iPad Pro Review (2018): Am I wrong, or is Apple?

As is so often the case, Apple nails the physical design. The new iPad Pro eschews the curved edges and rounded glass of the iPhone XS: instead, it offers crisp lines and Bauhaus restraint. Some devices you just want to pick up and use, simply for the commingled pleasure of actually holding them. The new iPad Pro is one such object.

At 5.9mm thick, and 1.4 pounds in WiFi + Cellular form, it's unexpectedly comfortable to hold. Of course, add the Smart Keyboard Folio, and that thickness increases considerably. The 12-megapixel rear camera, also borrowing technology like Smart HDR and 4K video recording from the iPhone XS, protrudes slightly, though not if you have the Folio attached.

Apple nails the physical design

Screen bezels are still present, though much reduced from before. It makes the biggest difference on the 12.9-inch version, which always looked comically huge and unwieldy before. We're not quite at Apple's much-quoted goal of the tablet equivalent of a piece of paper, but we're the closest we've been so far.

The display itself is a Liquid Retina panel, Apple borrowing the nomenclature it introduced for the LCD-based iPhone XR. Like the smartphone, the iPad Pro uses carefully masked pixels at the rounded corners of the screen, to match the curvature of the physical corners.

It's a check-list of Apple's latest display technologies. Antireflective, with a fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating, it supports the P3 wide color space and uses True Tone to adjust the color temperature according to the lighting conditions in the room. ProMotion delivers a 120 Hz touch response rate, for a crisper reaction to your taps and swipes. It is, in short, an excellent screen, and one which holds up outdoors as well as it does indoors.

Apple has matched it with equally impressive speakers. There are still four of them, but they've been redesigned with a separate woofer and tweeter at each location. All four deliver bass; the mid and high frequencies come out of the upper speakers, with the iPad Pro automatically adjusting depending on how you're physically holding it. The result is an impressively wide soundstage, and plenty of clarity and volume.

Sadly, like the recent iPhones, Apple has dropped the 3.5mm headphone jack on the iPad Pro. If you want to use wired headphones, you'll need a USB-C adapter, or to embrace Bluetooth. My AirPods paired automatically with the tablet since it was using the same Apple ID, but I can definitely see those with high-end wired headphones being frustrated.

If ever there was an argument for Apple dumping Intel processors in its Mac line and switching to its own A-Series ARM-based chips, the new iPad Pro makes it convincingly. The A12X Bionic that powers this newest tablet is astonishingly potent, eight cores that can work concurrently alongside seven GPU cores, and tapping into a shared memory pool. Apple says it's up to 90-percent faster in multicore performance, and I can believe it.

The result is a tablet that doesn't stumble, no matter what you throw at it

Indeed, this custom silicon can put traditional processors and graphics chips to shame, when it comes to raw horsepower. We're talking more grunt than an Intel Core i7. Apple doubles-down by throwing in a homegrown Neural Engine that focuses on machine learning, augmented reality, AI, and more.

The result is a tablet that doesn't stumble, no matter what you throw at it. No iOS app which I tried could put a dent in the iPad Pro's performance. Still, it's worth noting that apps which really do tap into the A12X Bionic – and potentially stress it – aren't here yet.

Come 2019 and we'll see Photoshop for iPad. Adobe has been demonstrating this for a while now, loudly pointing out that it's not some cut-down version of the pro-graphics app but the full software built for iPad Pro. In the demos I've been shown it handle dozens of layers and effects in real-time, faster indeed than on a regular notebook.

I'd personally be more excited, though, by Final Cut Pro on iPad Pro, but Apple is still pushing iMovie. There are well-reviewed third party video editing apps out there for iOS, but not being able to pick up a Final Cut Pro X project I started on my MacBook Pro and continue it on the iPad Pro – or vice-versa – is frustrating.

Still, some of the changes that arrived with iOS 12 have been far more useful for a pro workflow. Shortcuts, for instance, has real potential. I do a lot of batch image resizing and watermarking, something I'd previously had to look to third-party apps to do on iOS. Even then, it could be an underwhelming, buggy experience.

With Shortcuts, I can now bypass third-party apps for tasks like that. While creating your own workflows can be a little complex, there are plenty of preexisting ones being shared that pick up some of the more tedious tasks.

Apple's first-generation Pencil was functionally clever but ergonomically laughable. This second-generation Apple Pencil, therefore, keeps the pressure and tilt sensitivity of the original, but addresses things like physical design, convenience, and charging. It also nudges up the price, from $99 to $129, frustrating since you can't use the original Pencil with the new iPad Pro – or indeed this new one with the older iPad Pros.

The changes are probably worth the upgrade

Still, the changes are probably worth the upgrade. Where the old Pencil's cylindrical body proved prone to rolling around the desk, the new Pencil has a flat side that means it stays where you put it. Most of the time, that will be on the edge of the iPad Pro, where it now clings magnetically.

