AX Pro 2
Apple pencil alternative because even though Apple released a USBC apple pencil for $80 it’s still relatively expensive compared to the competition that we now have with third-party Apple pencil Alternatives because even the Apple pencil 2 is at $120 and it’s a six-year-old device
so what I’ve been using is the Ax Pro 2 by Penoval which has been my favorite Apple pencil alternative as of late and I’m always testing them out because it has pretty much everything that you would want out of an Apple pencil
and it’s compatible with pretty much any iPad that has a new form factor so firstly it charges magnetically and wirelessly it looks exactly like the Apple Pencil 2 and it has the same exact kind of form factor weight and quality of actual life in terms of how you’re able to use it it has removable tips similar to the apple pencil too and as I mentioned it works with any iPad
so as long as your iPad supports magnetic wireless charging it will be able to work iPad you get up to 10 hours of continuous actual use on this Apple pencil which if you are attaching it magnetic due to the iPad shouldn’t be an issue
because you’re always going to be fully charged it’ll show up in your battery percentage indicator so you always know how much battery is left on this pencil it even has a double-tap feature on the actual back of the Apple pencil it doesn’t take you from tool to Tool but it does take you from let’s say in-app to the home screen or into the multitasking menu as well, and then it has all the normal things that you would want out of a stylus
or an iPad pencil which has that tilt sensitivity and palm rejection and things like that so for $39 this is an unbeatable price for an Apple pencil alternative that gets you 95% of the way there in my opinion it just doesn’t have that double-tap shortcut to go from eraser to pen and then I want to bring up a stand by a company called Kyu this is the x33 stand it is a very well-built stand made out of aluminum it folds in a bunch of different angles it rotates
Kuxiu Stand
It gives you a nice little swivel it goes 180° and it’s just easy to add and remove whenever you need to so I love magnetic iPad stands and this one is no different by a company called Kuku like
I mentioned and it gives you all the angles that you would need whether you are somebody that’s using your Apple pencil or somebody that’s just viewing content or maybe somebody using a Bluetooth keyboard and using your iPad as a computer
so I will link all these down below for you guys to check out and I’ll give you guys the best prices that I could find at the time of this recording and then continue on the budget train
I normally do recommend the paper-like screen protectors but they are around $40 so if you guys need something a little bit on the cheaper side I do want to recommend E’s new screen protector which again hears me out here for a second because this extren protector is something that
EIP magnetic Screen Protector
I’ve never tried it before and I really do like it especially if you’re somebody who doesn’t want to fully commit to your screen protector to begin with because when you go with the screen protector route you know you’re committing to having that on your iPad pretty much for good unless you remove it and
then replace it with a different screen protector and keep your iPad with that nice little anti-glare look and keep the iPad fully protected from anything going on then whenever you’re done with it maybe you like to take notes with the actual screen protector on
so when you’re done taking notes you just remove it and then you can view content on that nice beautiful crisp screen which is how Apple intended you to watch content on the iPad itself
so if you guys are looking for a cheaper screen protector I believe this one’s $19 definitely recommend checking this one out by EIP and another product by EIP is our new keyboard case
now I’m not a super big fan of third-party keyboard cases especially the ones that have an actual trackpad because even though the magic keyboard for the iPad is still $350 for the 12.9inch iPad Pro it’s one of the accessories that I recommend to most people because it’s very hard to get a one to one kind of experience
EIP Keyboard Case
what Apple gives you compared to a third-party keyboard and I’ve tried a bunch of them but this one gets relatively close to exactly how Apple wants you to use a trackpad
so firstly from a Bluetooth keyboard perspective, it’s perfect right it has everything you need it’s chicklet style the keys travel perfectly far and for $69 it’s hard to complain about the build quality because it is made out of plastic
and it does have that nice rubberized material on the rear for protection but it is very well built and the quality is amazing you get a backlit key keyboard you get a full row of function keys seven different RGB lights if you guys are into all the different RGB colors on keyboards so that’s awesome and then you do have the trackpad
now the trackpad for the most part works great it’s very hard to come one-to-one but the gesture seems to work the pointing and clicking seem to work very well it’s very to use it’s very familiar you can touch to tap you can also physically tap all the way down for this keyboard to work how it’s supposed to work
so I’m very impressed with what you get out of it because you get the trackpad you get the keyboard and you get a case because this is a detachable keyboard so you can actual case for your iPad itself I have it in the 11in variant with the 11-in iPad Pro
but obviously, they do make it for the 12.9 in the iPad Air as well as the iPad 10 generation if you guys want to check it out get a very fully protective case that kind of wrapify on the entire iPad it holds your Apple pencil in a different apple pencil holder but also still allows you to charge your apple pencil even though the actual size of it is covered
and then of course you get a full Bluetooth keyboard and a trackpad for your iPad so if you’re in the market for a keyboard and you don’t want to spend $350 on a magic keyboard from Apple or even like their keyboard folio case which I believe is $200 this is definitely a good alternative at $60
so definitely check it out when you get a chance now that we got the main save out of the way and I saved you guys a bunch of money on the budget side of these things like we got the keyboard we got the screen protector the Apple pencil
we got the stand all the main stuff is there so now let’s talk about some auxiliary accessories that kind of just help improve the overall experience of the iPad
Hyper USBC hub
so the next product I want to talk about is by a company called Hyper it is a 6 in1 USBC Hub and what I like about this is that it’s relatively unique and also inexpensive
so all you do is plug this into your iPad itself and then you get an HDMI port you get a USBC pass-through port for charging that supports up to 90 Watts you get an SD card and a Micro SD card slot us a 3.2 Gen 2 Port as well as a 3.5mm headphone jack so if you
guys are using thumb drives or you guys are using external SSDs or you like to maybe use an HDMI cable to kind of put your iPad onto a monitor this will be perfect for all those scenarios and it’s small it’s Compact and it’s well-built and it matches the Apple aesthetic
but then also you might see that there are some music controls on the actual top of the USBC drive itself and it does exactly what you think it does so it lets you go forward let you go backward it
let you play pause whatever kind of meteor you’re using and it works with literally anything it could be a video from Safari it could be in YouTube it could be in Spotify Apple Music whenever volume controls can be used this thing will work exceptionally well
I absolutely love and then I wanted to throw in a mouse in here because obviously people like to use the trackpad and the mouse together sometimes like myself included now this mouse is by a company called Proto Orc and
what I really like about this is that it actually solves two problems in one I know that I mentioned the hyper USBC drive and I’m going to kind of recommend that one for most people just because it has everything that you would need but this Proto Arc Mouse actually has a little trick of its sleeve.
