Apple iPad Pro 2020 vs. Microsoft Surface Book 3: Full comparison By CNET

Living in an industry, that's all about moving fast and breaking things. The good old traditional laptop has proven remarkably resilient to change, but the last few years have seen interesting, hybrid devices like your iPad Pro your Surface Book 3 become increasingly viable alternative to clamshell laptops like a MacBook Pro or a Dell XPS, but which one of these two is more likely to be the future of laptops and, more importantly, which one is better for you to buy right now. So these devices have a bunch of different names, some call them hybrids, some call them transformers some call them two-in-ones, but basically they're devices that are both laptops and tablets, and there are kinds of two main ways that companies go about making them. First, you have devices like the iPad Pro, it's a standalone tablet and a really powerful one at that, and you can attach it to a case with a keyboard, and now you've got a laptop and apple upped. The ante really significantly in May with this the magic keyboard. So until May, all the keyboards were just keyboards, but now you have a trackpad too, so obviously even visually.

It's less distinguishable from a laptop than ever before. The iPad Pro plays this game exceptionally well, but it's definitely not the only one. In fact, it was really Microsoft that helped popularize this type of machine. With the Surface Pro line which has been releasing every year since 2013. , then you have your other type of hybrid, which takes a laptop and turns itself into a tablet.

So you have your laptop you've got your screen over here, and then it rotates around the keyboard, and then you get yourself a media. Little tablet the Surface Book.3 does this differently. You can detach the screen from the laptop base, giving you a standalone tablet. This feature is pretty sweet and right now you can only get it on a Surface Book. Obviously these devices are really different.

It's really not an apples to apples comparison, it's really more, like an apple to Microsoft, comparison but yeah, fantastic, jokes aside, these devices are quite different. The iPad is more of a slick, ultraportable slate and the Surface Book, while still being like, exceptionally designed. It's really more of a powerhouse, that's bigger and bulkier, and that's evident just looking at the specs. Almost all the configurations for the Surface Book 3 have an Intel Core, i7 and a dedicated graphics card, whereas the iPad Pro has apple's a12, z chip, which is perfect, but it's really more of a mobile processor than a full-blown laptop processor. This may be even more evident in the price.

The 13.5 inch serviceable three starts at sixteen hundred dollars, but that only gets you an i5 processor and integrated graphics. Really, if you're going to splurge this much you'd want to spend two grand and that'll get you 16 gigabytes of ram and i7 and, more importantly, NVIDIA graphics. Now compare that with iPad Pro. The 11-inch starts at 7.99, that's for 128, gigabytes of storage and all of them come with six gigabytes of ram. But then you want to add on 300 on top of that for the magic keyboard.

So if we're talking about eleven hundred dollars versus sixteen hundred but really two thousand dollars, but that's talking entry level, what happens if you max the specs out? Well, an iPad Pro 12.9 inch, one terabyte with cellular and a magic keyboard will cost you 2 grand. Then you have your Surface Book 3 for business, which has 2 terabytes of storage and an NVIDIA squadron graphics trip for really intense work that will cost you 3 700. So you don't need to tell me in the comments I know they're different. So why are we comparing these two? Well, one of the major marketing points of both is that they're, not traditional computers? This is especially true of apple. If you go on this website on the iPad Pro section, you'll see apple tells you your next computer is not a computer.

So how do these? Not computers fare both of these? Not computers are awesome in their own way, but they also make compromises in their own way, which one is better, is really more of a question of which is better for you. Historically, iPads have been consumption devices good for watching Netflix, reading, books, etc. , etc. , and just because the ipad pro has in its name doesn't really change that yes, peripherals and accessories make this more like a laptop, but where the iPad Pro shines, like really shines, is still in viewing content rather than making content. It's not that the iPad Pro can only do these things except the iPad Pro.

Does these things exceptionally well for me personally, a lot of what I do on a laptops device is read and watch stuff, and I would rather do both of those things on the iPad Pro over the Surface Book 3, and there are three main reasons for that. First is the size of the tablet itself at 13.5 inches the Surface Book is a bit unwieldy. It's a bit clumsy to find the right position to be able to read or even watch something for a long period of time. You do get a bit of that problem with the 12.9-inch iPad, but you get a lot more of that problem with the 15-inch Surface Book. Second, is the display itself? I'm a huge fan of the Surface Book.3 screens it's 3000 by 2000, which is a 3 2 ratios which is awesome, and it's sharp and crisp, and I love it, but I love the iPad Pro screen just a bit more. These blacks are deeper and, as a result, the colors are richer.

The third reason is the speakers. So this isn't really a pro with the iPad Pro as much as it is a con with the Surface Book 3. Although the iPad does have very good speakers, the Surface Book 3 speakers are just way too soft. They sound decent, there's, not a problem with the quality. It's just that they're really, really soft.

Not only are the speakers in the iPad Pro much louder, the speakers in my iPhone are also louder, so there you have it. This watch is already running the public beta of watch list 7, and I'm just going to go ahead and dive right in to sleep tracking, because, obviously the recommended amount is eight hours. That's not realistic for me, but I'm just going to go ahead and set it up like that. This is what my schedule looks like my bedtime is 11 p. m, and my wake-up is 7 am now I don't know.

