I've had the 12.9 inch M1 iPad Pro for over the past six months now, and in this video,
I’m going to walk you through the features on this iPad that I’ve used the most,
the downsides that come with using it and who I ultimately recommend should get an iPad Pro.
First up, the display. The 12.9 inch version of the M1 iPad Pro houses Apple’s best display
technology to-date. It not only has a 120 hz pro motion display like the
iPhone 13 Pro and new MacBook Pros, but also features Apple’s mini-LED display technology.
After six months to me, the display is the top feature of this iPad Pro. Now, I originally
thought that this was going to be a downside with the iPad Pro because Mini LED displays, this one
included, often have issues with blooming, and you can get this display to bloom, but like a lot of
“issues” that typically arise in news headlines anytime a new Apple product comes out,
usually it's overblown and after six months of use, for me at least,
blooming on the iPad Pro display has been a non-issue for what I've used my iPad Pro for, and
the increased contrast ratio of this display far outweigh the negative effects of display blooming.
And the 120 hz display just makes everything on this iPad feel wicked fast and smooth,
its one of those features where once you get it on one device, you want it on all of your devices.
The next feature that has made a huge difference for me on this iPad Pro is
FaceID and while this isn’t a new iPad Pro feature, the iPad Pro is currently the only
iPad in Apple’s lineup to feature Face ID and weirdly the only Apple device made for
typing that houses FaceID since this year’s MacBook Pro’s oddly did not include FaceID.
To me, after having 6 months to use my iPad Air and iPad Mini which have Touch ID
embedded in their sleep/wake button and comparing that with FaceID on the iPad Pro,
There's just no getting around it. To me, Face ID is the fastest way to authenticate into an iPad
and it's just more convenient. The only issue I’ve had with Face ID is when I have my iPad
on a table and I’m standing up more over it, it doesn’t really work well in that
situation or if you’re too far away from it, but in all other scenarios, it’s been great.
The next feature I’ve really liked with the 12.9 inch iPad Pro is the full size magic keyboard you
can pair with it. I prefer typing on the larger size of the magic keyboard, because you get a
little bit more space for your fingers and it feels exactly like Apple's laptop keyboards.
The key travel is great and having an integrated trackpad is very useful thanks to the cursor
support in iPad OS 15. Without the magic keyboard, I'd be using this iPad way less. It basically
turns your iPad into a laptop configuration which is great for writing and web browsing.
Also the new white color of the magic keyboard has surprisingly held up really well over 6 months and
looks in better shape than the black color in my experience, Though, I have been pretty
careful with it since the white color of the magic keyboard is susceptible to color transfer. Now,
the next thing that's made a really big impact on my use of the iPad Pro are all of the Apple
ecosystem benefits you get when you use other Apple devices with the iPad Pro.
The one’s I’ve used the most with this device are Apple’s automatic headphones switching with
AirPods and certain beats headphones, Continuity with my iPhone, where I can pick up where I left
off in an app on my iPhone on the iPad, AirDrop which makes it easy to move files wirelessly
between all of your Apple devices, and spatial audio support for paired AirPods devices which
makes it sound like you’re listening to something in surround sound and that paired with the HDR
capabilities of this iPad Pro’s mini-LED display, make it a fantastic content consumption device.
iPad OS also got some new features that have made a big impact on how I use the iPad Pro.
First, the app library finally came to iPad OS so now you don't’ have to scroll through
multiple pages in order to tap an app, you can just have your home screen and then
the app library to get to certain apps and that feature has worked quite well for me.
Another new feature that debuted in iPad OS 15, that I've been using a lot is called Hide My
Email, which allows you to use an auto-generated email address to give to a company when you sign
up for a service or are trying to get a discount on a product and have to sign up for a newsletter.
Apple will forward emails sent to the auto-generated email address to your
actual one so merchants and others don’t actually receive you’re real email. And its easy to go into
icloud settings to delete these emails if you no longer want to be on a mailing list from someone.
Some other notable things I’ve liked about this iPad include the improved
selfie camera Apple gave it, the performance where everything I’ve used this iPad for has performed
well and I haven’t run into any performance lags. I also like having Apple Pencil support,
though I don’t use this iPad as much to take notes on as my iPad Air or the iPad Mini
since those are a bit easier to carry around and write one, however, I could totally see where
having the extra screen real estate of the 12.9” ipad Pro would be beneficial to artists out there.
I mainly use the Apple Pencil for note-taking and signing documents.
