Gear Review | Apple iPad Pro

The first time you pick up the iPad Pro,

here's what you're gonna say.

This thing is huge!

And it is.

At 12.9 inches, this is the biggest tablet

Apple has ever made.

It feels almost ridiculous at first.

From a hardware perspective,

it really does just feel like a huge iPad.

At 6.9 millimeters thick, it's actually thinner

than the iPad Air.

But at 1.5 pounds, it's like holding one

and a half iPad Airs, or two iPad Minis.

It's big.

You can hold it pretty comfortably in two hands,

but if you hold it in one, you're either gonna drop

it, or accidentally club somebody in the head with it.

It's also every bit as fast as you'd expect

an iPad to be.

The A9X processor inside is super-powerful.

And even on a screen this high-res,

I've never seen a game or app so much as stutter.

Pro's display is 12.9 inches diagonal, 2732 by 2048.

Those numbers are huge,

but they really break down to two things.

One, you can just see more of an app at once.

You can see the interface and whatever you're working on

instead of having to tab through menus

and constantly go looking for things.

On the other hand, you can actually put two apps side

by side, and they basically run

like full-sized iPad apps in portrait mode.

You're not getting two small, windowed-down browsers.

You're getting two full-sized apps.

That's how Apple thinks you'll use this most,

and I think that's exactly right.

That's the kind of thing that makes

the iPad Pro feel much more useful than other tablets,

even than other iPads.

You can have your spreadsheet on one side,

your research on another, and even float

a Hulu window on top and have it all work, all at once.

This extra size manifests itself

in all kinds of different ways.

For one thing, there are four speakers on the iPad.

One on each corner.

And it will automatically change depending

on how you're using it,

so that you'll always get really loud stereo sound.

(action-packed iPad gaming music)

The keyboard, also, is the same size as a laptop keyboard.

So you can almost touch-type.

You get used to it much faster than you would a normal iPad.

These are small things, but they add up to something big.

It's a tablet that you can use

the way you work without having

to constantly rethink everything.

Work, by the way, is really what the iPad Pro is about.

You get the tablet itself starting

at $799 with 32 gigs of storage.

It comes in gold, silver, and space gray,

just like every other Apple device.

But you're really not getting the full iPad Pro experience

until you also buy two accessories: the Apple Pencil

and the Smart Keyboard.

The pencil, for its part, is great.

It requires some developer buy-in to really work properly.

But once it does, it's about the most accurate

and smoothest way you can draw on your iPad.

If you wanna draw, doodle, or just sketch, this is great.

But it's still just a stylus.

Neither the pencil nor the apps have

the same power or flexibility that you'd get

from something like Photoshop

or Illustrator on the desktop.

Right now, the iPad Pro is a great accessory for a pro.

Not a tool that's gonna replace

everything you already have.

But for the prosumer, or just somebody who wants

to mess around, it's wonderful.

The Smart Keyboard, on the other hand,

isn't quite up to the same standard.

It's built in to a cover, which is neat,

and it'll just clip on and flip over

to protect the iPad Pro's screen.

Or, you can unfold it and use it as

a stand for the keyboard.

The mechanism itself is a little bit awkward.

You kind of have to swan-dive it into place.

But once you get it there, it's pretty sturdy

and the keyboard is actually really good.

The problem is, there's not enough you can do with it.

If you're a person who loves keyboard shortcuts

or likes to navigate around with your keyboard,

you're kind of out of luck here.

There are a few.

You can use Command-Tab to switch between windows,

Command-Shift-H to go home, Command-Space

to do Spotlight, things like that.

But there aren't keyboard shortcuts within most apps,

and even the ones that do are very few.

The keyboard is for typing, nothing else.

The iPad Pro is not going to replace your laptop.

Not until you can organize all your windows exactly

the way you want to.

And not until developers decide that this thing

is for capital W work,

and start building their apps accordingly.

In that sense, Microsoft Surface Pro

is actually closer to the mark.

It has all the features you want in

a sort of imperfect form factor.

This is exceptional hardware, but with

a limited feature set.

But whatever you decide to use it for,

this is the most versatile, powerful, capable iPad ever.

It's great for watching movies, playing games,

browsing the web, even doing some work.

It's expensive, and it's huge.

But it's pretty great.

(casual groovy music)