Turn Your iPad Into A Pro For Cheap: 5 Affordable Accessories To Up Your Productivity

iPad Accessories: Typecase Edge Magic Style Keyboard, Eller Santé Upgraded Stylus Pen, and more to choose from.

Apple’s new iPad Pros grabbed all the headlines at the Cupertino giant’s recent Let Loose event. And with good reason. After all, they came with perhaps the most powerful processors ever made by Apple (and they got it before even the MacBooks and iMacs did) and brought a whole lot to the productivity table including a Pro-level Pencil and new keyboard, as well as high-end software. Lost in all the hype was the humble iPad (10th generation), which got a price cut and not much else. 

But that does not mean that the senior citizen in the iPad list does not pack a pro punch of its own. Its 10.9 inch display might be liquid retina rather than (sound trumpets for new tech term, please) Tandem OLED  and its chip is more old A14 (Bionic) than M4, but give it the right accessories, and the iPad (10th generation) can be your partner in productivity. And this need not cost the earth either. 

So if you are looking to add more Pro muscle to the most basic iPad of them all but are on a tight budget, go right ahead and grab the following accessories. They will take the iPad (10th generation) into the pro-ductivity zone, while keeping its price well below even that of an iPad Air:

Typecase Edge Magic Style Keyboard for iPad 10th Generation

Price: Rs 8,995

One of the most coveted productivity accessories of the iPad Pro (and even the iPad Air) range is the magic keyboard, which not only allows you to use a keyboard with a trackpad with the tablets but also seems to magically suspend the tablet over the keyboard for a better viewing and working angle. 

The catch, of course, is that the Magic Keyboard costs a fair bit - in fact, at close to Rs 30,000, it costs almost as much as an iPad (10th generation) does. Fortunately, Typecase has a keyboard that adds similar productivity-floaty powers to the iPad (10th generation) at less than a third of the price.  

The Typecase Edge Magic Style Keyboard is surprisingly sleek and solidly built and has a backlit keyboard (with 10 backlighting colours, no less), a spacious trackpad, and most important of all, that tablet-suspended-over-keyboard look. At about 800 grams, it does add weight to the iPad but it also gives it very solid Pro notebook vibes.

Eller Santé Upgraded Stylus Pen for iPad (with Magnetic Wireless Charging) 

Price: Rs 2,200

If you are looking for something that mimics the writing and sketching of the Apple Pencil and also some of its smartness, then this handy stylus from Eller Sante is one of the best you can get for not too much. It comes with not only a decent build and good tips (you get five in the package) but also supports palm rejection (preventing those accidental touches), has tilt sensitivity, and even has a shortcut key and support for gestures. 

You can also stick it on the magnetic side of an iPad Air or Pro to charge it as it supports wireless charging, although it comes with a charging cable for users of the iPad (10th generation), as that iPad does not charge the Pencil wirelessly. 

It seems a little rough to write with, so we recommend using it with a screen protector on the iPad but is a surprisingly good performer at its price. 

SanDisk 128GB Ultra Dual Drive Luxe (USB Type-C)

Price: Rs 1,650

The iPad Pros have got their base variant storage boosted to 128 GB, while the iPad (10th generation) stays at a very modest 64 GB. 

Well, if you need extra bytes with gigs to store music, videos, pictures and the like, we would suggest picking up this super handy and compact flash drive from SanDisk. 

Just plug into the Type-C port of the iPad (10th generation) and voila, you have 128 gigs of extra storage to play around with at hardly any extra cost!

ESR Paperlike Screen Protector 

Price: Rs 1,500 for a package of two

Envying that nano-texture finish on the displays of the new iPad Pros not only cuts down on the glare but also adds a slightly matte finish which makes them better to use with an Apple Pencil Pro. Well, you could add something similar to the iPad (10th generation) by using what is known as a paper-like screen protector. 

These are screen protectors that unlike conventional protectors give a tablet's display a slightly more textured, matte finish and make them 'paper like' (hence the name) in terms of being used with a stylus. The matte finish also generally brings down glare levels. You get options from many brands, but we liked the ones from ESR. 

Stuffcool Mega 10,000mAh 30W PD Super Compact Powerbank

Price: Rs 1,400

The battery life of the iPads is legendary but has been stuck at about 10-12 hours for a while now. Even the Pros have not really been able to take it beyond that. Well, this super handy power bank from Spigen will do just that. 

It is not only very compact and actually small enough to slip into a jacket or trouser pocket but actually has enough battery to recharge your iPad (10th generation)  to close to 80-85 per cent of full capacity. 

What's more, it charges the iPad at 30W, much faster than the 20W charger that comes in the box of the iPad and the iPad Pros! It actually gets charged very fast itself (in about three hours), and also shows its capacity on a handy display. 

The charging speed makes it the perfect iPad companion, giving it Pro-level charging speeds on par with an M1 MacBook Air, which it can charge too. And its small size makes it perfect to carry on a flight as well.