It’s Apple’s biggest tablet bet ever, quite literally. The idea that a tablet can make the leap from the consumption space to the creation space – from casual productivity tasks and gaming to a serious productivity companion – is at the root of the iPad Pro. But does that mean that the iPad Pro can replace both your laptop and tablet to become the sole computing device in your home? We’ve spent a month juggling the iPad Pro to answer just this.
What Is It?
If you look at it simplistically, the iPad Pro is a much larger (12.9 to the iPad Air’s 7.9-inches) iPad, and it practically dwarfs the seemingly diminutive iPad mini. You can buy the 32GB variant for Rs 67,900, and there’s an optional, but pretty much essential, Smart Keyboard case for a hefty Rs 14,900, but it doesn’t require batteries. Instead it connects via a new smart connector to the iPad Pro, and adds very little bulk to the iPad Pro. Flip it up and out, and you get a single propped-up position to watch movies or hammer away at the keyboard. If you’re into any amount of sketching or illustration, need to sign or annotate documents or prefer your meeting notes hand-written, consider adding in the Pencil (Rs 8,600) as well.
Key Specifications: Apple iPad Pro
- Processor: A9X chip with 64-bit architecture with M9 motion coprocessor
- Display: 12.9-inch 2732x2048 resolution LED-backlit widescreen Multi-Touch display
- Camera: 8MP/1080p iSight rear camera with ƒ/2.4 aperture and five-element lens and 1.2MP/720p front camera with f/2.2 aperture
- Sensors: TouchID, 3-axis gyro, accelometer, barometer, ambient light sensor
- Battery: Built-in 38.5-watt-hour rechargeable lithium-polymer battery
- Video/Audio formats: see http://www.apple.com/in/ipad-pro/specs/
- Dimensions: 220.6 x 305.7 x 6.9 mm / weight 713 g
- Price and Capacity: Rs 67,900 (32GB Wi-Fi), Rs 79,900 (128GB Wi-Fi), Rs 91,900 (128GB Wi-Fi + Cellular)
What’s Good?
It’s an iPad on steroids, which means it does things the iPad Air does even better. This is a performance beast by any measure, and it shows – apps launch instantly, multi-tasking between apps is quick and without any lag and every app you loved on the earlier iPads works faster on this one. Web browsing, in particular, benefits immensely with the 4GB of RAM under the hood, and you can have many tabs open and multitask with other apps without having to reload web pages all the time. Email and social tools benefit with the extra screen real estate, but where it shines is office apps, thanks to the Smart Keyboard. Typing is comfortable and the keyboard is mighty responsive, and there’s the bonus keyboard shortcuts for often used functions. If you don’t like the iWork office suite, you will have to pony up cash for an Office 365 subscription to use Office apps on the bigger iPad.
The bigger high-resolution screen benefits split-screen multi-tasking and movies, and if you love reading magazines or comics on an iPad, you’re in for a treat! But the real multimedia treat lies in the four-speaker setup on the Pro, one for each corner. It makes a huge difference to audio when watching movies, playing games or just listening to music.
The Pencil is a bit of a hard sell for the average buyer, but having used it for notetaking in Evernote or sketching in Paper, we can vouch for the fact that it is incredibly accurate and the palm rejection functionality works very well too. The Pencil’s pressure sensitivity allows for pretty spectacular pen and paint brush effects, or for stylised calligraphy.…if you can call our attempt that.
What’s Bad?
It’s super thin and light for its size, but the sheer size makes it a bit cumbersome for carrying around everywhere, and in portrait mode, it’s simply too tall for comfort. Another design oddity is how little Apple has integrated the Pencil with the Pro experience – there’s no place to stow or attach the Pencil when you’re travelling, which means you run the risk of losing it if you’re not using it! Worse still, it sticks out awkwardly from the Lightning port when it’s charging, which is just plain scary – unlike a plain HB Pencil, this is one pricey Pencil to break.
The screen, while gorgeous, lacks the 3D Touch we’re growing to love on the iPhone 6S. Also, while we’re nitpicking, the layout of the home screen is bordering on the ridiculous in terms of the sheer amount of wasted space. Several apps haven’t been optimised for the larger screen yet, and while this is an issue for developers to address, these apps are such an eyesore on an otherwise highly refined user experience.
But if you do the maths – a 128GB model (32GB just isn’t enough for long-term use) along with the Smart Keyboard itself will set you back by Rs 95,000 – that’s more than what you would pay for an extremely competent MacBook Air or a touchscreen Windows 10 laptop. They might be a shade heavier, but both run an arguably more “productive” desktop class operating system.
Why Buy it?
This is, without a doubt, a great iPad, and the multitasking and multimedia features make for an excellent all-day companion. But it is hobbled by the same weaknesses as any other iOS device – no USB ports, no torrent download clients – stuff that you take for granted on any laptop, Windows or Mac. Is it enough to get work done, though? In most cases – browsing the web, taking meeting notes, writing this story, editing photos – the answer is a firm yes. But it’s the edge cases that you can achieve with a laptop that you should consider before picking the Pro up.
(Tushar Kanwar is a technology columnist and commentator and has been contributing for the past 15 years to India’s leading newspapers and magazines. He can be reached on Twitter: @2shar.)
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