Big changes have been made to the iPad Pro, but in this case, are they for the best? We bust out our Apple Pencil to find out
There are big changes with the latest tablet from Apple, but are they all for the good?
The question of whether tablets are real computers or not is long dead. Even before companies started putting ‘pro’ on the end of product names, people were using tablets for business, creativity, gaming, personal admin… You know, things you would normally use computers for. The follow-up question is whether you might buy the new Apple iPad Pro
instead of your next laptop, and that’s where it gets complicated. The new iPad Pro is the best tablet ever made, and is a marvel of engineering… but still might not be right for you.
Cutting corners
This year’s iPads feature the biggest change in Apple’s tablet design since their creation, dropping the Home button and pinching the curved corners from the iPhone X. This is a much bigger deal than it seems at first, because it’s made the footprint of the 12.9-inch model dramatically smaller, cutting the chunky area at the top and bottom (when held portrait). The old version felt massive
and kinda ridiculous in the hand. This just feels like a good, usable size. It’s still on the big side, sure, but there’s also an 11-inch model (starting at £769), which is essentially identical other than screen size and resolution.
The 6mm thickness and 631g weight also help make it easy to handle. Compared to a 13-inch laptop, it’s so breezy to carry, or pull out and use – it doesn’t feel like a hassle to just grab it and swipe to unlock.
One part about the design that surprised us was the flat sides, which are more reminiscent of the iPhone 5 than the front’s mimicking of the X. It’s not a bad thing, and it’s almost certainly been done to accommodate the far superior way the Apple Pencil now works, but it’s a weird mix of Apple design past and present.
The second-generation Pencil now magnetically attaches to one side of the iPad, and wirelessly charges while it’s there. It’s impossible to overstate how much of an improvement this is, for so many reasons. For a start, the magnets are strong enough that this is the best way to store the Pencil in general, so it’s always to hand with your iPad. It also means it’s always charged and ready to go, whereas with the last Pencil you might’ve had to plug it into the iPad to get some juice, which left it sticking out the end, prime for accidental snapping.
The write stuff
As a result of all this, we’re using the Pencil so much more than we did on the last Pro, grabbing it to annotate maps, for example, or to sketch out notes we wouldn’t have bothered to before. You can also tap the Pencil to the screen of a locked iPad to jump straight into a new note.
The actual Pencil works pretty much the same, with pressure and tilt sensing. There’s now a flat edge to avoid any stray rolling, and you can double-tap this flat edge to trigger certain tools. A new matt finish makes it much easier to grip and use for long periods.
Of course, the Pencil is still an optional extra at £119, so isn’t exactly a cheap add-on, though it’s similar in price to the Microsoft Surface Pen. Alas, the older Pencil doesn’t work on newer iPads, and vice versa.
One of the strengths of using the Pencil compared to the (still great) styluses on the Microsoft Surface Go or Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 is the iPad’s ProMotion screen. It can shift how often it refreshes, up to 120fps, so you see instant response to your movement, which aids precision.
This isn’t new to this iPad. In fact, the screen is largely identical to the last model. Its 2732x2048 resolution looks pin-sharp, the brightness and wide colour display make everything vivid and gorgeous, and the True Tone colour adjustment, which matches the lighting temperature of the room you’re in, is kind on the eyes. It’s a bit of a shame it doesn’t have the contrast depth of the Samsung Tab S4’s OLED display, but it has its own advantages.
About face
To unlock the screen, Apple has replaced the Home button with Face ID. There’s just the one face-scanning camera, so it’s easy to accidentally cover it, but the iPad points an arrow
at where your hand is in the way, subtly conveying your idiocy.
It works pretty much as well as on the iPhone, but using it in your lap and positions like that, you definitely get more failed attempts. Using it propped up with a keyboard, it’s perfect – and mostly reminds us that we want Apple to start putting it in its laptops, like how most PCs have Windows Hello now.
Hidden behind the screen are four speakers, with a woofer and tweeter in every corner, giving impressively full sound that’s properly stereo, whichever way round you hold it.
Speaking of sound, Apple has dropped the 3.5mm jack here, along with swapping Lightning for USB-C as the only port. Dropping the headphone jack is a really weird decision – it kept it on the MacBook Pros, saying that it recognised that audio professionals need a lowlatency wired connection, yet this is a pro machine too. The USB-C headphone market isn’t exactly bustling, but you can get a USB-C to 3.5mm adapter for £9.
Having a USB-C port is great in general, though. It means SD card readers or docks can work directly with the iPad Pro, and it can even output to 4K and 5K displays – apps such as video or photo editors can show the results on the big screen, and the editing interface on the iPad.
It’s still limited, though – you can’t just plug in a storage drive to get at files, like you can on a Surface Pro.
Pushing the limits
When it actually comes to pro use, the phrase “it’s still limited” is kind of a recurring theme with the iPad. The Apple A12X processor is definitely pro-levels of powerful, that much is certain. It outperforms all but Intel’s
latest six-core laptop processors in benchmarks (the kind you find in £2k+ machines), and has handled absolutely anything we’ve thrown at it without skipping a beat.
But there’s more to speed than just power. Last year, we said the iPad Pro was the best tablet. This year, we’re still saying that, but we might recommend the Surface Go or Surface Pro instead for some people, when it comes to pro use. The iPad Pro is the better device overall, but even the cheaper Surface Go can do all the things Windows does. The interface may not be very touch friendly, the performance may be less slick, but it’s supports any obscure thing you need.
iOS hasn’t developed at the speed we expected. Take working with files: the fact that you can’t access external storage to transfer, back up, or find existing files is going to hold some people back. Even if you could access these files, though, you’re limited in how you can work with them. For example, there’s no way to open two instances of the same app, so you can’t have two Word or Photoshop documents open side-by-side.
Supposedly, iOS 13 will have a huge amount of new features like this, but that will make it two years between updates that actually add usability to the iPad. That pace is too slow.
Most of what we’re talking about are things that only a tiny percentage of people want to do, which is why we’ve still given it five stars, but if it has just ten missing features that affect one per cent of users each, that’s ten per cent of people who it’s not right for. It adds up.
Smooth operator
Assuming you don’t hit a wall with working on iOS, the iPad Pro is just fantastic. Running apps in splitscreen on a screen this size keeps everything really usable, and there are so many powerful, pro-level apps that are designed for touch-based use – it’s a huge advantage over its Android or Windows competition.
Intensive stuff like photo editing with tons of layers is smooth and fast. Keyboard shortcut support is growing in apps too, which is useful since this will be used in a laptop-style mode a lot, though we wish Apple’s official keyboard had a trackpad, if only for moving the text cursor.
And it still has huge battery life, though laptops are starting to match tablets these days. We’ve found that our unit has been losing more power on standby than previous iPads Pros, but it’s also faster to charge now, if you have a high-power USB-C brick.
It comes down to this: the iPad Pro is the best tablet on the market – it’s slick, the design is class-leading, and it’s insanely powerful, which means it’s only going to get more capable with updates as time goes on.
But it’s not a laptop replacement for everyone just yet, even though it costs the same as one.