Apple iPad Pro (2018) - Hands On Review By Digital Trends

Here it is, this is Apple's 2018 iPad Pro Apple is marketing it as a laptop killer. Now, we've only spent about four days with it, so we haven't been able to truly test if it can replace your laptop, but we've spent enough time to be able to say things we like and don't like so far. So, let's check it out. The iPad Pro comes in two sizes. This year the 12.9 inch and an 11 inch. So this is the twelve point.

Nine and she can see its massive Apple actually said compared to last year's twelve point: nine-inch iPad Pro this one is 25% less volume and 15% thinner. So how did they exactly do that? You can see they slimmed down the bezels around those edges, so they're, much slimmer overall, and it just prevents, provides much cleaner, look very similar to what they did with the iPhone 10s and the iPhone 10 compared to I phone eight, for example. So you have slimmer bezels. You also have a much thinner frame. So if you look on the sides, this is completely super thin laptop, and it does feel very lightweight.

Despite its massive size, one thing Apple did change. Is the smart connector used to be on the bottom here, but now it's over on the back right here. It doesn't really change much in the sense of usability it still attaches to this new smart connector we've got to do is plop it on does give you two new options to four angles. You can do a little more upright if you're working on your lap or a little more of an angle with your on desk or something like that. Quick word on the smart Keyboard we're not fans of the tech, Millet e of the keys, but it gets the job done.

There's no trackpad which we would have liked or Mouse support for iOS, but we'll get to that later. So, going back to those slimmer, bezels and the redesign one of the things that Apple did is they removed the home button here? So you no longer have a touch ID system to unlock the iPad. Instead, there's a face ID sensor, similar to the iPhone 10s and iPhone 10, and it's all over here, but as you can see it's pointing if I get cover this here, you can see there's an arrow that sort of says the cameras over the hair. So you want to sort of make sure you're in front of the tablet and your face is in general right in front of it, so it can't unlock so if I soon as I look at the camera here, it unlocked, and you can get right in and that actually works in any orientation. So if I flip this to portrait mode, I can easily just look in right directly at it and a lock and go right into the home screen face.

I'd works well, and it's pretty easy to get access into the iPad, and we don't really miss touch ID at all. Now over on the sides, you have the power button over here the volume rocker here and a SIM card slot here for cellular connectivity and if you'll notice around the edges, there's actually no headphone jack port. This is something that they're found a little annoying because we're traditionally using a 3.5 millimeter, headphone jacks. You won't really have a problem. If you have Bluetooth wireless earbuds around, you can easily connect them to the iPad Pro and listen to music and listen to videos and all sorts of things like that.

But having the utility of a headphone jack is still worthwhile. I. Think and we'd really have liked to see that here and over on the edge. There is something new, however, Apple has ditched the lightning port and for the first time, installed a USB connector on the side here, so that opens up the iPad to a host of other things that you can do with it, and we'll get more to that soon, and we don't have the 11-inch iPad Pro, but we do have last year's 10.5-inch iPad Pro, and you can see that this is what essentially, the differences in size will be, because the 11-inch iPad Pro is very similar to the 10.5-inch iPad Pro. You are getting the slightly bigger screen size because Apple has reduced the bezels at the top and the bottom getting rid of the home button in the newer one, but the 11-inch iPad Pro will still retain almost the same size and form factor of this one right here.

So you're you basically looking something similar to this in terms of comparing it with the other 11-inch iPad Pro and the 12 point 9 inches of my pet pro. One of our favorite changes, however, is the Apple Pencil. This is the second-generation Apple Pencil, and it's not glossy anymore. It's basically completely matte, so it feels much more like a normal pencil to hold. You also have this flat side here and that's because the Apple Pencil now magnetically just sort of connects to the iPad Pro, and you can see that little mark there saying it's paired, and it's charging, so it wirelessly charges and it also automatically just is a great place to be able to store it, because otherwise, you just sort of left it lying around, and it would just be very easy to forget it.

