Logitech Combo Touch: Four Years Later

I think it’s time for an update on my iPad Pro M1 and, most importantly, the Logitech Combo Touch I got for it. Think of it as a long term review of sorts.

In short, I bought another Combo Touch–the old one was falling apart.

Disclaimer: I paid for this with my own money, as I did the first one, but Logitech did offer me a discount. As usual, this article follows my review policy.

I had originally chosen the “sand” color, which was a sort of calculated bet–I wanted something different from the traditional black, and mentally prepared myself for it to accrue stains or dirt over time.

Guess what, it really didn’t. I guess it will look slightly darker and dingy if put alongside a new one, but I have zero complaints about the fabric-like parts and can only find a very small (sub 5-mm) stain if I look really hard. Maybe I was lucky, but those bits still look great.

I have also had zero issues with the keyboard. Yes, it has short travel, but it is effectively full size, the international English layout is excellent for coding, and it has been extremely reliable over the past four years. The only key with a (cosmetic) issue is my S key, which was slightly marred by a stray solder blob.

And the trackpad is simply sublime–it is the best non-Apple trackpad I have across all my hardware, not to mention it is luxuriously large for a tablet trackpad.

Over the years, the speaker slots (which are effectively thin strips of rubbery plastic) started deforming. First subtly, then to the point where they are now either broken or completely deformed:

This does coincide with how I hold it for writing in both landscape and portrait mode (the inner cover edge is also flaking off on the bottom left side in portrait orientation), but… I’m at a bit of a loss as to why this wasn’t factored into the design somehow.

Unfortunately, Logitech does not offer the possibility to buy only the cover, otherwise I would have kept my current keyboard.

And there were no refurbished ones shippable to Europe either (for whatever reason), so I ended up reaching out to support and then buying an entirely new “Oxford grey” one (which was effectively the only color available).

The new one is physically identical as far as I can tell–same connector, same kickstand, same key layout, same excellent trackpad.

Which means everything I wrote about the original still applies, and I won’t repeat it here. What I’m more interested in this time is whether this one will last longer without deformation.

I have my doubts, of course.