KUALA LUMPUR, July 8 — Trying to understand why someone would want to buy Apple’s latest iPad Pro when you have the great performance of the iPad Air and the relative affordability of the basic iPad, it’s like trying to decide whether you need a fancy folding knife when a box cutter can handle (most of) the work.
Overkill or amazing?
What the new iPad Pros have are the M1 processors, the same one running Apple’s newest MacBooks. On paper, that’s a huge bump in performance but how would you use that processing in the first place?
The answer lies in the iPad’s name: Pro. What would pro users use this for? Who are they? Why would they need a desktop-level processor in tablets? These people would be a very small, very specialised group and Apple, I think, knows that.
Besides artists and the cult favourite drawing app Procreate, the iPad also offers a very portable solution for architects, illustrators and even interior designers.
Laptops, even M1-powered ones, do not have the advantage that tablets have — apps that load almost instantaneously and are extremely portable.
I’d tested some of the more resource-intensive apps on the M1 iPad and for some apps, there didn’t seem to be much difference.
Apps optimised for iOS, including Lumafusion, Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer and Procreate seemed to load up almost instantaneously but ports, usually games, including Divinity Original Sin 2 and Civilisation VI didn’t seem to load much faster, though load time for the notoriously resource-intensive Genshin Impact did see some load time improvement.
Specific featureset
Drawing app Procreate is soon to add the ability to import 3D models and paint them and that’s actually a pretty interesting upgrade.
While Procreate is making the feature available for all iPad models, the M1 chip would make the process a lot smoother.
Sadly Procreate 5.2 isn’t out yet and neither is iOS 15, which will update Swift Playgrounds to allow you to code apps directly on an iPad. I’m looking forward to writing about them once they drop.
In the meantime, there are already 3D apps that can make use of a high-end iPad Pro. For instance, 3D motion capture apps already exist that make use of Apple’s LIDAR scanner for more accurate depth perception and 3D scanning.
There’s a limit to how much 3D work you can do with an iPad. You can’t do, for instance, 3D rigging, animation or rendering.
You can, however, still create 3D models as well as 3D concepts and artwork.
On an ordinary laptop, it would be tedious and you would need a separate tablet and stylus. On an iPad you can immediately draw on a canvas, create and edit 3D models and then display them on a screen to potential clients.
If you want full 3D creation capability in tablet-form, Wacom’s Studio Pro is a full-fledged tablet and pen running on Windows and a high-end Intel processor, but also costs nearly twice as much as the iPad Pro, depending on model.
Is that display really worth the hype?
Much has been written about the 10,000 mini-LED display, 12.9-inch display exclusive, and to be honest, unless your job really requires absolute true blacks perhaps you might be better off waiting for a true OLED screen.
Is the blooming or “halo effect” real? Yes, it is noticeable if you turn your iPad Pro on, in the dark. In ordinary daylight, you won’t really see it unless you are looking out for it.
It’s an undeniably beautiful screen but while Apple makes better tablets, Samsung OLED displays are, I think, superior to the iPad Pro in that respect.
Still it can’t be denied that as far as colour accuracy and brightness are concerned, this is the best display Apple has created for a tablet so far.
I also don’t quite see why Apple couldn’t just put the mini-LED screen on the 11-inch version when I’m sure users would appreciate it just as much.
Can you live with the iPad Pro’s limitations?
As hyped up as Adobe’s products are on the iPad, the reality is the iPad version of Photoshop is not as full-fledged as the full version.
You can do basic editing, work on layers and the like, but quite a few much-used features are still missing from the app which has been a dealbreaker for some artists.
There’s also the limitations that come with iOS that doesn’t allow true multitasking. Sure you can put two apps side-by-side but that doesn’t mean you can run them at the same time — as was my experience with some apps.
For most people the iPad Pro is a little overkill and I’m really not sure who thought white was a great idea for a new keyboard case so no Cheetos were consumed during the review period (the tragedy). White seems the in colour of the year but for most people, perhaps stick to the Black option instead.
The “new” Magic Keyboard is almost the same keyboard but Apple says the old one might not fit as well. Still gorgeous but you might do just as well with Logitech’s much cheaper Combo Touch alternative that also uses Smart Connecters, comes with a trackpad, no Bluetooth needed and thank the gods, does not come in white.
Battery life for me was about 4-5 hours for heavy use days where I would game, noodle around on various apps and watch YouTube or Netflix. The iPad Pro will heat up on GPU-intensive apps so I would suggest gaming with the iPad perched on a stand and/or with a controller.
I did notice some drain when the iPad was left untouched for a couple of days and on lighter use days I could stretch battery life to eight hours, maybe nine if I tweaked brightness settings.
The iPad Pro line remains the best tablets Apple has to offer but as to whether it is the best for you, the answer more often than not will be no unless you can make use of the crazy-fast processor and the colour-true screen.
Meanwhile I’ll be waiting for Apple to finally allow third-party apps to use more RAM so users can finally test the limits of what iOS can really do on an iPad Pro.
The iPad Pro can be found online on the Apple store or at official retailers in either 11-inch of 12.9-inch versions with prices starting from RM3,499.