ProtoArc Mouse
so obviously it is a Bluetooth mouth first and foremost it has one shortcut button it that works exactly how it’s supposed to and it has a scroll wheel as well right nothing too crazy nothing too special it is made out of plastic but that makes it very lightweight and very portable as well but what I like about it is that inside of it there’s actually a USBC Hub
as well so for some reason you’re in a pickle or for some reason you forgot to bring your hyper USBC drive you can now use this USBC Hub that’s built directly into the actual Mouse itself as not only a hub but also as a receiver for the mouse
so yes you can connect it via Bluetooth directly but if you want to connect it even get more hardwired in by using the same radio frequency you can then plug that into your iPad and then it connects automatically and then also you have an ACMI Port
as well as some other auxiliary ports built right in there so if you guys need a nice little twoin one this solves both problems of needing a mouse as well as needing kind of an emergency USBC Hub.
DockCase SSD
now another thing that I like to really bring with me is an external SSD I’m a big fan of using external SSDs with iPads because I don’t want to spend the extra money directly from Apple to upgrade the internal storage of the iPad
so some people like to Max that out I like to use external storage because it’s maybe like one/ a tenth of the price as it is to upgrade your iPad’s internal storage so what I’ve been using is by a company called Dock Case and
I’ve been using their tbyte kind of mini SSD enclosure which has been absolutely amazing because it kind of gives you a couple of things to have in there so obviously it is an SSD that I’ve been using to onload and offload footage kind of use it as an external SSD
when editing footage in Luma Fusion but also what I like about it is that it has a nice actual diagnostic screen that lets you know exactly how fast data is moving in and out of it and how much data is still left in it so it gives you all the information that you would need out of glance and it’s directly powered by whatever computer you’re using
so obviously this is going to work with the iPad but it can work with any other USBC-enabled device this is by a company called Doc Case definitely check them out and then some last little tidbits that I wanted to throw in there obviously you’re going to need an actual charging Brak
so I’m going to recommend a couple down in the description below but get yourself any of these new Gan charging brakes that are 30 Watts
because they’re small they’re portable they’re cheap and they can charge your iPad at full speed with no issues whatsoever the one that I have is by a company called Journey and it works exceptionally well for 30 watts in such a small form factor and then I do like to keep my iPad screen very clean at all times because that is the canvas.
30W GAN Charger
I’m using the most so I like to use paper like’s new cleaning kit which is a little spray bottle that can kind of be brought with you on the go you spray the bottle itself and then the bottle itself is also that microfiber cloth that actually cleans the screen
so this is a perfect little stocking stuff for if you’re already looking for next year or maybe you got this already but definitely an amazing little gift to give anybody and then two more accessories that I want to bring up one is going to be a capture card.
Paperlike Cleaning kit
now is a little bit more of a niche product but it is very very inexpensive.
how to use your iPad as an actual dummy monitor if you want a game maybe with your PS5 or your Xbox series X or even like your Nintendo Switch basically what this capture card does is you plug one side of the USBC into the iPad itself.
The other side is HDMI in basically allows your iPad to be a dummy monitor for you to HDMI in whatever you want it could be a DVD player could be a Blu-ray player but of course, most people are going to be using it for console gaming
I still want to play a little bit of Madden I now use my iPad as my monitor to game this isn’t Remote Play this is literally using your iPad as a monitor with this capture card
I believe it’s only like n bucks and I’ll leave a link to the app down below that supports this as well which is normally free but some of them cost a dollar or two.
Satechi Carry Case
The final accessory I’m going to bring up is some sort of carrying case I like to use the one by Satti I’ve had this one for years and still, it holds up
so well it can fit pretty much any laptop that you want up to I believe 15 in it’s lined in microfiber lining it’s got some pockets on the front some zi pockets for you to put small Chargers like all the things that I mentioned
I believe you can fit literally everything that I mentioned in this little caring Case by itself and I think it’s only $30 and it’s very very high quality the zippers are amazing the microfiber lining keeps
everything protected and clean whenever you take out your laptop or your iPad and like I said it fits everything that I mentioned earlier but that’s going to do it for this video everybody I wanted to bring to light some budget accessories that I’ve been using that I really highly recommend
because it gets very expensive to buy stuff directly from Apple even though yes maybe it is the best experience but $350 for a magic keyboard $12 for an Apple pencil maybe some sort of screen protector directly from Apple will be like $40 to $60 things start to add very very quickly
so if you go with this budget route for less than 300 bucks you can have everything you need for your iPad maybe even less than 200 bucks.