Big Change: A Review of the Updated Tablet From Apple — iPad Pro 12.9″

Pho­to: digitaltrends.com

iPad Pro is the most fash­ion­able and styl­ish tablet. They say that only design­ers need it, but with the new proces­sor, iPad Pro has become both a gam­ing device and a ver­sa­tile work machine. Does it make sense to take it? Of course! But Apple, as usu­al, sticks to its pre­mi­um pric­ing pol­i­cy. Let’s take a look at the most pow­er­ful mod­el in the new line­up, the 12.9″ iPad Pro, and find out who should buy it any­way.

What’s in the box

Box next to iPad 12.9″. Pho­to: YouTube chan­nel Karl Con­rad

The 2021 iPad Pro 12.9″ comes in a clas­sic white Apple box that has a life-size image of the device all around. Inside, the tablet itself is right on top, pro­tect­ed by a plas­tic film, then doc­u­men­ta­tion. The iPad does not need any instruc­tions, so there is main­ly infor­ma­tion about the war­ran­ty, a descrip­tion of how to turn on the tablet, and two stick­ers with an apple.Under the doc­u­men­ta­tion there is anoth­er recess in the card­board case, there is a cable and an adapter for charging.If you have a mod­el with a SIM card, then inside the box you will find spe­cial key.That’s the whole set.

Tablet body

On the top edge of the case, in addi­tion to the speak­ers, there is a micro­phone and a pow­er but­ton. Pho­to: theguardian.com

The 2021 iPad Pro is sim­i­lar to its pre­de­ces­sors — the design of the tablet is still styl­ish. It looks both fash­ion­able and durable. The iPad is thin but weighs around 680 grams.

The device is large. The screen diag­o­nal is 12.9 inch­es, which means that the tablet is slight­ly small­er than 13-inch lap­tops. Because of this for­mat, many will pre­fer the iPad 11″ or the Mini mod­el. But if you want a big screen, then this tablet is bet­ter than the rest.

The case is made of alu­minum, the screen is glass with a pro­tec­tive coat­ing against scratch­es. As with all portable devices, it’s best to buy a case for your iPad.

In total, there are 4 speak­ers on the tablet: two at the top and two at the bot­tom. There is also a USB‑C charg­ing port on the bot­tom edge of the case, which dou­bles as a Thun­der­bolt port. There is almost noth­ing on the sides, only the mag­net­ic charg­er for the Apple Pen­cil pen on the right and the vol­ume but­tons above it.

The tablet is sold in just two col­ors: sil­ver and gray. Both look styl­ish, but after the intro­duc­tion of the bright mod­els, iMacs are much less impres­sive.

iPad Pro screen

Even on a sun­ny day out­side, the iPad screen is impres­sive­ly bright. Pho­to: techadvisor.com

Apple nev­er miss­es a mark when it comes to dis­play. Even unlike pre­vi­ous mod­els, the 2021 ver­sion of the device has a larg­er screen and is made using Mini-LED tech­nol­o­gy, mak­ing the image rich, bright and clear. Apple called this screen Liq­uid Reti­na XDR, and it real­ly can be called “the best to date.”

The max­i­mum bright­ness is 1600 nits, but it is not nec­es­sary to use it all the time. It is bet­ter to acti­vate the adap­tive screen mode, which auto­mat­i­cal­ly reacts to ambi­ent light, adjust­ing to it.

The refresh rate also keeps up with mod­ern norms: 120 Hz means that the screen is updat­ed 2 times more often than most ana­logues. When you scroll through pages in a brows­er or social net­works, this effect is espe­cial­ly notice­able: the process is very fast and pleas­ing to the eye. And in games, the pic­ture is smooth and clear.

The screen res­o­lu­tion is 2048 by 2732 with a pic­ture depth of 265 pix­els per inch. Approx­i­mate­ly the same char­ac­ter­is­tics of the dis­play Sam­sung Galaxy Tab S7 Plus.

Tablet performance

iPad Pro can be con­nect­ed to a large screen and stream games. Pho­to: YouTube chan­nel Byte Review

The iPad Pro has arguably the best per­for­mance of any known tablet. That’s right: the result of this device is not one of the best, but the best. This, of course, is pri­mar­i­ly due to the fact that Apple installed its pro­pri­etary M1 chip on the tablet.

For a reg­u­lar iPad user, the dif­fer­ence in pow­er may not be notice­able, espe­cial­ly in every­day tasks. But as soon as it comes to demand­ing appli­ca­tions (work­ing with music, graph­ics, video) and games, the chip shows what it is capa­ble of.

In the Geek­bench 5 mul­ti-core test, the iPad Pro scored 7279, almost three times the score of the Galaxy Tab S7 Plus, which was pre­vi­ous­ly con­sid­ered the best per­form­ing mod­el. What’s more, the score is even bet­ter than last year’s iPad Pro, which with the same proces­sor only scored 4,700 in a sim­i­lar test.

As always, the iPad offers sev­er­al stor­age options: 8 GB of RAM with 128, 256 or 512 GB of SSD stor­age, the pre­mi­um ver­sion with 16 GB of RAM and 1 or 2 TB of inter­nal mem­o­ry.

