iPad Pro, 2018 review: incredible speed, but iOS is limited

Traveling with an iPad Pro is not new to me. I used the Previous iPad Pro as the main suburban computer and, before that, other iPads. They are perfect for quick reading, communicating, writing on a keyboard and … for me, that's about it all.

Do not forget that I am on the New Jersey Transit train for at least 45 minutes each way. (With the recent construction delays, it takes almost an hour and a half.) On my ride, I try to work. To date, the productivity of the iPad and its multitasking workflow have been limited, making it a difficult device for me to replace my laptop. But I managed in my journey, choosing portability on a laptop.

Now I'm going with the 2018 Pro iPad 2018 12.9 inch 2018. I write this review about it. It has an excellent keyboard, but could use a trackpad. It has a big screen looking like a laptop. It's more portable than the latest version. But that does not solve the last things I need to make a real laptop. Is it important? Is it close enough? And if I do not sketch or edit photos, is this product even for me?

Welcome to the iPad Pro 2018.

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Editor's note: We are reviewing our impressions of the new iPad Pro after a few days of use. The ratings will be added once the battery tests, benchmarking and additional USB-C accessory tests have been completed.

An artist tool that requires more software updates

The new iPad Pro is winning huge gains on its predecessor: it's amazingly fast, the USB-C, a much better pencil design, easy connection with Face ID and more screen even more crowded in a more compact design. From a purely material point of view, it's a knockout – and a beautiful fall, to begin with.

But the iPad Pro is not yet flexible enough. The browser is not the same as an office-level experience, which can complicate the work with Web tools. No touchpad on the optional keyboard and no mouse support make editing text tedious. In addition, iOS has not changed enough. This sounds a lot too much like an evolution of the iPhone, instead of a fully-evolved desktop. And the current crop of available apps does not yet exploit this awesome new material. A real version of Photoshop is on the bridge d & # 39; Adobefor example, but it will only be available in 2019. (I took a quick look and look great, but it has not happened yet.)

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Despite these disadvantages, this new material will cost you a lot. The price of the iPad has increased to $ 799 for the 11-inch version with 64 GB, compared with $ 649 last year for the 10.5-inch. The 12.9-inch version costs $ 999 for 64GB of storage. My high end review unit, with a crazy 1TB SSD and a cellphone, is $ 1,899. Add in the Apple Pencil new and improved (Its price has risen from $ 99 to $ 129), this sleek new Smart Folio keyboard case ($ 179 USD or $ 199 instead of $ 159 USD) and the new USB-C dongles and headphone adapters you'll need, and it's an expensive iPad.

As exciting and noteworthy as this constant evolution of the iPad Pro is, it is also frustrating at first, especially considering the price you pay. It echoes the familiar model of Apple's 2018 iPhones: faster and bigger screens, higher prices. In six or twelve months, if Apple and third-party developers continue to invest in the evolution of IOS and expand the universe of available accessories, the potential of this incredible device will be fully to be exploited. In the meantime, it is rather a niche product for artists and creatives who want to live within their limits. If you want to get a glimpse of the creative possibilities at a much lower cost, I recommend the much cheaper one. iPad's entry-level 9.7-inch (which works with your old pencil or the Logitech Pencil, as well).

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Welcome to the iPad X

The new iPad Pro looks like a great iPhone X. In many ways, it really looks like a great iPhone X or XS super powerful.

Face ID hits the iPad, without the notch: It has a face ID and the same TrueDepth front camera. Whatever you can do with the iPhone XS, XS Max or XR and its front camera, you can do it here. Depth-based portrait photos have the same appearance as the iPhone, and Animoji and Memoji as well as other depth-sensing RAs can be used. The facial identity is almost invisible. The camera now fits perfectly into the narrower frame on the edge. It's hard even to remember where he is sometimes.

The camera works in landscape and portrait mode and quickly recognized me. Face ID seems to be more suited to tablets and even better to laptops, but Apple has not yet introduced it on Macs. I sometimes had to lean or lift the iPad to connect to an app or pay for something on iTunes. It is there that face recognition can become boring with Touch ID.

In addition, the face ID is only designed for a user. He underlines the still outstanding lack of multi-user support on iPads. For families or people sharing an iPad, there is no way to store multiple connections unless you convince Face ID to accept the face of someone else. "alternative appearance."