It charges wirelessly while it's there, a system far preferable to the often-mocked Lightning plug on the end of the original stylus. Snap it into place the first time, and you're giving the option to pair the Pencil with the iPad Pro – useful if you want to use the same stylus with multiple tablets. Subsequently, when you dock it you get a pop-up showing battery status. The magnetics are impressively tenacious, the Pencil holding in place no matter how hard I shook the tablet, though it can still be knocked off if you jostle it in your bag.

Apple offers free engraving if you buy the new Apple Pencil from it directly: not many characters, but enough to make it clear whose stylus belongs to who. Unfortunately, despite the price increase, you no longer get an extra nib in the box.

Generally, using the new Apple Pencil is much the same as the old one. A nice tweak, though, is the ability to instantly summon the Notes app by tapping the Pencil on the iPad Pro's screen when it's turned off. It allows you to quickly get started writing notes or jotting down sketches. Sadly you can't change which app opens by default, if you're a fan of other note-taking apps or, indeed, an art app you draw in.

The other big change is the double-tap support. Rap your fingertip twice on the barrel of the Apple Pencil, and you can toggle between two tools: in Notes, for example, the default is to flip between pencil and eraser. In the settings you can change that to switching between the two last used tools, or to bring up the color palette.

Developers, however, can customize that double-tab behavior for their individual apps. An art app, for instance, could have it summon a quick-access menu of tools and shortcuts. It'll be up to developers themselves to decide on that – and you can turn the double-tap gesture off altogether, if you prefer – but it could be a useful improvement over the old stylus.

With Apple's gung-ho embrace of USB-C on its MacBook lines, it was only a matter of time until the port made its way to the iPad Pro. Replacing the Lightning connector, it has some straightforward advantages. Not least is the fact that you can now use the same charger for your MacBook and your iPad Pro. I'm always looking for ways to lighten my bag, and not having to bring two bulky chargers is a good way to do that.

It's also considerably faster than Lightning was, when it comes to data. With the iPad Pro now supporting USB 3.1 Gen 2, it means up to 10 Gbps data rates: twice the speed of the old connector. That pays noticeable dividends if you plug in your digital camera to import photos, or use the USB-C to SD Card reader.

Most exciting for some professionals, though, is external display support. USB 3.1 Gen 2 is fast enough to drive a 5K monitor over DisplayPort, and with the right adapter you can still plug in a camera, SD card reader, or other USB-C device at the same time.

Functionally, external monitors work much the same way as they did before, with the old HDMI adapter for the previous iPad Pro. Most of the time that means mirroring what's on the tablet's display on the monitor. Some apps, which have specifically added support for it, display different things on iPad Pro and externally: iMovie, for example, shows a full-screen preview of what you're editing on the big display, while you interact with it on the touchscreen.

It means that, if you were hoping to have two different apps viewable at once, you'll still be using iOS' split-screen system – even if you have a 5K external monitor to play with. I can't imagine that's a limitation of the A12 Bionic's potency, so it comes down to iOS simply not being ready for it.

Indeed it's fair to say that the iPad Pro's USB-C port epitomizes the controversy around whether the tablet is a "true" notebook replacement. I plugged in a USB microphone, and an ethernet adapter, and they worked just fine. The USB-C port provides more power than the old Lightning port did, too – up to 7.5W – so there's more chance that external peripherals won't complain of being under-juiced. You can even charge your iPhone from your iPad Pro, with the right cable.

USB-C can muddy the water

In other ways, though, USB-C can muddy the water. Partly that's down to general confusion around the port, but Apple plays a part in that, too. The USB-C cable in the box, for instance, only supports power delivery: it's a USB 2.0 cable, not USB 3.1, and so you don't get external display support.

Apple has also taken a pretty rigid side in the USB data argument. While the iPad Pro can import photos to the camera roll, you can't just plug in any old USB drive and access the files on it. Nor is iOS set up to push media files back to your SD card or camera.

As always, there are outliers. Certain apps, designed to work with certain USB drives, can access files other than images, but you need to have the right hardware and software. That's not much use if all you need it to grab a document off a thumb-drive a colleague hands you.

Apple maintains that the cloud is the key, and that cloud storage is now so affordable – and wireless connectivity now so fast – that most files are just as accessible, and even more convenient in a multi-device world, when you store them remotely. The exceptions it will concede are raw photo and video files, hence the iPad Pro's ability to import them. Even then, though, it sees the cloud – or services like YouTube – as being the way you'd then offload your processed content.

I've tried, on many occasions, to live my digital life the way Apple envisages it. The reality always runs into a headache, though, one that's either insurmountable or which requires so many workarounds and hacks as to be just as much of a deal-breaker.

The cloud may be ubiquitous, but people still give me USB drives with documents on them. The video I just edited on the iPad Pro may be uploaded to YouTube, but I'd still like to be able to offload the original, processed file to external storage for my own backup. AirDrop is great, for an ad-hoc share with someone, but only if they're an iOS or macOS user.