The Left and Proper keys are the identical peak because the mixed Up and Down keys, so it’s arduous to determine them by really feel. Apple makes use of this similar keyboard format on the MacBook Professional, besides as of 2021, the arrow keys are fastened to be T-shaped. I don’t know why the desktop keyboard will get omitted. And on the colourful iMac Magic Keyboard, it will be good should you had a sq. the place you possibly can actually see the colour shine via.

Sadly, you don’t have bodily keys for Web page Up, Web page Down, Dwelling, Finish and Ahead Delete. You should utilize Possibility-Up, Possibility-Down, Command-Up, Command-Down and Operate-Delete to get the identical performance, however that normally requires utilizing each palms, and isn’t as quick.

My perfect compact keyboard format has full-size arrow and navigation keys, however with out the quantity pad. Amongst keyboard fans, this is called the tenkeyless or 87% format.

Full-size format

The total-size format is a extra customary keyboard format.

You have got Command, Possibility and Management on either side of the keyboard, organized in that order, symmetrically, going out from the spacebar.

It doesn’t waste any area on these pointless PC keys — Insert, SysRq, Scroll Lock, Pause/Break. As an alternative, you will have a Context Menu key. (This was beforehand the Operate key, however that’s been moved to the underside left, like on the MacBook keyboard.) I’m unsure how helpful that is, however a minimum of I do know what it does.

The opposite keys, F13 – F19, are clean. You’ll be able to assign your personal actions to them should you dig via System Settings.

The large floor space it occupies in your desk makes you assume it ought to be heavier than it really is. Though it’s manufactured from steel, I don’t assume it’s artificially weighted in any respect. I’ve used loads of smaller, extra compact plastic keyboards which can be over twice as heavy. It’s very nice.

No multi-device pairing

AirPods use clever pairing. They’ll successfully keep paired to a number of units without delay, in order that switching between your Apple Watch, iPhone, iPad and Mac is seamless. When you have a number of Macs sharing one desk, you may not need two mice, or two keyboards or two trackpads. It may possibly get complicated and crowded.

However alas, all of Apple’s newest peripherals nonetheless use vanilla Bluetooth, and don’t benefit from Apple’s personal expertise elsewhere.

Apple’s reply to that want is Common Management, which lets one keyboard management a number of units — even a Mac and iPad — however that solely works if all of the units are subsequent to one another and on the identical Apple account. When you have a piece laptop computer and a private laptop computer, they’re in all probability on totally different Apple accounts. Continuity isn’t true multi-device pairing; the keyboard solely stays paired to at least one Mac, which acts as a relay. Take that Mac away, and your Magic Keyboard gained’t be linked to the opposite one.

Assessment Conclusion: Do you have to purchase the brand new Apple Magic Keyboard?

Personally, I wouldn’t use the Apple Magic Keyboard. I don’t assume it’s good sufficient to justify its excessive costs, and neither of the configurations match what I need.

However as a result of I don’t assume Apple goes to make a tenkeyless mannequin in black (and since I don’t like membrane keyboards, anyway) what I actually need is an answer for these of us who like third-party keyboards but additionally need Contact ID. Ideally, that may be Contact ID constructed into the Magic Trackpad.

★★★☆☆

Purchase from: Amazon (White, Compact)
Purchase from: Amazon (Black, Full-size)

Apple didn’t present Cult of Mac with a evaluate unit for this text. See our evaluations coverage, and take a look at different in-depth evaluations of Apple-related objects.