Apple iPad Pro (12.9 inch, 2018) Reviews and Feedback

Apple iPad 2018 Pro is stuck in the middle again, more than ever. The tablet offers powerful software that has not been written yet. He is very pretty, and very fast, but starting at $ 999 for the 12.9-inch model that we've tested, it's costing too much for the operating system and the applications that it runs. iOS has been designed for simple, single-task and single-application workflows. Its multi-window solution and its Files application are kludgy bolts on. There is no good video editing software. Photoshop arrives, but not until 2019. Peripheral support is less than what it should be. In the end, this simply does not correspond to professional experience.

Price

The iPad Pro is extremely expensive for a tablet. The 11-inch model starts at $ 799 and the 12.9-inch model starts at $ 999. That's for a 64GB Wi-Fi unit, though. There are also 256GB, 512GB and 1TB units. Adding an LTE modem costs $ 150 more. A 12.9-inch, 1 TB unit with a cell phone costs $ 1,899 without a keyboard or stylus. The Smart Keyboard Folio costs $ 199 for the 12.9-inch model, or $ 179 for the 11 inches. The pencil Apple costs $ 129.

In other words, it is now possible to pay more than $ 2,000 for an iPad.

Of course, if you simply want an iPad, there is the basic iPad base model at $ 329. However, you must stop considering the Pro as an iPad. To justify his price, he must do much more.

Design and accessories

As mentioned, the iPad Pro is available in two models, 11 inches or 12.9 inches. We tested the 12.9-inch, 1-TB unit. They are both smaller and lighter than last year's iPad. Advantages, because they have much smaller glasses. LCD "liquid retina" displays are excellent, with 120Hz refresh rates and a wide range of DCI-P3 colors. To maintain application compatibility, Apple has locked all of its iPad screens at 264 pixels per inch, which means that the larger the screens, the more pixels they have.

I can not conceive that this tablet is used without Apple's Smart Keyboard Folio, a hull / magnetic keyboard cover. There are two positions to place your screen: a more vertical one that tends to be a bit too reflective and a more angular one that gives you a better view. Fabric-covered keys are more enjoyable than second-generation MacBook Pro; they have a definitive click, but it's a soft one that does not hurt the fingers if you're a hard typist.The Pro tablets have rounded corners, but harder edges than the standard iPad. They also have a flat back with a noticeable hump for the 12 megapixel camera. On the front, there is no more home button–as with the new iPhones, you will use Face ID with the 3D front camera. The tablets have a single USB-C port at the bottom and powerful quad speakers placed on the sides if they are in landscape mode. The top right edge of the tablet (depending on whether you're in portrait or landscape mode) is magnetic, and the new Apple pencil is stretching well.

The new pencil is one of the main reasons to buy a new iPad. If you are a regular user of Pencil, you are probably irritated by its two main structural flaws: its hood is easy to lose and its perfectly cylindrical shape stands out from everything. There is also nowhere to put your pencil.

The new pencil has a matte finish and a flat side. If you put it on the table and push, it will stop. The back part is not removable and the Pencil hangs securely on top of the iPad, where it also recharges. It's a big improvement. This means that you always know where your pencil is and that it is always charged.

There are also new features. Double tap on the barrel of the pen changes mode, for example between pencil and eraser; it is controllable by individual applications. This is similar to Wacom stylus With pimples, the pencil is really a place of choice for professional stylus owners.

The Pencil is as sensitive as ever, with incredible sensitivity to pressure and tilt. For example, call a watercolor brush in an application like Procreate, and the pencil's sensitivity to pressure and tilt will look almost like a brush. The new Pencil only works with the new iPads. Therefore, if you earn money through artistic efforts, it is a weighty argument to get the new models.

Gross power

The benchmarks of A12X processors from Apple as well as a professional laptop. It's beautiful what this thing can do. I compared it with three of this year's Macs using Geekbench, a CPU performance test that I've always thought to be a bit biased towards iOS; GFXBench, a relatively neutral graphical reference that uses Apple's Metal APIs; and Basemark Web, which tests rendering performance in Safari. Look at the results.

