A new iPad with a totally different size means iPad cases with equally different sizes, too.
There’s a big new iPad on the way, and it’s one that doesn’t necessarily incur a big new price.
We are, of course, talking about Apple’s replacement to its long-running 9.7 inch iPad range, which most recently in the 6th generation was an iPad celebrated for being an “iPad for everyone”. Bundling in Apple Pencil support with a 9.7 inch screen, solid performance, a great design, and an affordable price point made the 9.7 inch standard iPad an easy iPad anyone could opt for.
But that’s a little different this year, as Apple is changing things.
Now that Apple’s tablets are all above 10 inches, it’s time to do the same for the 9.7 inch iPad, too.
Alongside the launch of the iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro ranges last week, Apple had another product up its sleeve in the 10.2 inch iPad, the seventh generation of 9.7 inch tablet (which is now clearly not 9.7 inches anymore).
Under the hood, not much has changed, though Apple has increased the screen size, and that’s something case makers will be forced to adapt too.
Australian keyboard case maker Brydge is one of the first there, with the Brydge 10.2 launching to grip the 7th-gen iPad and provide a MacBook-inspired case for the iPad.
Similar to other Brydge cases, this keyboard is made from one piece of aluminium and includes backlit keys, but also uses Bluetooth to talk to the iPad. That’s a bit of a surprise given the new iPad supports a physical keyboard connector, making it similar to both the iPad Air and the iPad Pro.
However in the Brydge Pro for the iPad Pro, we found Brydge skipped the Smart Keyboard connector for cost reasons, and suspect the same might be true here.
As such, you’ll find the Brydge 10.2 for the seventh-gen iPad will only work over Bluetooth, adding a keyboard to the iPad in a design that looks like the MacBook, but operates wirelessly instead.
The Brydge 10.2 is priced at $129.99 USD, which likely means you can expect to find it for around the $200 mark locally when it does arrive here. Currently, that’s set to be around October, likely alongside the September 30 release for the 7th-gen iPad (iPad 10.2) , and it probably won’t be the only new keyboard case we expect to see, thanks to that new screen size.