Apple does­n’t sup­port mem­o­ry cards or exter­nal hard dri­ves, so if you go with the 128GB mod­el, it’s best to pur­chase addi­tion­al iCloud stor­age right away.

iPad cameras

Like smart­phones, tablets now also come with dual cam­eras. Pho­to: arstechnica.com

On tablets, cam­eras are usu­al­ly not impres­sive, but Apple offered us a dual main sen­sor: a stan­dard one with a res­o­lu­tion of 12 megapix­els and a wide-angle one with 10 megapix­els. You can’t expect fan­tas­tic pic­tures from a tablet, but you can safe­ly show your sur­round­ings dur­ing calls or take pic­tures of doc­u­ments and images for ref­er­ence. The cam­era also has a depth sen­sor for por­trait pho­tos. It blurs the back­ground, cre­at­ing bokeh when shoot­ing.

The front cam­era with a res­o­lu­tion of 12 megapix­els is designed for calls and video con­fer­enc­ing. It is locat­ed on the top of the device when the tablet is in por­trait ori­en­ta­tion.

Espe­cial­ly for the front cam­era, we devel­oped the Cen­ter Stage soft­ware func­tion, which fol­lows you dur­ing video con­fer­ences so that you do not go out of focus. It does a great job and crops the video so that you are always in the cen­ter.

iPadOS

The iPa­dOS 14 oper­at­ing sys­tem is now installed on all new devices. It is easy to upgrade to ver­sion 14.6. Pho­to: apple.com

The tablet sup­ports the lat­est ver­sion of iPa­dOS — 14.6. It is not much dif­fer­ent from the pre­vi­ous ones: only some addi­tions and secu­ri­ty updates.

If you’re new to this sys­tem, you’ll still find it easy: it’s easy to use and intu­itive. All appli­ca­tions, func­tions and char­ac­ter­is­tics can be found in just a few clicks, and the set­tings are set step by step. Even those who have nev­er used such devices will quick­ly under­stand every­thing on their own.

Apple has a large app store where you can pick up, test and buy a lot of dif­fer­ent pro­grams for any task. It also has a lot of games.

A sep­a­rate ben­e­fit for Apple device users is the ecosys­tem. You can access any of your devices with a shared account and iCloud. For exam­ple, it is not nec­es­sary to take a lap­top and even a phone with you every­where: your iPad will replace them.

It can also be used with a lap­top or iMac as a graph­ics tablet using the Side­car fea­ture.

Accessories

The new key­board fits the tablet per­fect­ly. Pho­to: tomsguide.com

No mod­ern tablet is com­plete with­out a col­lec­tion of acces­sories. The iPad Pro is no excep­tion. The Mag­ic Key­board is designed for it. You can, of course, use the key­board from the pre­vi­ous mod­el, but it will not fit per­fect­ly to the case, since the new iPad Pro is slight­ly thick­er.

Anoth­er acces­so­ry that will also have to be pur­chased sep­a­rate­ly is the Apple Pen­cil 2. It is suit­able for both pre­vi­ous ver­sions of the tablet and the new one.

Tablet battery

Bat­tery char­ac­ter­is­tics can be seen on the taskbar, and if desired, you can turn on the pow­er sav­ing mode. Pho­to: iphonearena.com

As always, Apple hides infor­ma­tion about the full bat­tery capac­i­ty on its new prod­ucts, but you can check it in prac­tice. If in the pre­vi­ous mod­el the charge was 9720 mAh, then on the new one it is most like­ly more.

The tablet is able to work up to 10 hours, as the man­u­fac­tur­ers promised us. The load at the same time is aver­age: web surf­ing, watch­ing videos, a lit­tle work with texts, games and appli­ca­tions (dif­fer­ent in pow­er and ener­gy costs). At max­i­mum bright­ness, the bat­tery drains much faster, but most tasks can be per­formed at medi­um.

There is good news: a full-fledged adapter is includ­ed in the kit and, of course, there is a quick charge func­tion. It is aver­age in terms of char­ac­ter­is­tics — it will take 2 hours and 45 min­utes to ful­ly charge from 0 to 100%.

Bottom Line: Advantages and Disadvantages of the iPad Pro 2021

The tablet is ide­al for watch­ing movies, social net­works, brows­ing and, of course, work. Pho­to: scmp.com

The 2021 iPad Pro is the most advanced tablet to date. It is not with­out flaws, but it is dis­tin­guished by incred­i­ble pow­er and qual­i­ty. The device can com­plete­ly replace a lap­top and is espe­cial­ly con­ve­nient for those who work with cre­ative appli­ca­tions: graph­ics, video or music.

Pros of iPad Pro 12.9″ 2021

• high pow­er
• Styl­ish design
• High qual­i­ty screen
• Con­ve­nient Ecosys­tem

Cons of iPad Pro 12.9″ 2021

• High price
• Not fast enough charg­ing
• Aver­age cam­era qual­i­ty
• Acces­sories not includ­ed