iPad Pro
The Review
Lance Ulanoff
The iPad Pro is the first workhorse iPad that, if you kick in for the accessories, could change your work life.
Apple may never give us a touchscreen MacBook, but, for now, we have the next best thing: The iPad Pro and its companion Smart Keyboard.This once-fabled behemoth of a tablet is now real and, to be frank, rather remarkable. At 12.9 inches, its screen is as large as two iPad Air 2 screens side-by-side (portrait-style, of course), and with a new A9X chip, it has power to burn and seems up to virtually any task.
It’s the iPad that finally makes sense of Apple’s dual-paned, multi-tasking metaphor the company unveiled with iOS 9.To call it simply “the next iPad,” however, is misleading. When paired with the Smart Keyboard and Apple Pencil, the iPad Pro’s tablet personality recedes, and a workhorse steps forward.From a distance, the iPad Pro does look almost exactly like any other iPad. It has the same 4:3 aspect ratio screen and a thin, aluminum body. The Touch ID home button is in its usual spot, as is the FaceTime camera, the power and volume buttons, audio jack and Lightning port. There are, though, subtle differences, like the four sets of speaker grills placed around the chassis and the Smart Connector, a group of three connectors on one long side of the device.
And then there’s the other major difference. The iPad Pro is simply ginormous. It’s almost as big as a 13-inch MacBook Air display and, at 1.57 pounds (1.59 pounds for the LTE model), it outweighs the iPad Air 2 by more than half a pound. While the iPad Pro is essentially the size of a dinner plate, it’s not fat. In fact, the tablet is, at 0.27 inch, only 0.03 of an inch thicker than the iPad Air 2.I only point out the stunning size so you can appreciate all the ways it will benefit you.
The iPad Pro starts at $799 for the 32GB model, but you’re going to want the $169 Smart keyboard and the $99 Apple Pencil, very much in the way you wouldn’t buy a Microsoft Surface Pro 4 tablet/PC without the keyboard (both the Surface Book and Surface Pro ship with a Surface Pen).With these accessories, the iPad Pro becomes something more than an oversized tablet. It’s a productivity platform — and a very good one, at that.
One of the best things about the new iPad pro is that more really does mean more. Instead of taking the iPad Air 2’s 2,048 x 1,536 resolution display and stretching it for the iPad Pro’s larger screen, Apple built a new, higher-resolution screen that, with a 2,732 x 2,048 resolution, features 5.6 million pixels. Everything on it looks gorgeous.It’s also the reason that multi-tasking works so well on the iPad Pro.iOS 9 introduced a new multi-tasking pane for iPads that feels like it was really meant for this large-screen device. To access it, you must first open an app. Once that’s done, a swipe gesture from the right side of the screen slides in a horizontally scrolling list of running apps (the list can get pretty long, which means it could benefit from a simple search bar at the top). Tap on one and it opens and fills the right-side pane. You can drag the separation bar over to the left to more evenly split the two panes. Since there is as much workspace as two iPad Airs, you really do have two screens to work with.
Changing which app is running in the right-hand pane is easy; you just swipe down from the top edge of the screen (over the right-hand pane) and it converts it back into the list of available apps. To change which app is running on the left side, you can use a four-finger gesture which reveals the traditional app tab interface. Select one and it fills the left side of the screen, while maintaining the app running on the right.I did have to get used to the two different ways the two panes could interact. If I just dragged over my task pane and selected an app, the left pane would remain in what’s known as “slideover mode,” which means the left app will take over again if I tap to use it. To put the apps in multi-task mode, I have to grab the pane adjustment bar and drag it a bit left and then right to have both panes snap to multi-tasking attention. Apple explained that this is by design, since sometimes you just want to peek at some other bit of content or app information and then return to your main task.
Other tablets — like Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S2, which runs a mobile operating system like Android, and the Surface Pro 4, which runs a laptop operating system like Windows 10 — handle multi-tasking with even more power and aplomb (both let you drag and drop between panes, something you can’t do with the iPad Pro and iOS 9), but this is definitely a step in the right direction for iPad, especially if Apple wants it to become a go-to device for productivity workers.
The iPad Pro is a tablet. It’s a mantra I keep repeating to myself over and over, even as I use it attached to Apple’s elegant Smart Keyboard 80% of the time.I’ve used iPads with a keyboard before, most notably the iPad Mini with Logitech’s Ultrathin Keyboard Cover. It’s a great Bluetooth device, but there is no getting around the size limitation: I could never type on it for an extended period of time.Apple’s Smart Keyboard, which doubles as a cover, is completely different. First of all, it’s a full-sized keyboard with well-spaced keys raised a couple of millimeters off the base. It’s not battery-powered or Bluetooth. Instead, the Smart Keyboard holds onto the iPad Pro with magnets and communicates through the tiny Smart Connector in the center of one of the tablet’s long edges.As I noted above, the Smart Keyboard is also a cover and, initially, converting it into a stand and keyboard for the tablet is a tiny bit confusing. As a cover, the keyboard is completely hidden under a soft cover flap that rests against the iPad Pro screen when the cover is closed.
