Apple iPad Pro review

The debate has raged since the iPad first launched: is it a device for consuming or for creating? While there are plenty of creative things that you can do with an iPad, in truth it was often an accessory to a PC or laptop for many jobs. Apple wants to change that with the iPad Pro, a tablet that does everything the regular iPad can, plus a whole lot more, from office work to creating works of art. With that in mind, I’ve written the entire review using the iPad Pro and its Smart keyboard cover, having used it exclusively as my laptop for the past couple of weeks.

Design and build quality

When I first set eyes on the iPad Pro, the first thing I thought was: its massive. In part, this reaction is down to the fact that the Pro looks just like a big iPad Air 2. Given that I’ve used the Air 2 since launch and am familiar with how it looks and feels, it’s quite a surprise seeing the Pro model for the first time. However, once you pick it up and feel how light it is (713g for the Wi-Fi model), you start to realise that its dimensions (221x306x6.9mm) aren’t actually that big. In fact, the iPad Pro has roughly the same footprint as the 13.3-inch MacBook Pro, only it’s a lot lighter and slimmer. The more I used the new iPad, the more its benefits shone: you get the big screen you’d expect from a laptop, but the thinness and lightweight you’d expect from an iPad. In other words, when you first see the iPad Pro, give yourself a little time to get used to it.

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Screen

With its 12.9-inch screen, the iPad Pro has the biggest display that Apple’s ever put in a tablet, and it’s bigger than most of the Android competition, too. It’s also the highest-resolution tablet, with a whopping resolution of 2,732x2,048. This works out to the same 264ppi pixel density as the iPad Air 2, which has a resolution of 2,048x1,536. This means that an iPad Air 2 in portrait mode is the same height as the iPad Pro. Effectively, you almost get two iPad Air 2 screens side-by-side in the Pro, which means more resolution for single applications, or you can run supported applications side-by-side without losing resolution or squishing everything too tightly together. Needless to say, the screen's up to Apple's usual quality with fantastic viewing angles letting you clearly see the screen from practically any angle. Our colour calibrator measured an excellent 98.2% sRGB colour gamut coverage, and brightness was above average at 393cd/m2. A contrast ratio of 1,552:1 is fantastic, and a black point of 0.25cd/m2 is one of the lowest we’ve seen from a non-OLED display.

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iOS 9.1

Quite a few of the changes in iOS 9.1 were designed with the iPad Pro in mind, making it easier to use and more powerful. Top of that list are the new multitasking options. There are two modes. Slide over lets you slide a compatible app in from the side, giving it focus. It lets you, for example, quickly check your email without having to leave your browser.

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If you want to go for full multi-tasking, the Split View lets you run two apps at the same time, each one getting half of screen: this works to roughly having two iPad Airs in portrait mode side-by-side. It works well and I found that I could do most of my daily jobs without wishing for multiple desktops or positional windows. The only thing at the moment is that app support is a little limited: Apple’s built-in apps and productivity apps support it, as does Microsoft Office, but Google hasn’t updated Google Drive to work with the new multitasking. I imagine it won’t be long before more developers update their apps, though.

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The iPad Pro also gets its own on-screen keyboard, which uses the additional resolution that’s available. With the new keyboard you get dedicated number keys and shortcuts to cut, copy and paste. It makes typing without a dedicated keyboard a lot quicker than with the old iPad keyboard.

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Performance & Battery life

The dual-core A9X processor inside the iPad Pro is based on the A9 chip that powers the iPhone 6S, albeit with a more capable GPU to drive the extra pixels. It wiped the floor with its competitors in the Peacekeeper browser test, scoring a huge 5,476. It powered through the GFX Bench Manhattan onscreen test at 33.5fps, and an offscreen score of 80fps is seriously quick. The dual-core iPad even scored 5,484 in GeekBench 3’s multi-core test, beating many quad-core Android tablets. It’s not an unreasonable jump to say that the iPad Pro is faster than a lot of budget Windows laptops, particularly when combined with the slick and efficient iOS 9.1 OS.

A big body means that there’s plenty of room for a massive 10,307mAh battery. This doesn’t automatically translate into phenomenal battery life, because of the big, high-resolution screen. Even so, it lasted 9 hours 8 minutes in our video playback test, running at a screen brightness of 170cd/m2. Considering the screen drops the refresh rate to 30Hz when showing still images, only jumping to the full 60Hz when displaying anything moving, to save power, there’s easily enough for a day’s worth of work from a single charge. The 2.1A USB charger delivers power through the Lightning port quickly when it’s time to top up.

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Storage, Wireless and 4G

All of the iPad Pro models have integrated storage with 32GB (£679) and 128GB (£799) Wi-Fi only models. They’re kitted out with the latest 802.11ac Wi-Fi, so will make the most of a fast router and internet connection if you have one. If you want data on the go, only the 128GB version has a cellular version (£899). This adds in the Apple SIM, which lets you choose your data plan on the fly. It’s a shame that EE is still the only major UK network to support the SIM: it’s about time the other networks got in on the act and gave us a choice!