Speaking of signing documents, I actually stumbled across this really cool feature
that you can use between a Mac and an iPad called Continuity Markup.
where if you open up a document preview from Finder on your Mac
by selecting it in finder and hitting Spacebar, you can select the markup
button and then in the dropdown select the iPad Pro to markup a document. So
if you’re working from a Mac, it makes it very easy to go in and sign contracts
or mark up a document without having to move the document file back and forth between devices.
So that's everything that's made a positive impact on my use of the iPad Pro over the
past six months. Now, before we talk downsides, let's talk battery life.
The battery life on the iPad Pro in my experience is fine. Like it's not great and that's because I
always want it to last just a bit longer than it actually does. For what I use my iPad Pro for,
I can get it by charging it maybe once or twice a week, which is pretty good.
Now before iPad OS 15 came out, I noticed that Find My had a lot of background activity that
seemed to be draining my iPad Pro quite a bit and the only thing that seemed to help was either
turning it off completely or removing all of my Air Tags from my Find My network. Since iPadOS 15,
this hasn't been affecting me as much and my iPad Pro’s battery life seems to have improved.
Alright, next let's talk downsides and what's still missing from the iPad
experience. One thing I use my iPad for a lot is to write on and Google Docs still doesn’t
have iPad cursor or trackpad support which is lowkey infuriating at this point since these
features have been out for well over a year. Now you can get around this by using Google docs on
Safari which is shows websites in their desktop config instead of mobile like Safari on iOS,
but the absence of trackpad and cursor support on major third party apps like Docs or sometimes it
can be hit and miss like with Amazon’s app, there is still some work for people to do in this area.
Another downside to the iPad Pro experience is widgets.
Apple still limits you a bit on where you can place widgets which is low key frustrating when
you first start building your home screen compared to how you orchestrate a desktop on a Mac.
Now, by far, the biggest downside I found using an iPad Pro are the limitations that you get
with iPad OS. If you think about computing tasks with Apple devices, you can split them
into two main categories which are creation and consumption. Now to me, the iPad Pro,
it checks all of the boxes for consumption, Think checking social media, email, reading articles,
browsing the web, online shopping, watching a video etc. Plus, it’s a more flexible device
for consumption than a MacBook Pro because you can use it in many more configurations.
Where things get confusing, though is for those who want to do what I'd consider to be
more creative computing tasks. Think photo and video editing, coding, creating music,
drawing and illustrations, etc. For the iPad Pro there are technically apps that allow you to do
these things, especially for drawing and sketching with the Apple Pencil, However, because iPad OS
prohibits side-loading, which is downloading an application directly from the web like you can
safely do on Mac OS, you're more limited to what apps you can download on iPad OS, even though both
the MacBook Pro and the iPad Pro now run off the same processor and cost roughly the same.
So who is this iPad Pro for and do I recommend it?
To me, the iPad Pro is a device that excels at consumption computing tasks and some creative
ones. It can do some specific creative computing tasks very well, but it still can’t replace a
lot of professional apps and workflows you can do on a MacBook due to iPad OS’ limitations.
I think you'd get this iPad because you want the Pro Hardware features that come with it,
like it’s 120 hz mini-LED display, lidar sensor, better rear cameras and M1 processor,
and/or if you want an iPad in a larger form factor because the Pro line is the only one
with the 12.9” size. Now if you don’t need the top of the line features or don’t need a
larger sized iPad, you should probably look at the smaller and cheaper iPad Air, which
has the same form factor and accessories as the iPad Pro, and if you're interested in
learning more about how a Pro compares to the Air, you should check out a video that I did
on that exact subject which you can get to by clicking the link here in this video, and then,
you can come back to this video or check out the link in the video description below.
And lastly, if you’re just looking for an iPad to mostly read on,
maybe play some iPadOS games, I’d actually check out the iPad Mini. it's about the same
size as a Kindle and it's the lightest of all of the iPads that Apple makes, which
to me, makes it the best iPad to hold in one hand and read on for long periods of time.
And we've done reviews on both the iPad Mini and the iPad Air,
so if you're interested in learning more about those two iPads, I've linked their
reviews that we've done here in this video, as well as in the video description below.
So, ultimately, after spending 6 months with the 12.9” iPad Pro, do I recommend it?
Yes, for me, I've loved using this iPad Pro because of its great screen
and typing experience. In fact, it's actually replaced my old MacBook Pro
as the portable computing device I carry around with me and write on.
The iPad Pro starts at $799 for the 11-inch version and $1099 for the 12.9 inch version
in either space grey or silver and you can use the purchase links on
the side of the video or in the description below to lean more.
I hope you found this video helpful and if you did hit that thumbs up button
and subscribe to the channel to see more six months later reviews like this one.
For 6 Months Later, I'm Josh Teder, thanks for watching.