To convert it into a keyboard, I have to first attach the smart connectors to their counterparts on the tail end of the cover (if you’re already using it as a cover, it will be connected that way, anyway). Magnets make that job easy. Then I pull the tablet forward, dragging the connected cover with it and place that connected pair in a silicone cover channel that sits right behind the keyboard. As I’m doing that, the rest of the cover sections fold into a stiff triangle that the iPad Pro actually rests against.While the Smart Keyboard lacks the ability to adjust the angle of the iPad Pro on the Smart Keyboard, the sturdy setup rests comfortably on my desk and my lap.I’m using the keyboard right now, as I write this review. The key action (the technology under each key is the same as what you’ll find in a new MacBook) feels great and the fabric weave covering offers some pretty satisfying tactile feedback — it also keeps crud from getting in between or underneath the keys. I appreciate the inclusion of arrow keys, but wish that, along with “Delete,” it included “Backspace,” but then that wouldn’t really be an Apple keyboard, would it. Like most Apple keyboards, it also includes a pair of Command and Option keys on either side of the space bar. More notably, the keyboard offers a physical key for the emoji keyboard, something I accidentally hit on more than one occasion.
Naturally, the iPad Pro includes a full-sized virtual keyboard as well, but it takes up roughly half the screen, visual real estate I’m not willing to give up. One thing, though, that does remain from that keyboard even when you are using the physical Smart Keyboard is the new QuickType bar. It will suggest different word completion options, offer undo and redo, access to the clipboard, as well as bold face, italic and underline. You can hide it via a little down arrow on the right side, but it tends to pop right back up as soon as you start typing again.I do admit that I’m so used to using laptops and Surface Pros and Surface Books with trackpads that I keep reaching for a phantom trackpad on the Smart Keyboard. Obviously, there isn’t one and touching the screen works just as well. However, even on touch devices like the Surface Book, I’ve put the touchpad to good use. Maybe on Apple's next Smart Keyboard.
Regardless of size, the iPad experience is nothing without its apps. Right now, for instance, I’m using Microsoft Word for the iPad, an app designed for Apple’s tablets that seems fully realized on the iPad Pro and highlights its strength as a productivity tool.Apps also highlight the tablet’s impressive processing power. The iPad Pro is the only iOS device with Apple’s new A9X chip. The 64-bit chip is, Apple claims, 80% faster than all the portable PCs sold in the last 12 months and with better graphics performance than 90% of them.
It certainly has some impressive benchmark numbers. Benchmark service Geekbench gave the iPad Pro single-core (3,218) and multi-core (5,455) numbers that blew away virtually everything else (in the mobile space), including the A9 chip in the iPhone 6S/6S Plus. It even outperforms the new MacBook's Intel Core M processor (2,367 and 4,489 for single-core and multi-core, respectively). What’s more, the iPad Pro’s single-core score rivaled desktop performance on the Microsoft Surface Book (beating the sixth-gen Intel Core i5 and coming close to a sixth-gen Intel Core i7). The multi-core scores lagged behind both systems, but not by the margin you might expect.
Numbers, obviously, do not tell the whole story. Apps like the eye-popping Complete Anatomy from 3D4Medical, literally illustrate the tremendous graphics horsepower, which leverages Apple’s Metal graphics engine. That app put me deep inside the human body and then, as I stripped away layers of flesh, veins, and muscle, let me spin the high-resolution skeleton around like a top.
Image manipulation can be one of the most processor-intensive tasks, but Adobe clearly believes the iPad Pro is up to the challenge. They have a whole collection of iPad apps for manipulating images and roughing out project ideas. I gave each of them, Adobe Comp, Photoshop Fix and Photoshop Mix a spin and they all worked like champs. Plus, if you have an Adobe Creative Cloud Account, you can start your work on the iPad Pro and finish it on a more powerful desktop or laptop.
Other standout app experiences include News (its image-intensive layout really benefits from the big screen), Notes and Maps. With the big screen it feels a little bit like unfolding an old-school map on you lap. I especially enjoyed viewing major landmarks like Mount Rushmore and the Grand Canyon in the 3D flyover view.
I was never one of those people who bought into the Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs’ claim that the best input device was your finger. I mean, I love tapping and pointing at things on the screen, but for some tasks, nothing beats a good-old-fashioned implement.
Now, thank goodness, Apple appears to agree with me. Along with the iPad Pro and Smart Keyboard, Apple unveiled its first stylus, the Bluetooth-based Pencil.Apple Pencil is thinner and longer than Microsoft’s Surface Pen. The Pencil has a removable tip on the back that covers the Lightning plug. You both pair the Pencil with the iPad Pro and charge it by plugging it directly into the tablet’s Lightning port.There is no place on the tablet to store the Pencil and since it’s perfectly round, the Pencil occasionally rolled away from me. As a result, I lived in fear of misplacing or losing it. I think there will be a healthy third-party market for Apple Pencil holders.My minor misgivings about losing it, the Pencil is a marvel of engineering and once again highlights the iPad Pro’s excellent screen resolution and design.I used it with a handful of my favorite iPad drawing apps, including Autodesk Sketchbook, FiftyThree’s Paper and my go-to app, Procreate.