So this only works on this one side right here, so you won't be able to connect it anywhere else on the other sides of the iPad Pro. The pencil itself is the same great pencil in terms of pressure sensitivity. You can, you know, draw as hard as you like to get darker colors and put more pressure just exactly like drawing in real life. It's very accurate, there's very minimal latency when you're drawing as well. It's absolutely a joy to use and this new functionality of just attaching it to the iPad Pro really does elevate the experience of the iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil second generation.

The downside is, though, that this Apple Pencil does not work with any of the old iPad pros, and the old Apple Pencil does not work with this new iPad Pro. So if you have an Apple Pencil lying around, and you wanted to get this new iPad Pro, you have to upgrade to this one, and the price has also jumped from ninety-nine dollars to a hundred and nineteen dollars for this new generation one. So it is a bit of a downside, especially if you have the old one lying around, but we think it's definitely worth it if you're getting this iPad and you are interested in drawing or sketching or maybe even taking notes with a pencil. It's an absolute excellent necessity to get that Apple Pencil to pair with the iPad Pro Apple Pencil does have a new feature. Basically, you can double tap on it on the bottom area to swap between the pencil or the eraser.

So, for example, if you're writing in the Notes app just double tap, and it'll automatically swap to the eraser, and you can erase and double tap to go back now. This has to be supported by third-party developers. So if you go into a third-party app, for example like sketches, you know I double tap, there's nothing really happening, because the app developer has an added support yet, but we think most app developers will add support very soon and there's also a couple options. You can switch between current tool and eraser. You can switch between current tool and last used.

So there's another option right there and there's also an option to show the color palette, and we've already seen some other third-party developer. Adding supports procreate, for example, will allow you to even double tap to zoom in or zoom out of something you're working on. So it's pretty neat feature that adds a bit more. You versatility to the Apple Pencil Apple said this is the iPad as always wanting to build, and we can see why this is one of the best iPads we've ever seen. Apple creates the front.

The slim down, bezels, perfect, give off a modern look over on the back. This matte texture really feels nice. It's very lightweight. The flat edges also help with grip. It also kinds of kind of reminds us of a Microsoft Surface laptop, but overall we were pretty happy with the design here we do it's not perfect, though we do think that Apple maybe went a little too strong with the magnets.

We are a little worried, sometimes when we're holding this you know shuffling in between bags and just walking around with it. Sometimes we have. You know push this to the point of where it sort of dangles like this, and it hasn't actually fallen yet so that's good, but it does keep us worrying about the Apple Pencil, but it will actually lose it or if it will fly off one point and the magnets on the smart Keyboard little may be too strong, often times when we're walking around or trying to put this together, trying to quickly throw it into a bag. Some of these magnets are a bit too strong to sort of pull away and would put a lot of force into it and sort of just Springs away, and they out the pencils sometimes does the same thing it did before, where we accidentally hit it and it sort of gets knocked down like this, like it's currently doing, so it doesn't feel as polished as it could be, but it's very, very close. Overall, we were very happy with the design here of yeah ed pro.

The iPad Pro screen is absolutely amazing. It's colorful, vibrant, sharp, the twelve point. Nine-inch iPad Pro has a screen resolution of 2732 by 2048, and the 11-inch model has 23 88 by 60 and 68 resolution, either way you're getting super high-res sharp screens. They look absolutely great, but the highlight here again with the iPad Pro series is the pro motion technology essentially you're, getting a hundred and twenty Hertz screen. Now it's not 120 Hertz all the time.

It's mostly when there's something going on that deems worthy of it. When you're playing games you'll see that if app developers up added support, you can see a more fluid gameplay, for example, but also just in general, using apps like Twitter. You just be able to see that fluidity and just moving throughout the operating system because of that much higher refresh rate on the screen and just makes for a much more joyful experience of using the iPad Pro Apple's iPad Pro is powered by the 12x Bionic processor. It's a slight improvement over the processor in the iPhone 10s and 10s Mac's. But basically you won't have any performance issues here.

