14. Apple Magic Keyboard – Best keyboard for Intel Macs
Apple’s keyboards are a bit confusing with two generations of keyboards available, and each generation offers two different keyboards, with or without a numeric keyboard.
The older generation of magic keyboards is still available and is now primarily intended for use with older Macs that have Intel processors. These older keyboards are missing the Touch ID sensor, available with the two new keyboards that Apple launched in the summer of 2021.
Touch ID and some of the other features of the new keyboards do not work with Intel-based MACs, so if your Mac has an Intel processor, these older keyboards are the best options available from Apple-self there are of course plenty of other keyboards available from other manufacturers that we are also reviewing here.
The less magic keyboard may be expensive at $ 99/£ 99, but its elegant slimline design started a tendency for ‘low-profile’ keyboards that many other manufacturers are now following.
The aluminum body feels quite robust, but the slimline -Design means that the keys do not ‘travel’ very well, so fast typists may prefer a larger keyboard that is actually designed to do some proper work instead of just looking beautiful.
The room rod and the small set of navigation keys in the lower right corner of the keyboard are also pretty small and fiddly. To be fair, however, the compact small keyboard is pressed into a lot of useful features where the top row of function keys provides checks for brightness, volume and playback of music.
The magic keyboard acts as a standard Bluetooth keyboard, and Apple says its rechargeable battery will last for about a month at a time. Like all Apple keyboards, it has a lightning port for charging, but the latest version of the Magic keyboard now includes a USB-C-to-light cable, so make sure you don’t buy an older model from other online stores that may still have a USB-A cable (unless you have got an old Mac that only has USB-A connector).
And of course there is the larger version called Magic Keyboard with numeric keyboard ($ 129/£ 129). This is also quite expensive, but adds a numeric keyboard to people who need to do a little serious number of crunchy every now and then. This keyboard also has a larger set of navigation keys, which is very useful for rolling through long documents or web pages, and an additional set of navigation keys that allow you to jump to the top or bottom of a document quickly.
The larger keyboard layout also means that there is also room for some additional feature keys that go right up to F19 (rather than F12 for the less magic keyboard). However, it is a shame that the settings in macos to programming your own keyboard shortcuts are rather limited, so power users may prefer to use a third-party tool like USB Overdrive or Hotkey app to take full advantage of these additional feature keys. This larger keyboard has the same monthly hose battery life as the less magic keyboard, although it shows its age a bit like (surprising) that the charging cable still has a USB-A connector.
You can find the best prices for Apple keyboards and mice in our offer round-up.