Apple iPad Pro review: The beautiful, BIG iPad that wants to replace your laptop
Apple iPad Pro review: The beautiful, BIG iPad that wants to replace your laptop - This year, for the first time since
2010, Apple didn’t update its flagship iPad. Except it did. Suddenly,
the iPad Air 2 isn’t Apple’s classiest tablet any more. It’s been
overtaken by a more advanced, bigger brother.
The iPad Pro has just gone on sale, and
I’ve been putting it through its paces it for more than a week to see if
it lives up to the hype – and the price tag.
Apple iPad Pro review: Design
One glance tells you this is an Apple
iPad, thanks to its glass front and aluminium rear, chamfered-edge front
and all-over immaculate build quality. It has an identical design to
the iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 4.
The front is all display, surrounded by
narrow bezels on the longer sides and wider ones at top and bottom. A
camera lens peeps out from the centre at the top and the home button
with Touch ID capabilities nestles at the bottom.
Every other detail, almost, is the same
as on the smaller-screened Apple tablets. Power button on the top edge:
check. Volume up and down buttons on the right edge: check.
Whacking great Apple logo on the middle
of the back: check. On the Wi-Fi and cellular model – plastic stripe on
the back and SIM card slot on the right edge: check and check. Single
loudspeaker on bottom edge: oh, hold on.
The iPad Pro, uniquely in Apple’s iPad
range, has four speakers, two on the top and two on the bottom edge. As
you’d imagine, this design change seriously upgrades the tablet’s audio
capabilities.
There’s one other difference: on the
left edge, three small circles sit innocuously in the middle. These form
the Smart Connector, which attaches Apple’s Smart Keyboard or
third-party accessories such as the Logitech Create keyboard case.
For all the similarities to previous
iPads, the Pro has one major difference: its size. The 12.9in display
may not sound much bigger than the previous iPad’s 9.7in screen, but it
looks huge in comparison.
It’s much heavier than the iPad Air 2,
but still lighter than the first iPad, weighing 713g for the Wi-Fi-only
edition, and 723g for the Wi-Fi and 4G model. That’s heavier than many
rival tablets, but it still feels light relative to its size.
Apple iPad Pro review: Display and audio
The 12.9in, 2,048 x 2,732 display has
the same pixel density (264ppi) as the iPad Air 2. It’s a Retina display
so it’s pin-sharp, and as with most Apple displays it’s bright and
vividly colourful.
As always with iPads this is an IPS LCD
screen, not AMOLED, so colours aren’t overblown or oversaturated, and it
has the same anti-reflective coating as the iPad Air 2, which makes it
readable, even in bright light.
In testing, the screen is even more
impressive. Maximum brightness is a retina-searing 393cd/m2, contrast is
as high has I’ve seen on an IPS panel at 1,552:1, ensuring solid
imagery that leaps from the screen, and colour accuracy is beyond
reproach.
The screen covers 98.2% of the sRGB
colour space, and its average Delta E dips below 1 (the exact score is
0.87), which is the sort of performance I’d expect from a professional
monitor.
And yet what really stands out is the
size of that screen. It’s as wide as the iPad Air 2 is tall, so there’s a
lot more real estate on offer. When you’re working on a video-editing
app, this gives you a good-sized video window along with the editing
timeline below.
And if you choose the multitasking Split
Screen view, where you can have two simultaneously active windows side
by side, both windows are substantial and usable in their own right.
If you’re using the iPad Pro to consume
rather than produce content, it’s a joy. Video playback is butter-smooth
and really shines on this display. Plus, as mentioned above, the four
speakers add a beefy sound that’s better than any previous iPad. The
tablet reaches high volumes and the stereo effect is clearly
discernible.
Intriguingly, when you turn the tablet
from landscape to portrait, the iPad detects this, switching the
orientation of the speakers so the left channel continues to come from
the two speakers on your left. The sound on this tablet, not something I
have ever concerned myself on a device of this type before, is
seriously impressive.
Apple iPad Pro review: Smart Keyboard
The Smart Keyboard is one of the two
essential peripherals for the iPad Pro. Just as the Type Cover improves
Microsoft Surface tablets massively, so the dedicated keyboard turns the
iPad Pro into a successful laptop substitute.
Tim Cook recently said that although he still loves his Mac, when he travels he just takes the iPad Pro as his computer.
In some ways this keyboard is better
than Microsoft’s Surface keyboard, because the keys (which at first
glance look like they may not be up to much) are superb to use: firm but
responsive and highly comfortable, even when used for long periods.
The base is solid enough for you to have
it on your lap, too, but the big problem with it is that it can only
prop up the iPad Pro at one angle. You may find this fits with your way
of working, but there will almost certainly be a situation in which the
tablet doesn’t quite work perfectly.
Another issue is that, for now, only the
US keyboard layout is available, although of course it’s still possible
to use it as a UK layout if your iPad is set up that way. This way the £
sign is right where it should be, even if the physical key shows the #
symbol.
Other layouts will follow shortly and
Logitech’s cover is already available. It’s a little cheaper than the
Apple model (£110), has backlit keys, and acts as a case to protect the
rear of the iPad as well as the front. The key action is decent, and
currently it’s the only iPad Pro keyboard with a UK layout.
This has its disadvantages, however: it
holds the iPad up at a steeper angle that’s less practical for use on
your lap than the Apple keyboard, and it adds a lot more bulk and weight
to the iPad Pro as well. It weighs a hefty 750g, more than doubling the
weight of the iPad Pro.
Still, the thick, nylon-weave material
it’s made from does provide a lot of protection, and the smooth
aluminium surrounding the keyboard gives it a more classy feel than the
Apple’s cloth-topped keys.
