iPad Pro (2018)$799 (starting for 11-inch) and $999 (starting for 12.9-inch. The GoodGorgeous design with slim bezelsSpectacular displayAll-day battery lifeInsane performanceHas a USB-C port!The BadReally priceyNo headphone jackRear cameras are worse than previous genAccessories sold separatelyiOS 12 needs better multitaskingThe Bottom LineApple's iPad Pros (2018) are such powerful mobile computers, you'll need to change the way you work to truly get the most out of them. But the thing is, you'll want to.
Cool Factor4
Learning Curve5
Performance5
Bang for the Buck4
You can multitask with features like opening two or three apps at the same time, but with the way they’re designed to work, it’s slower than a traditional windowed-app experience on a Mac or PC. I love having a touchscreen to tap and scroll, but I long for a mouse when I want more precision when I'm doing things like scrubbing through a timeline in a video editing app.
And as vastly improved as the new Apple Pencil is with its ability to magnetically clip onto the iPad Pro and wirelessly charge it, and as great as the Smart Keyboard Folio’s two angle positions are, they cost extra, and they're not necessarily always a better substitute for a tried and true keyboard (with good key travel) and responsive trackpad.
For certain types of creative professionals who will relish the iPad Pro’s desktop-class performance, the iPad Pros paired with an Apple Pencil are well worth the high price tag — the 11-inch starts at $799 and the 12.9-inch starts at $999, respectively, without any accessories — to unlock a new kind of creative and mobile productivity.
The new iPad Pro inspired me to want to do more, to make more, to “Think Different” just like the original Mac did when I sat down in front of its all-in-one design, boxy mouse, and drew in MacPaint for the very first time.
But if you’re just planning to use the iPad Pro to watch videos, browse social media, or play light games like Candy Crush, its potential will be wasted, and any older or cheaper iPad or cheaper brand of tablet will do.
You should only get a new iPad Pro if you’re gonna be pushing its power. Otherwise it’s like getting a sports car and never driving faster than 35 mph — people will ooh and ahh at your shiny new thing, but you’ll return home feeling empty every time.
ALL-NEW DESIGN AND LIQUID RETINA DISPLAY
Not since the iPad Air has the iPad received such a major design overhaul that it changes everything about Apple’s tablet. From the second I touched the new iPad Pros right after their announcement, I knew this was the iPad’s very own iPhone X moment.
On the 11-inch iPad Pro, Apple’s increased the display size (up from 10.5 inches) while maintaining virtually the same footprint as the old model. The iPad Pro I’ve been testing, the 12.9-inch one, is the tablet that feels the most tangibly new.
The all new aluminum body is a cross between an iPhone 5 and the antenna bands from the iPhone 6.
The bezels are slim as the 11-inch and equal on all four sides, but it’s so much easier to handle in your hands. Without a huge “forehead” and “chin” bezels, the 12.9-inch no longer feels like a breakfast tray when you grab it in landscape. In portrait mode, the side bezels are still a reasonable thickness for your thumbs comfortably to rest on.
Both iPad Pros are thinner — the thinnest iOS devices ever — at 0.23 inches (5.9mm) thick, but there’s no flex to them at all. I tried bending my review unit with a moderate amount of pressure and it remained rigid.
The quad speakers are smaller, but louder and clearer.
The buttons are flatter, but no less tactile.
The 11-inch weighs the same 1.03 pounds as the 10.5-inch iPad Pro, but the 12.9-inch model is 0.10 pounds lighter. It’s not something you should notice, but psychologically because the whole device is smaller and thinner it somehow seems much lighter than it really is.
In space gray (there’s no other color for these new iPad Pros), the tablets and their flat sides look like powerful work displays — not your typical lean-back device for binging Netflix. Combined with the rounded corners of the Liquid Retina display, something Apple tells me was developed first for the iPad Pros but launched with the iPhone XR first, the modern industrial design is both futuristic yet familiar.
The corners of the display are now rounded off to match the curvature of the metal body.
DUSTIN DRANKOSKI/MASHABLE
The display itself is arguably Apple’s best LCD in a device ever, even better than the iPhone XR’s screen in my opinion. While it lacks any kind of 3D Touch pressure sensitivity or Haptic Touch vibrational feedback, the Liquid Retina display is still stunning from all viewing angles. Not to mention, it’s really bright, the colors are rich, and the resolution (2,732 x 2,048) is beyond sharp. Its ProMotion feature, which ramps the display refresh rate from 24Hz (for things like reading) all the way up to 120Hz (for things like scrolling and gaming) is a feature of the iPad Pros that I wish the iPhones had.
