The new M1 iPad Pro is now Thunderbolt-compatible
which means you should be able to use Thunderbolt drives
and also Thunderbolt docks with the iPad.
So in this video, I'm going to be testing out
one of my favorite Thunderbolt 3 docks,
and that is the CalDigit TS 3 Plus
which I've featured on this channel.
And I've also already done a review on.
Now this is the iPad Pro 12.9-inch.
It is the base-model version,
but I have upgraded the storage to a 256 gigabyte SSD.
But apart from that, everything is stock.
So eight gigs of RAM and everything else.
Now, if you guys aren't familiar
with Thunderbolt docks, essentially, they allow you to act
as a hub for whatever device you plug into it.
So in this case, it's an iPad.
So plugging in a single cable to my Thunderbolt 3 dock
should allow me to use multiple drives, monitors,
and external accessories.
And if any of those devices are Thunderbolt-compatible,
such as this SSD from Sabrent,
it should give us the same speeds
or equivalent speeds on the iPad.
So without any further ado,
let's plug in the CalDigit TS 3 Plus
into the iPad, and we'll see what we can get.
Okay, so straight away you can see there
that we are charging, so it definitely is working.
The dock, the light is turned on, everything looks good.
So what we'll do first of all
is we're actually going to plug in this Sabrent SSD.
So this is a Thunderbolt 3 SSD.
It's four terabytes, and it's the XTRM-Q model number,
so it's a super, super fast drive.
In previous videos on my channel,
I've been able to get about 2,400 megabytes per second,
read and write speeds, so it's a blazing fast drive.
So let's plug this drive
into the Thunderbolt port on the dock.
And as you can also see, I have a,
just an old-school one terabyte hard drive
plugged in as well just to see if that works.
So we'll come into the Files app, first of all,
and you can see immediately the XTRM-Q drive
is appearing, as is the Seagate one terabyte drive.
So that's totally fine.
We're going to come into this third-party app
called FE File Explorer Pro.
Now this is a paid app.
I think it's only around $5,
but the good thing about this app is that
it's going to give you a little bit more clearer idea
of the transfer speeds.
So what we'll do is we'll come into the XTRM-Q drive.
You can see that loads up here totally fine.
I have a previous video of mine here
that's 5 1/2 gigabytes in size,
so if I play that, you can see that's working totally fine.
So let's right-click on this,
let's actually copy, and let's paste this
onto my iPad. So you can see, I'm just going to replace that.
You can see that we're getting
around 700 megabytes per second write speed.
So about 750, which although it's pretty good,
it's nowhere near the max speed of this particular drive.
So let's try doing a slightly bigger file or folder.
So let's try this 4K Footage folder.
So I'm going to copy,
and I'm going to paste this on my iPad.
Okay, so we're getting a little bit better
at write speeds here, so around 800 megabytes per second,
but again, guys, this thing can do
almost 2,500 megabytes per second.
So if this is only hovering around 750 to 800,
that is just not good at all.
That's very, very slow.
So let's actually just stop that,
because I've done this testing before
and it stays at that same consistent rate.
And what I'm going to do is,
I'm actually going to show you guys something interesting.
So I'm going to copy one of these files
that I've already transferred over.
So I'm going to copy to XTRM-Q.
So you can see here, the actual write speed
from the iPad onto the
external Thunderbolt drive is pathetic.
To be honest, it's only 160 megabytes per second.
So the really cheap hard drive I have plugged in
is only a little bit slower than that.
And this is a 6 to $700 drive.
So that's pretty shocking to be honest.
Now as to exactly what's causing this,
there are a few ideas.
So it could just be that iPad OS is not optimized
to take full advantage of the Thunderbolt transfer speeds.
So this iPad theoretically should be able to do
up to 40 gigabits per second, but as you can see,
that's just not happening anywhere.
(jazz music plays)
So that is enough for drive speed.
What about other accessories, such as an external monitor?
Let me grab a 27-inch 4K monitor,
and we'll see if it works with the Thunderbolt dock.
Okay, so here we have the monitor,
and what I'm going to do now is I'm actually
just going to plug it in.
Now guys, just a quick note, this is actually
the third cable I've had to try.
So I tried USB-C to USB-C.
I tried DisplayPort to USB-C.
None of it worked. So I had to go hunting
for a DisplayPort to DisplayPort cable
and only then would it work.
So as you can see there, working totally fine.
If I open up say LumaFusion, for example, loading up fine.
If I stream this in full-size, and if I play this
in real-time, you can see it's working perfectly fine.
The actual quality is good too, so no real issues there.
So it's good to see that this is all working,
at least somewhat working.
So, as I said before, guys, we really need to wait
until WWDC in a few months, just to see how iPad OS
is going to evolve, because in its current state,
it's, I wouldn't call this device a pro device at all,
because you're still very, very limited
with what you can do.
But like I said before, it's good to see that
at least Thunderbolt works to some extent.
So hopefully those changes are going to be made
to the software which should allow us to
be able to use this.
Maybe not quite to the same extent as the Mac,
but somewhat similar.
Anyway, guys, thanks for watching this video,
and any questions, leave them down below,
but apart from that, thanks for watching.
And I'll catch you in the next one.