Speakers and entertainment

It's not all work, work, work, as the iPad Pro has four speakers, rather than the usual two. Using its orientation sensors, it uses the top two speakers for spatial separation (stereo) and the bottom two to deliver low-frequency sounds. The result is a rather impressive tablet for sound: watching a film on Netflix I felt no need to reach for a pair of headphones or to plug in a pair of speakers. That's good news, as you can travel with the one device and use it for everything while you're away. 

Keyboard

If you’re going to use an iPad for work, a physical keyboard is still a must. There are plenty of third-party keyboard cases for older iPads, but they all connect via Bluetooth and require charging themselves. Apple has built its own for the iPad Pro, using the magnetic connector on the side of the tablet to deliver power and data. It means that as long as your iPad has charge, you can type. The £139 Apple Smart Cover also doubles as a case, similar to Microsoft’s Surface Pro 4 Type Cover keyboard.

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The keys look like they will be spongy, but each one has a surprising amount of travel and feedback. We were soon typing at speed without making many errors. The excellent viewing angles meant we could type comfortably with tablet and keyboard resting on our lap. Shortcut keys familiar to Mac users make a return, including COMMAND+C and COMMAND+V to copy and paste. You can even use COMMAND+TAB to quickly move between apps.

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The onscreen keyboard doesn’t disappear altogether when using the Smart Cover; you still get one row of commands that differ between apps, but typically include formatting options, undo and redo, copy/paste and auto-complete options. With the keyboard attached, you lose the virtual trackpad multi-touch gesture and have to rely on your finger and the keyboard’s cursor keys. Apple has retained its US layout, too, which is frustrating for British customers.

Pencil

When Apple first introduced its Pencil stylus, there were plenty of jokes about how much it cost (£79) but, when you look into it, there’s actually a load of technology packed in, which is why it’s more expensive than most bog-standard touchscreen styluses. This includes two sensors, which can sense orientation and pressure, as well as the integrated battery, which is charged via the Pencil’s integrated Lightning connector: 30 seconds plugged into your iPad Pro’s Lightning port gives you around 15 minutes of use. You can also charge it via the USB cable included in the box.

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So, is it any good? Well the feedback from Expert Reviews’ resident artist, Katharine Byrne, was that, compared to the Surface Pro 4’s stylus, the Pencil isn’t quite as comfortable to hold; however, it’s additional sensors make it the more pleasant device to draw with. In particular, you can get some neat effects, such as using the Pencil on its side to shade in a drawing. As you can see from Katharine’s drawing of Tim Cook below, you can get some impressive results from this tablet. It’s important to point out that the drawing below was created in Notes, and with a dedicated art package you get even more control.

What about if you’re not an artist? The Pencil’s not quite an essential purchase, in this case, but the finer control it gives you can still be important for some applications. In a way that’s the beauty of the iPad Pro, as you only have to buy the accessories that you want and will use, and the box isn’t just cluttered with everything.

Can it replace a laptop?

When it comes to writing docs, sending email and browsing the web, the iPad Pro is just as powerful as the competition. With a choice of Google Drive, Microsoft Office and Apple Pages, Numbers and Keynote, you can definitely get as much done on this tablet as with a Mac or PC. It also excels at jobs that laptops can’t do well, particularly digital art. The touchscreen and Pencil combination is much slicker than any desktop operating system. For a large number of people, the iPad Pro can replace a laptop or desktop computer for the majority of tasks. In some cases, the lack of a particular app will be a stumbling block, but for certain creative tasks it falls behind the traditional computer.

If you edit a lot of photos on the go, or work with RAW files, it’s far easier to plug an SD card into a laptop than mess around with adaptors or Wi-Fi syncing on the iPad. While there's Lightroom Mobile, you either have to import photos from your Camera Roll or synchronise them from your computer, making it a little more hassle than using the OS X version. That’s not to say that the iPad Pro doesn’t have the power to cope: Pixelmator for the iPad is just as powerful as for the Mac and its processing is actually quicker in some cases. Video editing is a similar story. The iPad Pro can play three 4K streams simultaneously, letting you make some quite complicated edits from anywhere, but you need to get the video onto the iPad first: easy if you’re shooting from an iPhone 6S, but less so if that video’s coming from a different camera.

For a large number of people, the answer is going to be that the iPad Pro can replace a laptop or desktop computer for the majority of tasks. For these people, the benefits are clear: a powerful computer that powers on instantly, gives the best touch-screen interface and is a lot lighter than even the thinnest computer.

Conclusion

The iPad Pro is a staggeringly quick tablet, with a superb high-resolution screen, great speakers and decent battery life. With its high-quality accessories that let it adapt to different situations and uses, it’s also one of the most flexible tablets/computers we’ve used. It does something new and a bit different to both laptops and previous tablets, so it’s a matter of what you use a computer for as to whether this is the product for you. 

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If you really only use email, a browser and regular office apps, the iPad Pro is a slick and lightweight computer that can easily replace your laptop, but doubles as a fantastic tablet for entertainment. Likewise, if you’re a digital artist, the high-quality Apple Pencil provides a superior experience to other styluses, making the iPad Pro the top platform for you. If, on the other hand, you rely on software not available on iOS, or regularly work with photos and video, a traditional laptop is still your best bet.