Apple iPad Pro review: Apple Pencil
The Apple Pencil is Apple’s answer to
the stylus. It’s slim, perfectly weighted, and a quintessential Apple
beauty: sleek, elegant and highly effective.
If you’ve ever used a stylus with an
iPad, forget everything you know: the Pencil is nothing like that
experience. Whereas using a stylus with an iPad is a bit laggy, and a
bit imprecise, the Pencil is fast, responsive and clean. Latency is,
according to Apple, under 20ms – which in the real world means that you
don’t notice it at all.
Unlike most capacitive styluses, it has a
slender nib, which is firm rather than squashy to the touch. That’s
because the tip of the Pencil, like some styluses from Wacom and N-trig,
includes sensors that recognise pressure. Apple hasn’t revealed how
many levels of pressure the Pencil can spot, but it has a satisfyingly
realistic feel to it.
More than any other stylus I’ve used, it
feels most using a real pencil on paper, with just the right amount of
slide and friction. Tilt the Pencil on its side and you can even add
shading as you draw.
Two things about the Pencil show off
Apple’s attention to detail perfectly. The cap, which covers the
Lightning plug used to charge it, has a small metal ring and snaps to
the top in a really satisfying way, and when you place it on a flat
surface desk Apple has designed the weighting and shape of it so that it
always rolls to a halt with the logo and branding facing up.
It seems Apple has thought through the
practicalities as well. The top slides off to reveal an extended
Lightning connector. This is used to pair the two and charge the Pencil –
and it doesn’t need long to deliver a useful amount of charge; in fact
Apple says that 15 seconds connected will give 30 minutes of use.
I can’t vouch for the absolute accuracy
of that statement, but it certainly seemed to have plenty of pep after
the briefest of charges. And when it does eventually run flat, it’s
reassuring to be able to revitalise it in less time than it takes to
make a cuppa.
One negative point here is that there’s
no sleeve or place in the iPad Pro or the Smart Keyboard to keep the
Pencil, so mind you don’t lose it. At £79 it’s also far from cheap, but
if you want to make the most of the Pro, it’s a purchase worth
considering.
Already plenty of apps have been
optimised for the iPad Pro’s bigger screen and the delicate Pencil.
Apple’s own Notes app is a joy to sketch on, especially with the virtual
ruler, which offers spectacular precision.
Apple iPad Pro review: Performance and battery life
Apple has included its most powerful
processor to date in the iPad Pro. The A9 chip found in the latest
iPhones has been beefed up with an X, and iPad Pro also has extra RAM.
Whatever the stats, this is a tablet
that feels consistently nippy and responsive. Even when editing video,
even at 4K resolution, the iPad Pro didn’t slow down. Tasks from video
playback to side-by-side email and web surfing were swift and easy to
accomplish.
Apple has said it’s faster than many
portable PCs, including some of the MacBook range, and the benchmarks
seem to bear this out. A Geekbench 3.1 single-core result of 3,192 and
multi-core result of 5,413 are significant improvements over the iPad
Air 2.
I also ran the GFXBench Manhattan tests,
which delivered results of 33fps for the onscreen test and 79fps for
the offscreen test, run at 1080p. Again, these are seriously impressive
results: faster than any Android or iOS tablet we’ve ever tested, and
faster even than a mid-2014 MacBook Pro 13 equipped with Intel’s
integrated Iris Graphics 6100.
| Benchmark results |
iPad
|
iPad
|
Samsung Galaxy
|
| GeekBench 3 – single-core | 3192 | 1811 | 1230 |
| GeekBench 3 – multi-core | 5413 | 4516 | 4194 |
| GFX Bench GL 3.0 – Manhattan, onscreen | 33fps | 28fps | 12fps |
| GFX Bench GL 3.0 – Manhattan, offscreen | 79fps | 39fps | 15fps |
One of Apple’s guiding principles has
always been to avoid statistics, however, and focus on delivering a
flawless user experience. And this is most certainly the case here.
The other critical component of
performance is battery life, and that’s an area in which Apple’s iPads
have always been consistently good. Although there’s a big, rich screen
to service here, there one heckuva big battery to power it – a 38.5Wh
battery, to be precise.
And in our video rundown tests, the iPad
Pro performed admirably, lasting a solid 9hrs 8mins (in flight mode,
with the screen set to a brightness of 170cd/m2) before expiring.
Apple iPad Pro review: Verdict
The Apple iPad Pro is a stunning
machine. It looks fantastic and, once you get over just how big it is,
the size becomes a benefit, with its immersive screen and a giant
playground of real estate for apps to exploit.
Add the Smart Keyboard or a rival setup
and you have a creditable laptop alternative, with decent battery life
and Apple’s unparalleled choice of big-screen, touch-enabled apps. The
Pencil adds a whole new dimension of usability and is a wholly enjoyable
peripheral to use.
It is expensive: add it all up and
you’re spending more than £800 for the the full set of tablet, Pencil
and Smart Keyboard. But despite this, the iPad Pro is not bad value at
all.
For your money you’re getting a fast,
capable laptop running on iOS, and an eye-poppingly good tablet with
ear-tingling audio to boot.
The iPad Pro marks another major inflection point: it ends the whole “iPads are only for consumption” debate.
The only people who can’t use the iPad
Pro as a creation tool are those who need really high-end performance:
professional graphic designers, professional video editors, the kind of
people for whom 16Gb RAM is table stakes and think nothing of going a
lot, lot higher.
Most people don’t fall into that
category, and for most people the iPad Pro is more than enough creation
tool. For some – anyone who sketches or loves using a stylus – it’s
actually a better creation tool than the average PC or laptop.
Certainly, it’s worth checking out the
size and weight to see if they suit you. There are other iPads that are
smaller, lighter and much cheaper. But if the size appeals, the new
Apple flagship is hard not to like. Source: TechnoMeda
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