That said, when we tried to undertake other workflow comparisons, we could not. The professional applications we like to use on other operating systems, including Photoshop and Handbrake, simply do not run on iOS and the workflow tests we like to use, such as PCMark and Cinebench, do not run on iOS either..Sure As a reference, the iPad Pro is faster than a Mac Mini and often faster than an Intel Core i7 MacBook Pro. From the hardware point of view, this 2 in 1 is worth every dollar that Apple charges for it. The speeds we observed in our landmarks continued in our daily experience, with everything going on effortlessly.

This illustrates the problem for the next thing I want to say, namely that Apple could consider launching Intel low power chips and making its first A13 laptop next year. While the Series A processors, in terms of raw power, are now faster than many Intel chips, macOS applications and more specifically Mac tierces are compiled for Intel processors, and not A series processors, with a significant emulation tax.

What is the magnitude of the emulation tax? The Samsung Galaxy Book 2 runs Windows 10 on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 processor, an amplified version of the Snadragon 845 in the latest phones. The Snapdragon 845 phones with QHD screens are currently getting scores of about 330 on Basemark Web in the standard Android browser. The Galaxy Book 2, using Microsoft Edge (which should be its fastest browser), gets 150. Ouch.

So, if you are trying to run Adobe MacOS applications on this processor, for example, they will probably work much worse than the performance shown, unless Adobe does the complex and cumbersome recompilation of their recompilation for the different sets of instructions. There is no easy answer.

Networking and battery

The network capabilities of the iPad are as good as the performance of its processor. Like the iPhone XS Max, the iPad Pro cellular is based on the Intel XMM7560 modem, which can handle speeds of up to a gigabit. It has a physical SIM card slot and a software-configurable integrated eSIM. They do not both work at the same time, but you can switch between them. The physical slot supports all US and Canadian carriers; eSIM supports AT & T, Sprint and T-Mobile, and you can choose a service plan directly from the Settings application.

With regard to LTE, the Pro supports a wide range of US and international bands, including all bands that each of the major US carriers use. he to have Sprint and the old Verizon CDMA system, but this system is in any case useless for data, so it does not matter. What matters is that it checks Sprint's and Verizon's LTE networks.

See how we test the tablets

For Wi-Fi, it can simultaneously do 2.4 / 5GHz 802.11n / ac with 80 MHz channels. It has Bluetooth 5.0. The connectivity is just excellent.

We still need to perform battery tests, but we have no reason not to believe the 10 hours of using Apple with a brightness corresponding to about half of that of the generation previous iPad Pro. It's shorter than some laptops we've seen, but most people find it adequate and you can quickly charge the iPad with the biggest USB-C power supply you can to get you (like those of recent Macs). It comes with a new 18W charger, but you should get a 30W charger, like the one sold by Apple for $ 49.

Camera and USB-C

The absence of home button makes the iPad cameras more relevant than ever. The f / 1.8 12-megapixel camera is certainly better than that of the iPad's 8-megapixel base model, and it looks pretty similar to the iPhone X's camera, which is great. Autofocus, LED flash and 4K video recording are all supported.

That said, I think that the actual use of the main camera (and the actual use for better low-light performance) relates to augmented reality applications and that the Pro places the objects on horizontal surfaces and verticals very quickly.

The front camera is a gigantic advance over the standard iPad, from a 1.2-megapixel camera to a 7-megapixel sensor with 1080p video recording and 3D imaging supporting Face ID features , Animoji and Memoji. Face ID works in all orientations and the front camera is flush with the latest iPhone. With powerful quad speakers, this makes it a great device for video chat.

USB-C is a big step forward for the Pro, but not as big as it could be. Again, it is retained by iOS. You can plug in keyboards and docks that plug into USB-A ports, DisplayPortsand Ethernet ports. In fact, I often needed an Ethernet port for an iPad. The easy availability of USB-C-to-Ethernet adapters is therefore pleasant. You can plug a USB-C headset to get around the lack of headphone jack.

I do not mind not being able to connect a mouse or touchpad to an operating system that does not have a pointer function. But you can not plug arbitrary printers or external storage devices, and these are two important shortcomings. Ideally, you should be able to simply plug in a drive and have it appear in the Files application, but it does not work: you need to use special drives that support iPad applications. The print is wireless only. Apple could have created generic external storage drivers for the Files application without breaking iOS metaphors or sandboxes, but he just chose not to do it.