Another reason why I generally found the iPad to be a bit more satisfying to use than the Surface Book is the fact that the iPad has a dedicated operating system, so last year apple unveiled iPadOS a dedicated operating system for the iPad. It's not quite there, yet there's still some things that need to be improved on and some potential that's yet to be realized, but it's still better than Windows 10 for tablets. So Windows 10 is great for the Surface Book when you're using it as a laptop, but when it's in tablet mode, it's not quite as fluid or smooth a lot of that has to do with the app store. So by now the app store and the Google Play Store they're kind of not terribly exciting, but it's definitely a case of you. Don't know what you got until it's gone, because the Microsoft store pales in comparison.

The Microsoft store does have some essentials like Facebook, Instagram and so on, and it's also got a lot of Microsoft's own apps, like skype and, of course, Office 365. , but outside that it hasn't got really anything else now. Obviously, when you're using the Surface Book as a laptop, that's not really a problem at all, because Windows 10 is an excellent operating system for laptops, desktops computers. It just means that as a tablet, things are a little more clumsy, more awkward and take a few more steps than they. Otherwise, should it's not a dealbreaker? It's simply that as a tablet.

It can't compare to the iPad Pro, but once we start talking about productivity, that's where things shift into the Surface Book, three's favor, so iPadOS feels great to use and certainly accessories like the magic keyboard. Let you get more productivity out of your iPad, but really when it comes to workflow, it can't really compare to a fully fledged windows.10 devices like the Surface Book 3. So a key reason for that is that a lot of the apps you'll find on the iPad are not the fully fledged versions you'd find on a desktop windows or even mac, so, for instance, adobe photoshop, adobe, famously and too much height brought photoshop to the iPad last year and though it has a lot of the functionality, it doesn't have all the functionality, which means that if you're a pro you'll need a laptop to work with the iPad and the iPad can't really replace a laptop, I'm, not an artist. But I did have personal experience with this with say: Google Docs, so Google Docs is good enough for me to use on the iPad for 90 of my job. However, the iPad app version of Google Docs doesn't let you see comments left by your editor, which, in my case, are a lot, because I'm terrible and right at the same time.

So when I was amending suggestions, I had to see the suggestions in read mode and then fix them in write mode uh again that only comes up with like 10 of my workflow, but it's important enough for me to just switch to a laptop. The iPad Pro does a lot of productivity stuff really well, if you're an office worker or a creative there's, a good chance, you can do a lot or even most, of your job on an iPad Pro. But at the moment you probably can't do all of your job on an iPad Pro. So that brings us to graphical power. This Surface Book is actually rather unusual.

It's a 13-inch laptop 13.5-inch laptop with a dedicated graphics card. It's got an NVIDIA GTX 1650 max q card, which is really like. I said unusual for a 13-inch laptop. That means on this. You can do a lot more than your average 13-inch laptop and certainly your average tablet, namely video editing and gaming, so that graphical power will really benefit two groups of people.

Firstly, obviously gamers uh, the Surface Book three will let you play most mainstream games. Organ mainstream games, but you'll need to turn the settings down on a few, but that's still pretty good for a laptop of the size. You'll also be able to do some light. Video editing, I'm going to stop there for just a moment and say that a lot of the pros I just listed don't really apply to the 15 inch in the same way, because while the 13 inch is overpowered compared to its 13-inch competitors, the 15-inch is a little under powered. But you can read CNN's full review on that to see more now, it's not that the iPad is under powered and in fact, uh the CPU of the iPad benchmarked similarly to the CPU in the Surface Book 3, which is crazy, and a lot of that is because Microsoft used a lower wattage processor because it lives in the screen and not the laptop base, but either way.

The iPad is certainly not an under powered device. It's just in a different league power wise to the Surface Book 3, and it should be because the Surface Book 3 is anywhere from 1 000 to 1500 more expensive than the iPad Pro. But there is one hardware spec that could end up being a big deal for apple, which the Microsoft Surface book currently doesn't have and that's AR the 2020 iPad Pro. In addition to two rear cameras, also has a LIDAR sensor, which is essentially a depth sensor which helps with AR apps, so Apple's been investing really heavily in AR right. Now, it's not that big of a deal no apps have really broken through and become widely useful, but you know who knows I'm going to bind right now, because I really like both of these products.

The Surface Book is powerful. It has one of the best keyboards I've ever used, and its detachable screen is big and beautiful. However, the iPad Pro has a screen, that's even better, and it's got that it just works feeling that comes with apple's best products. The iPad Pro is actually maybe my favorite device out there, but at the same time, it's hard to recommend as a laptop replacement. I'm really more excited about these two about the future of the iPad and iPadOS and, if you're looking for a complement to your laptop and workflow.

This is about as good as it gets. I love this device, but if you're talking about one device, if you had to choose one, I would go with the service book 3. So which one of these excites you more. Are you more interested in the ultraportable iPad or the desktop replacement Surface Book 3. ? Can you hear your thoughts? Let us know in the comments below, and I'll see you next time.

Source : CNET