FIRST TEST
Apple iPad Pro Tablet ₨67,000 (32GB)
“Makes everything you do inherently better” FOR Sharp screen; fine audio; fast processor; accessories
AGAINST Pricey; needs more native apps
★★ ★ ★ ★
Ever since Apple announced the iPad Pro late last year, people have struggled with how they should label it. Is this a laptop replacement or just a really big iPad? The thing is, trying to shoehorn it into a single category is either misunderstanding what Apple has tried to do here, or selling it very much short of what it’s capable of. In reality, it sits somewhere between the two. It looks very much like the rest of the iPad family, with its gently curved edges and brushed-metal chassis seeming very familiar. Of course it’s much bigger – and to begin with feels stupidly so. At 12.9in, the iPad Pro dwarfs the iPad Air 2 and makes the iPad mini 4 seem almost toy-like. But it isn’t long before everything clicks into place and it all seems so obvious. Going back to the Air 2 after an hour with the Pro, we had to check we hadn’t picked up the mini by mistake. All of a sudden it feels like this is the size of iPad that makes sense.
Apple has made sure that making the jump in screen size doesn’t mean any unnecessary bulk either. Assuming you can make room for its bigger size in your bag, at 6.9mm thick it’s close to iPad Air 2 levels of slimness, and at 713g it’s still much lighter than your laptop.
While the screen might be the headline feature, there’s plenty more for the iPad Pro to shout about, including a new, more powerful A9X processor. It promises to be 1.8x faster than the A8X in the Air 2, with double the graphics performance and twice the RAM. There’s certainly no doubting it’s fast. It wades through processor-heavy tasks like movie and photo editing without worry, so it makes easy work of more menial tasks like browsing and multitasking. There are no stutters when jumping between apps or swiping through menus and webpages. Gaming is also super-smooth and lag-free.
Bigger is better Just as with a phone screen, the iPad Pro’s larger screen makes everything you do – whether it’s watching movies, browsing the web or working on documents – an inherently better experience.
Leader of the resolution At 12.9in, there’s 78 per cent more screen to go at here than with the iPad Air 2, and with a resolution of 2732 x 2048 and an iPad Air 2-matching 264ppi, it’s the highestresolution Retina display on any portable device – its whopping 5.6 million pixels tops even the 15in MacBook Pro. They come together and offer a superb video experience that’s hard to fault. Colours are slightly more muted here than on the iPad Air 2, but they never appear dull or washed out – just more natural. Contrast is still superb, with whites bright and blacks deep, while edges and outlines are always well etched and solid. The bigger screen isn’t only better for video. The extra screen real-estate lends itself well to things such as multi-tasking, meaning the split-screen capability brought in with iOS9 makes even more sense here.
App Store only The iPad Pro runs on iOS9, so can only run apps from the App Store, rather than the desktop software your MacBook would be capable of (such as full Adobe Photoshop). If anything, that’s what the iPad Pro is waiting on for its size and power really to make sense – more specifically designed apps that take advantage of its bigger screen and faster processing capabilities. A large part of the iPad Pro’s charm is its emphasis on creating things, removing a level of technicality to put you into a much
IN DETAIL...
Remove the Pencil's cap to reveal the Lighting connector, which connects to the Pro for charging and pairing
16 | What Hi Fi? | March 2016
The Pro's larger size means it can house a speaker at each corner, giving sound quality a real boost
Following the established iPad pattern, the Lighting port is tucked discreetly behind the bottom edge
The main camera has an 8MP/2.4 lens with autofocus and the capacity to shoot 1080P video