In addition, iOS management of multiple monitors is far from ideal. You can connect USB-C DisplayPort monitors via the USB-C port or translate to DisplayPort or HDMI (but not Thunderbolt) via a USB-C docking station. But since iOS does not have a desktop, every application needs to understand how to handle the secondary monitors. Sometimes they are used to display presentations while you view notes on the main screen. Sometimes they are for zooming in or out of works of art. They are never able to perform many more tasks than you could have done otherwise.

No Pro Flow

The iPad Pro uses iOS 12. According to a survey we conducted, about a third of respondents say they can use the iPad Pro as their main computer. This is important because the price is so high.

However, during the tests, I was just having the same workflow issues as iPad owners for a long time. For example, my daughter is applying for admission to a local art school. She wants to learn how to use Toon Boom and Photoshop, the standard applications of the animation industry. The Pro seems perfect for that, right? There is no Toon Boom for iPad, however, and Photoshop is planned for 2019.

I like to create data visualizations. Excel on the iPad Pro allows me to insert graphics and write directly on it, which is very cool. But I can not drag them into a Word document even if the Word document is open in split screen mode. I have to capture them, trim them, record them on the film and import them. In addition, changing and moving the axis titles are really problematic, unlike Excel on all other operating systems.

There are even compatibility issues with iPad apps! Animatic, an animation program, hangs. Videoshop, a video editing program, does not switch to landscape mode. LumaFusion, the best professional video editing app, has an uncomfortable relationship with my OneDrive account.

The iPad Pro does not do a lot of existing work as well as the existing machines that do it. This is not the material. The processor, the screen and the pencil are first-rate. This is due to the lack of iOS mainstream consumer applications and poor device management and multi-application workflows. It's the same old story we tell for years.

The basic $ 329 iPad performs a lot of the basic tasks of the iPad. Want a sleek, virus-free and well-managed computer for e-mail, word processing, games and cloud school work? Maybe a nice little SSH terminal? An iPad Pro is not necessary for these tasks. The A12X processor here is simply overkill for these workloads, and the other great Pro features for which you pay–ProMotion screen, the new pencil, the best speakers–do not add up to $ 500 worth of real value.

So what is the pro doing well? The multilayer sketches are beautiful. Applications like Procreate and a dozen other works of art can handle a virtually infinite number of layers with smooth transformations.

Pro does not treat CAD or AR like any other device. I have seen demonstrations of enterprise education systems using RA objects for tasks such as jet engine repair, the kind of things for which you would probably want expensive AR glasses, and which generally works a little janky on Windows tablets or cheaper iPads. The pro is amazing for that, but it's a niche.

Comparisons and conclusions

The standard iPad at $ 329, which actually costs between $ 600 and $ 800 once you've added the keyboard, pencil and storage options you want, is a great little computer at the right price. For drawing, word processing, web browsing, a little photo editing, content consumption and games, an iPad transformed into a 2 in 1 is efficient, simple and virus-free. That's why it's a choice of editors and one of the products we recommend the most.

The things you can not do with a basic iPad are not usually due to the hardware, but to the software, and the iPad Pro, unfortunately, continues to run the same software. This places Pro miles behind more flexible 2-in-1 Windows, such as Microsoft Surface Pro 6, when it comes to running workflows such as desktop, Photoshop, Lightroom or other applications. , for example, the animation software Toon Boom. The pro just can not step up. Its operating system and its applications will not allow it.

The Pro is a secondary tablet in expensive creative configurations. I'm talking about artists, animators and photographers who do not hesitate to spend up to five digits on their workspace and who want the best. It beats Cintiq Wacom and can be a useful tool for traveling photographers who want an optimal representation of their work.

The engineering work of Apple is epic here. The iPad Pro is easily as powerful and as well designed as Windows 2 in 1 and Mac laptops. But as long as iOS does not have multi-application, multi-document, multi-tasking, and multi-device workflows, the Pro is an essential accessory. a main course.