There are tons of keyboards available in all different shapes and sizes to cater to whatever your typing needs might be. It doesn’t matter if you want to fly through documents at 150 words per minute or type on the go with a lightweight Bluetooth keyboard; chances are there’s something out there that’s meant for what you want.
However, just because these keyboards exist, that doesn’t mean they’re any good. The basic premise of a keyboard is to type, and if it fails at that, the portability, battery life, looks, or compatibility won’t matter. Unfortunately, that’s how I learnt that folding keyboards aren’t my cup of tea, and I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone either.
I Massively Overspent on a Mechanical Keyboard—Don’t Do What I Did
I fell down the mechanical keyboard rabbit hole. Hard.
Folding keyboards are not what you think you’re buying
The reality behind the hype and marketing
Now there are tons of different folding keyboards available on the market, from cheap ones that you can buy on an impulse to more expensive options that can go as high as $80 on Amazon. However, the vast majority of options you’ll see online will be somewhere in the $10 to $30 range—and that’s exactly where my specimen falls.
The Portronics Chiclet foldable keyboard I attempted to work on will set you back roughly $12. For that, you get a Bluetooth 3.0 keyboard that folds in half, weighs about 175 grams, and claims up to 140 hours of battery life on a single charge via USB-C. It connects to iOS, Android, and Windows devices, and when folded, it’s small enough to slide into your pockets.
The overall build and finish are perfectly acceptable for such a cheap keyboard, and the hinge isn’t half bad either. On the connectivity front, the Bluetooth 3.0 standard is quite dated, but I didn’t experience any dropouts or lag while typing. And although I haven’t tested Portronics’ claim of 140 hours of battery life, it has lasted me enough sessions not to complain. The battery charges in about two hours, which is reasonable, and the ABS plastic body is durable enough to survive scratches and bumps when carried in tight spaces.
Unfortunately, that’s about all of the good you’ll find in this keyboard. When it comes to actual typing, it’s a completely different story.
The typing experience is the dealbreaker
Why it feels worse the more you use it
As I said before, the entire value proposition of a keyboard, any keyboard, is how it feels to type on. And that’s exactly where the Chiclet fails to perform, and not all of it is the manufacturer’s fault.
To fold the keyboard in half and keep the size reasonable, Portronics and most other manufacturers have to make serious compromises on key size and layout. Key size is still something I can adapt to. I frequently switch between my Keychron K2 V2 mechanical keyboard and my HP Omen Transcend 14’s built-in keyboard, but the layout is where this keyboard drops the ball.
The height of a folding keyboard is typically around 8 to 9 cm, which is significantly smaller than that of a regular keyboard. That means function keys like Tab, Caps Lock, and Ctrl, among others, get squeezed to the point where hitting them consistently requires a small act of faith every single time. The spacebar split—that awkward gap running down the middle where the fold happens- is a constant source of frustration on account of missed keystrokes, and your muscle memory from years of typing on normal keyboards will fight you every step of the way.
The Portronics also has some weirdly positioned keys, which make typing incredibly frustrating. For starters, the Backspace key is a tiny button located on the far right edge of the keyboard with a .com button right next to it, and a big gap in the middle. I don’t understand why this gap couldn’t have been used to make the backspace bigger, which would’ve made the .com key somewhat useful.
Currently, I either keep hitting the empty space or the .com key and get a string of gibberish added every time I want to delete any text. The question mark key is also located to the right of the arrow keys, which aren’t the same size as the rest of the keys around them—another source of frustration that’ll actively make you want to throw the keyboard away. You can find a use for the Copilot key on your keyboard, but I struggle to understand how a .com key is beneficial, especially at the cost of the backspace key.
Thankfully, it doesn’t slide around too much, despite being tiny and lightweight. The rubber done switches to give what I can only describe as okay-ish feedback. There’s also a complete lack of any tenting or tilting solution. This is fine for short bursts, but for anything sustained, your wrist will start paying for the portability really quickly. Making small changes to your keyboard can help you type more comfortably, but these kinds of keyboards just don’t offer that flexibility.
Who is this even for?
The niche audience that might still justify it
Despite its shortcomings, I wouldn’t put the Portronics Chiclet or its entire class of keyboards in the trash. Yes, it’s frustrating to type on, especially for someone like me who types thousands of words daily and is used to a great mechanical keyboard. But for travelers who want to answer emails without pulling out their laptops, or someone who wants a keyboard for their tablet without dishing out ridiculous amounts of money on keyboard covers, a foldable keyboard can be a handy little accessory.
The real reason your keyboard has F1 through F12
Those keys are there for a reason.
But that’s all that it is—an accessory. The problem is that these keyboards are increasingly being priced as a typing solution and competing with actual keyboards, which offer a significantly better typing experience. In a world where you can pick up a mechanical keyboard for as low as $25, there’s no way a foldable keyboard’s typing experience holds up. So, unless you really want it, I’d recommend adding a bit more weight to your kit as the trade-offs aren’t worth the benefits for most people.