At all, games run incredibly smooth, we've thrown all sorts of work, intensive tasks at it. Even exporting and editing files with Lightroom haven't had any issues at all haven't yet to see a stutter. So we think most people will be more than satisfied with the performance here. Perhaps even it's been overkill. Another thing we are making a lot of use of is using this USB connector SD card reader to plug it into the iPad, something that we've used on other devices.

Android phones, especially to quickly get some photos uploaded and edited, and on the go basically as soon as you plug it in you get Apple photos opens up, allows you to import those photos from your DSLR. So, for example, if I just say choose this photo right here or say: if we just import anyone, we imported this a couple of minutes ago. See that photo right here, and what's great is you can also just jump into Lightroom or whatever editing app? You want to use, and you can easily just add that photo and do all the work that you would traditionally would do, and you can also use the Apple Pencil to tweak things, and you know just do your traditional workflow or that you would on a laptop or desktop. It's pretty great way to work. We think the USB edition is definitely a win-win for everyone, because it just opens up the iPad to a lot more.

We also connected it with this USB see two Ethernet jack right here, basically you're connecting it over here, the USB-C port, and you plug in an Ethernet jack, and you get much faster internet speeds. If you haven't even to check lying around, we didn't know that would work, but we were very happy that it did. There are reports that some things don't work. For example, USB, see external storage devices. Apple said: that's because there's no file system in iOS to properly handle that, but they did say that if you have a storage device with an app as long as you have that app installed once you plug it in it should sort of pop up, and it should work.

So it just really depends on if there's an app to go along with that external storage device that uses the USB-C connector iPad Pro runs iOS 12 out of the box, it's very similar to iOS on the iPhone. You will notice some differences, for example this dock right here, if you're an in-app. The first thing and I happened, you'll see that dock, so you can quickly access most used apps and any app that you set here on the left side and if you keep swiping up you'll get recent apps that you can quickly scroll through, and these gestures are sort of recently introduced. Basically, you can act as a control center at the top right very similar to iOS, and your notification bar top iOS 12 on an iPad is very easy to use. Everything is pretty accessible, and you also have the most tablet: optimized apps, compared to any other operating system out there.

You won't find this kind of rich tablet, content for compared to an Android apps, for example, and even just in general, apps like email, for example. You get the split view, and can do more with pulling in apps to drag them here. So you can get the split screen mode, and you can sort of do other things with it like have it hover over apps, and you know, there's potentially more that Apple could do to get more multitasking content here. But overall, this is pretty great as a tablet experience. But it's when you sort of dock it into a keyboard and sort of try to start using it as a laptop replacement that things get a little finicky.

It's not that you can't perform, or it's not that it can't do the tests that you kind of wanted to do it's just not as intuitive or as comfortable as say using a laptop or something with a mouse. A mouse support would go a long way in making everything a lot easier and faster to work on the iPad, otherwise you're constantly using your fan to move around throughout the operating system and when you're trying to get work done- and you know typing especially moving that cursor around can be not as precise as say using a mouse overall. What we're saying is you know: Apple should really add Mouse support into iOS so that we can use a mouse with the iPad Pro, because it would help us get a lot more work done. I OS still has other limitations, and we're still sort of testing this out to see how much we can use this as a full-on laptop replacement, and we'll share more on that soon. The 11-inch iPad Pro starts at $7.99 and the twelve point nine-inch iPad Pro starts at $9.99. This can go up way, higher and twice almost past $2,000, because you can get different storage options up to two terabytes.

So should you buy it? The iPad Pro is an excellent device for a lot of things. You can use it as an excellent multimedia device at home, walking around with it at home with a tablet. Interface is amazing, because there's so many tablets, optimized apps, drawing with it with the Apple Pencil, is also a lot of fun, and it's also feasible to get a lot of work done on this device. You might still want to use a laptop or desktop to get some more intensive work done as we found iOS to be a little limiting, but we still think it's definitely a worthwhile investment, and we're going to continue testing it over the next few weeks to see how much we like using it as a laptop.

Source : Digital Trends