Surface Pro Flex Keyboard
I recently had some unexpected funds come in and I decided to splurge and buy a Surface Pro Flex Keyboard to go with my Surface Pro 8. I figured I’d share a few thoughts about it. Right off the top, I will say that at $350 this is a luxury accessory to a computer that already counts as something of a luxury item. While it genuinely does improve the experience, for a lot of people (possibly most) that improvement won’t justify the additional $170 (almost double) compared to the regular Surface Pro Keyboards. This is especially true if you already have the regular keyboard. It might be easier to swallow when purchasing it alongside a new Surface, particularly if you are financing the whole purchase.
With the price out of the way, I’ll say that the keyboard is a substantial improvement, although there are a handful of bugs that I hope they eventually work out. The keyboard itself is more rigid and has a more solid and premium build. The keys themselves have a very comfortable, short throw and there is considerably less bounce, particularly when typing with the keyboard attached to the tablet. The haptic trackpad is an enormous improvement over the mechanical one. Most notably, it is a lot quieter than the very clicky older trackpads, while the haptics (which are adjustable in power) still give plenty of feedback. The keyboard cover itself is attractive with the Alcantara fabric on the back where it belongs. The key layout is basically the same as the older covers, although it does have a Copilot key. I’m getting close to trying to figure out if there is a way to disable that as I’m getting very tired of launching Copilot accidentally.
Of course, the big appeal of the Flex Keyboard is that it has Bluetooth built in and can be used while detached. Frankly, this is a game changer for the Surface Pro and may be enough to justify the extra cost for many, depending on their specific needs. My eyesight isn’t as good as it once was, so being able to pull the tablet up to the edge of a table or desk while using the keyboard on my lap vastly improves usability. It is also a big help in tighter spaces. I haven’t had the opportunity to fly with it yet, but I definitely can see it as a big plus on airplane tray tables. One use that I hadn’t expected, is that it is sometimes nice to keep the keyboard vertically somewhere off to the side while I’m using the Surface as a pure tablet so that I can reach over and use the trackpad in occasional situations where I need more precise positioning than with the touchscreen. All of these scenarios are so useful that I really hope that eventually wireless capability becomes standard in the less expensive models. I’ve never noticed any kind of lag when using it disconnected.
Another discovery I’ve made with this new keyboard is how fast and reliable Windows Hello face recognition has become. My older keyboard was the model with the built-in fingerprint reader and I did worry about losing that. In fact, I considered that to be the most likely reason if I decided to return the Flex Keyboard instead of keeping it. What I’ve found is that I really don’t miss it at all. It’s almost the opposite as, previously, Windows would seem to be confused at times about whether the camera or the fingerprint reader should be the active option for authentication. One of my concerns was that, in the past, I had seen a lot of problems with “Couldn’t turn on the camera” errors or other similar problems blocking facial recognition. That doesn’t seem to be an issue any longer.
As I mentioned, there are a few bugs/quirks with the keyboard that I hope are worked out eventually. The most significant is that it doesn’t always connect easily. I’ve never had problems with it losing connection while I am actively using it, but sometimes (probably once or twice a day) the keyboard has been non-responsive when I wake the computer from sleep, unlock it, or when I reconnect after using the keyboard wirelessly. Holding down the escape key acts as a power toggle/reset button for the keyboard and doing that does reconnect it. Another bug is that the charge level doesn’t report properly. I was worried that it wasn’t holding a charge or recharging properly for some reason as I was periodically getting low charge warnings. After doing a search online, I learned that this is a known bug with the charge levels displayed under windows where basically the keyboard can have a near full charge but will sometimes report at or close to zero.
Another mixed bag is the charging slot for the pen, which is now exposed even when the keyboard is fully attached. This does make it a lot easier to grab the pen when needed, but there is an LED on the pen that flashes roughly once every minute or so while on the charger and this can be a bit of an annoying distraction. More seriously, I discovered that the mouse pointer was occasionally going wild when using the Surface docked with the keyboard cover closed (which I do often at home). I eventually figured out that it was constantly trying to move to the same spot on the screen, which is roughly where the pen is located on the built-in screen. Basically, it was registering touches from the pen. This is easily worked around by removing the pen when docking, but the pen/touchscreen obviously should be disabled when docked and the Surface screen isn’t in use.
Hopefully those bugs will be eventually worked out (and it is possible some or all might be specific to using it with the SP8 instead of the new model), but they aren’t really showstoppers at all. As hard as it would have been to justify the purchase as anything other than a luxury splurge, I really am glad I have it.