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Beautiful makeover: No doubt about it, this iPad is pretty. The two new sizes fit more screens in less space, in different ways. The 11-inch Pro incorporates a larger screen in a case that is similar in size to the 10.5-inch version of last year. The 12.9-inch shrinks the body of the larger Pro from last year and keeps the same screen size, and the difference is spectacular. The glasses are pretty and small, and Face ID fits perfectly. It's a perfect look … except for the lack of headphone jack.

An amazing screen: The iPad Pro display is charming. This is an LCD and not OLED, and its rounded corners are designed in the same way as the iPhone XR LCD screen. The screen can reach 120 Hz as last year, which is paying in regular scrolling, and sometimes in games and animation. It's brilliant and the colors are superb. Technically, the iPhone XS OLED outperforms it in detail, but it is just as good or better than the screen of the iPad Pro from last year. And having a slim tablet that is almost all screen makes an attractive update.

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Audio booming: The speakers have a fantastic sound. Crisp and noisy. The iPad last year looked awesome too. Now the speakers are resonating so loud that all the iPad vibrates at full power. It's like you're holding a speaker. If nothing else, the iPad Pro is a killer TV.

USB-C input, Lightning output and headphone jack: Yes, it happened. As rumor, Apple has abandoned its Lightning connector on the new iPad Pro and under-bed in USB-C. It means an incremental transition that is both frustrating and potentially changing. More on that later.

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But Apple has also followed its worst instincts of iPhone design and dropped the standard 3.5 mm headphone jack. As with the iPhone, you can buy a $ 9 dongle (USB-C to 3.5mm), but you will then cut the only port. And because the iPhone still uses Lightning, you will not be able to exchange headset adapters between this and this new iPad Pro.

IOS Navigation on iPad Pro: Welcome to swipeland

The scan gestures of the iPhone X are now on the iPad, for the most part intact. Swipe up allows access to the home screen. Dragging from the corner opens the Control Center. The old iPad OS had some similarities. Now, some new wrinkles appear. You open the application dock by sliding a little up and holding it, which can be confusing. Dragging up shows all open applications, including those that remain in shared screen association, as before. Since the iPad version of iOS already indicated the orientation of the language of the iPhone X, the continuous jump is not debatable.

But would I have liked more novelties for the iPad Pro to feel even more like on a PC? Yes, I would have. Multitasking continues to improve from year to year, but it's still not as fluid as I would have liked for my workflow.

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Speaking of workflow: let's talk about shortcuts. What used to be called Workflow now belongs to Apple Shortcut App, offering ways to create macros and link actions together and link them to Siri commands. I think Apple is targeting shortcuts to improve productivity, improve things and not feel limited by iOS. I did not spend a lot of time in shortcuts – I'm not a big macro user or an IFTTT programmer (if that, then). But maybe that could help. I would prefer that if iOS just allowed me to have multiple items simultaneously, view more information on the home screen and perform multiple tasks that way. The iPad Pro promises a lot of power, but it does not allow me to easily access this power.

For comparison, I quickly jumped on an old Chromebook to save certain attachments, fill out a form, write to someone and attach the files. Just a little daily work. Simple on a Chromebook, but it's harder to do the same on an iPad Pro.

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Pencil: A big improvement – but you'll have to buy a new one

The first Apple pencil was good to use but had a host of annoyances, especially its awkward loading method "save it in the Lightning port of the iPad". The new Pencil has refined the solution with an elegant magnetic inductive load. It attaches directly to a panel at the edge of the iPad Pro. By giving him a place to charge, much like the AirPodsThis means that your pencil will probably be ready as needed instead of rolling somewhere and probably exhausted. New also: a capacitive sensor double strikes on the bottom third of the iPad, which allows for a single action. Applications must activate it individually: iOS 12 does not use it, except in the Notes application.

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But no matter who can take notes – how's the new pencil to draw and draw? I met the New Yorker and CBS News cartoonist and journalist, Liza Donnelly, to see what she thought about it. She worked with the iPad and The Paper application of 53 do live sketches at news events, creating journalism on the fly. Watching her work, I realized how good Pencil was.