CES 2017 | Brydge Keyboard turns your Surface Pro into a laptop

The aluminum construction and backlight give the Brydge keyboard a premium look. (Source: Laptop Mag)

The Brydge 12.3 keyboard is a 0.7-inch aluminum backlit keyboard cover that is designed to make the Surface Pro feel more like a laptop. The key feature of the keyboard is that it allows the attached tablet to be opened to any angle without using the kickstand for support.

Douglas Black, Published 01/04/2017

Microsoft's Surface series has long been billed as the tablet to replace your laptop, but there are some situations where the Surface still (literally) falls flat. The kickstand, in addition to the Type Cover, means that the Surface actually has a much longer footprint than a traditional laptop. The Brydge's 12.3 is a bluetooth keyboard for tablets that aims to solve this problem by bringing its own hinges, which allow the tablet and keyboard to function more like a true laptop.

The Brydge 12.3 is aluminum and 0.7 millimeters thick, making it significantly thicker than any official Type Cover—but this is almost certainly a concession needed for the keyboard's hinge to support the weight of the connected tablet at nearly any angle. The Brydge doesn't connect to the Surface through the tablet's Type Cover connect port, however. At the moment, the available US$150 version connects via bluetooth, but a directly-connecting US$250 model, bundling a 128 GB SSD, is supposed to be coming soon.