What you need to know
- DoBox Pro is currently available on Kickstarter.
- It has a keyboard, trackpad, and ports.
- It turns an iPad Pro into an iPadOS notebook.
DoBox Pro is an iPad Pro dock that turns the tablet into a fully fledged notebook complete with a trackpad and keyboard. Oh, and it has a few ports on offer, too. The only downside is you'll need to deal with Kickstarter in order to get one.
DoBox, the maker of DoBox Pro, says that it expects to ship the dock around February 2020 but if you want one you'll need to drop $199 right now. That's a lot, and the prospect of waiting four months for the product to arrive doesn't fill us with joy. But it might just be worth the wait.
The reasons for that are many. First, there's a built-in keyboard along with a trackpad sat atop a 16,000 mAh battery. That makes this thing super portable in terms of power – you won't need to charge your iPad Pro because of that extra battery.
And then there are the ports. The DoBox Pro has lots of them including a microSD card reader, HDMI, Ethernet, and even a 3.5mm audio output for those who just won't let it die. Two USB-A ports almost rounds out the collection of slots and whatnot. But we've saved the best for last.
On the side of the dock you'll see what appears to be a space for a SATA drive to be inserted. As Cult of Mac also points out, the DoBox is worryingly vague about it. It does say that it supports up to 2TB of storage, although of what type we aren't yet 100% sure.
The idea of a trackpad being built into an iPad Pro dock is a new one that is only made possible by the recent release of iPadOS 13.1. In that update Apple added support for mouse and trackpad input, something users have been crying out for in recent years.