Beautiful as the screens are, Apple could have went further. The new iPad Pro displays don’t support HDR and as good as the LCD is, it’s no OLED. It’s not a deal-breaker by any means, but whenever I watched Netflix videos with letterboxing (the black bars above and below the content), I cried a little inside that the screen wasn’t OLED so that the bars would be as black as the bezels instead of dark gray.
An OLED display with HDR support would have driven up the price even more, but it would have made the heftier price tag more justifiable.
The TrueDepth camera system enables Face ID.
The rest of the iPad Pro is pure Apple refinement. The buttons are flatter, but they’re no less tactile. The quad speakers are physically smaller, but they’re actually a little bit louder and producer wider and clearer sound. There’s no headphone jack (like you didn’t see that coming?) and I don’t really mind since AirPods are so, so good and good wireless headphones can be in any price range from $25-$500. If you’re not down with wireless, grab a USB-C-to-headphone-jack dongle from Apple for $9.
Tucked into the top bezel (in portrait mode) is a TrueDepth camera system. Just like on iPhone X, XS, XS Max, and XR, the camera system houses the front-facing FaceTime camera, infrared camera, dot projector, flood illuminators, and other sensors like the proximity and ambient light sensors, and a microphone.
It’s super advanced camera tech, but here’s what you need to know: It supports Face ID in any orientation (portrait, landscape, and even some angles in between), it enables Animoji and Memoji (also good for using these during FaceTime video calls), and it takes selfies (more on that later).
Setting up Face ID
It’s mighty impressive Apple was able to get Face ID to work in any orientation and equally baffling why the iPhone X, XS, and XR can’t unlock in any orientation other than portrait. It’s not perfect — I still got some Face ID unlock fails at some angles or if my hand was covering the TrueDepth camera system (iOS warns you if you’re blocking it) — but mostly it successfully worked more times than on my iPhone XS.
The luddites will bemoan the loss of Touch ID (even though it’s inaccurate and false that it’s less secure than Face ID), but I didn’t miss it one bit. I’ve moved on to Face ID and only those who have never used it will never understand how much better it is for things like unlocking the device, authenticating Apple Pay purchases, and entering saved passwords.
Goodbye Lightning, and hello The biggest change besides the design and Face ID is the USB-C port. Yes, my friend, Apple has killed the Lightning port on an iOS device for the first time.
Switching from Lightning to USB-C means all of your existing cables won’t work and you’ll have to buy new ones if you don’t already own some, but the advantages of the universal port are worth the swap.
For one, the new iPad Pros can charge using the same USB-C cable and power adapter as the ones that come with any of Apple’s MacBooks (that include the MacBook, MacBook Pros, and the new MacBook Air). Hurray for less crap to travel with!
Another reason USB-C’s more versatile than Lightning: It’s easier to connect the iPad Pros to an external monitor (up to 5K resolution) and to accessories like a DSLR camera. Just by changing the port, Apple’s essentially made the iPad Pros more like a laptop computer than previous iPads have ever been.
As much as I hate dongles, it’s so great to not have to buy a special Lightning-to-USB dongle to connect to download photos from my SD cards directly to the Photos app. I used the same accessories I use for my 12-inch MacBook: an SD card reader plugged into a USB-A-to-USB-C adapter that came with an old Pixel phone, and voilà, downloaded all my photos without having to spend another penny.
Not to mention, with a USB-C-to-Lightning cable, the new iPad Pro’s have USB-PD (power delivery) and can charge another device like an iPhone at 7.5 watts. I mean, bumming a charge off an iPad Pro is a good reason to choose an iPad Pro to bring with you on a flight instead of a MacBook.
The possibilities with USB-C are endless… if Apple builds around it. Right now, crucial accessories that would make the iPad Pros more computer-like such as hard drives and USB flash drives do nothing when you plug them into the tablets. With no Finder or proper file system, there’s just no way to read the files on these storage devices.
It really seems like a no-brainer for the Files app to be able to do this and I’m praying Apple adds support for external storage drives in an upcoming iOS 12 update or iOS 13.
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