12.9' iPad Pro: Review

                  12.9' iPad Pro:
      Is it the best tablet on the market?

The 12.9in iPad Pro (2018) is at the centre of a battle at Apple HQ. Not a literal battle. I’m not talking Jony Ive in a chain mail tabard prodding a sharpened pike at Tim Cook (although that’s an image I’m going to struggle to get out of my head). No, I’m talking about the struggle over the future of mobile computing. More specifically, the battle between the iPad and MacBook.

Yet, there are still some pretty major roadblocks to using an iPad Pro in a professional environment and, increasingly, those roadblocks feel artificially imposed. It’s as if Apple wants the iPad to become a professional tool, but can’t bring itself to unleash it fully.

This is the latest version of Apple’s 12.9in iPad Pro. It’s the tablet Apple says it wants you to replace your laptop with. It’s best used in conjunction with the add-on keyboard and the Apple Pencil stylus, both of which are “optional” extras that have to be purchased separately.

It’s also much more expensive, following the rather unfortunate trend of rising prices for pretty much all tech-related products. The basic 12.9in iPad Pro with 64GB of storage will set you back £969, the new Smart Keyboard Folio costs £199 and the second-generation Apple Pencil is £119.

With the new Apple A12X Bionic chip inside, coupled with 6GB of RAM, the 12.9in iPad Pro (2018) is, quite simply, phenomenally powerful. Just take a look at the benchmark graphs below. In Geekbench and GFXBench, it’s not only faster than last year’s iPad Pro, but it’s also faster than the eighth-generation Intel Core i5-based Microsoft Surface Pro 6 we reviewed just a month ago. That’s pretty impressive stuff.

Things such as improved audio from the iPad’s redesigned quad-speaker array and better audio capture from its new five-microphone setup (the last iPad had “only” three). There’s also Smart HDR for the iPad’s 12-megapixel camera – although I still think you’re a bit mad if you use it as your main snapper – and also Gigabit-class 4G and eSIM support for the cellular version of the iPad Pro. The problem I have with this iPad Pro is the same as it has been with previous models. Although it’s now as expensive as a fully-fledged laptop and just as quick, it just isn’t flexible enough to justify costing as much, if not more, than its Windows and macOS-powered counterparts.

Until Apple removes those roadblocks, the iPad Pro will remain a tool that only some people can use on a professional basis. For such a capable and downright gorgeous piece of hardware, that’s a crying shame.