I have been drawing on the iPad for five years and almost always with dumb styli that basically rely on the capacitive response of the screen and nothing else. I’ve become expert at drawing without resting my hand on the screen.Apple’s Pencil, however, is a Bluetooth device, which means it includes palm rejection. Obviously, other iPad Bluetooth styli have offered this feature on the iPad and it’s a feature I enjoy when drawing on the Surface Book and Surface Pro with a Surface Pen. Yet I have rarely seen a better designed Bluetooth pen.
The responsiveness is exquisite and the Pencil tip material offers just the right balance between friction and smoothness on the iPad Pro’s touch screen. Pressure sensitivity is about as close as you’re going to get to actually drawing on real paper. It even supports shading, letting me hold the Pencil at an extreme angle to access a the virtual long-edge of a graphite pencil or wide magic marker. What’s more, there is almost no perceptible visual space between the Pencil tip and the digital line that appears on screen. All that combined with the iPad Pro's impressively large canvas (I have room for a full drawing and reference material) make this a fantastic drawing experience.I draw at what I would consider an average speed, but I was interested to see how well the Pencil, the iPad Pro and its A9X-backed system would keep up with some really fast doodling. I set up an iPhone 6S Plus and recorded myself at 240 frames per second as I rapidly drew a spiral on the screen. I did the same thing with the Surface Pro 4.
Here’s what I learned. The eye cannot see things a good slo-mo camera can pick up. Neither system could actually keep up with my frenzied scrawl, but while the Surface Pro 4 actually lost track of the detail in my lines and seemingly made up the gaps, the iPad Pro, which was somewhat less behind, never lost the veracity of my line.The Apple Pencil isn’t just for drawing. It works as a pointer and with the right apps can help you sketch out complex ideas. I had fun playing with Adobe Comp and Paper, both of which let you rough sketch shapes that they turn into polished diagrams.
The iPad Pro is a tablet with all the attendant sensors: Gyroscope, accelerometer and even a barometer, so I put it through the usual tablet paces, even as I sometimes found its size awkward for, say, gameplay where I had to move around the screen.
On the Virtual Reality app Vrse, which presents a variety of immersive, 360-degree video experiences, I didn’t really enjoy holding up the 12.9-inch display as I tried to look around my virtual environment (although I have to admit that it was fun to see the SNL 40th Anniversary Jeopardy sketch from some completely different perspectives). A large screen ostensibly means a more immersive experience, but in reality it also promises arm fatigue. On the iPad Pro, the best games were the ones where I did not have to pick up the screen and move it around.My experience with magazines was somewhat similar. In the GQ app, for instance, the current issue looked gorgeous, but, it only works in portrait mode, which meant I couldn’t put it in the Smart Keyboard stand and had to hold it upright in my lap. The screen is really too big for that.
Reading in iBooks was a better experience because it worked in landscape mode, where it offered two pages of text at once. It was like reading a physical book (without the weight of all that paper in your lap).Photos, videos and movies, naturally look amazing on the Retina screen. The screen is large enough that you can watch a movie with a friend and, thanks to those four speakers, the sound can just about fill a room.
The iPad Pro has a pair of cameras that do not break any new ground: an 8-megapixel, 1080p iSight camera on the back that’s the same as the one found in the iPad Air 2, but backed by the image processor from the iPhone 6S/6S Plus. On the front is a 1.2-megapixel, 720p FaceTime camera. FaceTime worked great and even benefited from that great new audio. It's a shame it's not using the 5-megapixel front-facing camera as on the iPhone 6S/6S Plus.
Apple promises roughly 10 hours of battery life for the iPad Pro. I regularly got at least 9 hours when using the iPad Pro for word processing, web browsing, some video streaming and a variety of app tasks.As for the Pencil, I used if for four days straight, including a two-hour drawing session, before a pop-up appeared on the iPad Pro telling me the Apple Pencil Battery was at 5%. The Apple Pencil ships with a male/female Lightning adapter, which lets you connect it directly to a traditional iPhone or iPad charger. I prefer this method to charging it in the iPad Pro, where it looks kind of ridiculous. There is a benefit to charging this way, you can get 30 minutes of power with a 15-second charge.
If you think the iPad Pro is simply about a bigger iPad, you’re missing the point. Apple’s iPad Pro is a new front in the quest to grow the productivity and business market for the iPad. Consumers are likely a secondary consideration. The iPad Pro does everything a smaller iPad can do, but its size, especially when paired with the Smart keyboard and Pencil, offers benefits tiny tablets can only dream of.I honestly like the iPad Pro, but not because I have so much screen real-estate. I like it because I could use it to get real work done. And even as Apple SVP of Marketing Phil Schiller told me last month that the market for convertible devices like the Surface Book (which, to be fair, runs a desktop OS) was not growing, the company has essentially delivered its own hybrid device.