If you guys haven't heard of Sidecar,
it's essentially a feature that allows you
to transform your iPad into a second screen for your Mac.
Now this is by no means a new feature.
It's been around for quite some time now,
but I've had many people actually ask me,
"Does it work on the new M1 iPad Pros,
and if so, does it actually work well?"
So in this video, I'm going to test it out,
give you my thoughts.
We'll see if it's responsive, and we'll see if perhaps
the performance and functionality has actually improved
with the new M1 iPad Pro.
So we've got the tools here, so I have
an M1 MacBook Air, just the base model.
I've also got a iPad Pro, so I'll pop this up
onto the stand and we'll switch it on.
Now guys, these stands I'll actually
link in the description.
They're both pretty portable, you can actually fold them up.
This is a really cool stand from Satechi, it's for the iPad.
So if you want to actually mirror your display
onto the iPad and get that second screen,
you have to come into the display option,
and you want to make sure that Airplay is turned on,
and then you want to select your other iPad
if it does actually pop up there.
You also want to make sure
that you have it enabled on your iPad as well.
And that's literally it.
It's just a single click of a button and you're good to go.
Now I've also got a mouse and keyboard here,
so I'm actually going to be trying to mirror
what most people would actually consider
a fairly productive setup,
so I have a Keychron K6 mechanical keyboard here.
I've also got a Logitech MX Master 3 Wireless Mouse.
They're both wireless.
Okay, so if we come into the display arrangement,
let's actually switch these two around
so this is the iPad.
And now that works totally fine, so you can see
I can actually switch screens super, super easily,
and there's actually zero lag here.
I'm actually quite surprised at how responsive
and how well this works.
It's actually pretty much exactly the same
as a proper dual screen set up with two external monitors.
And the actual refresh rate here,
there is some glitching and kind of tearing
but it's really not that bad at all.
Now, if you guys didn't already know,
a cool trick is if you see this white bar,
you can actually move this around, and that will designate
whatever screen you put it onto as the main screen.
So you can see I now have the menu bar on the iPad.
I'm actually going to move that back
because I don't really like having that on the iPad.
So what we'll do, let's actually maximize this.
Okay, so let's actually test out some video.
So I'll go onto a Gamers Nexus video here,
and we'll just skip through it.
So as you can see it loads quite quickly.
Now this is more so dependent
on the actual internet speed and internet connection,
but you can see that even when scrubbing the timeline
it's relatively quick to load.
And if we change this to 4K, that's loading up fine.
We'll go to full screen.
It doesn't really go quite to full screen, but that's okay.
You can also use your finger
to scrub down the bottom here, and also pause and play.
I would honestly rather use
a mouse and keyboard there though,
but it's good to see that it is at least working.
Now obviously the screen is not touch responsive
because it's just being extended from the Mac, obviously,
but you do have access to touch controls up here,
even though they're not super intuitive.
So you do also have the option to disconnect,
and you can bring up a keyboard on the iPad.
I don't know why you would use that but the option is there.
All right, so what I'm going to do now is I'm going to test
a relatively common productivity workflow,
so I'm going to have emails open on one screen,
and I'm also going to have a Google doc open on the other,
and we're going to see how responsive it is
switching between the two and actually getting work done.
Okay, here we have these setup.
So as you can see on the left, on the iPad,
we just have a Google doc.
Now this is a script for a video
I'm releasing in a few days,
and we also have some emails
on the right on the M1 MacBook Air.
So let's just try out some typing here.
(keyboard clicking)
So as you can see, there's zero delay.
If I'm typing here, it comes up basically in real time.
There's no delay at all, which is great to see.
And then if we actually come and we switch this
between the two displays, zero issues at all.
Likewise, if I go in here to send a new email
(keyboard clicking)
works totally fine, no issues at all.
Now if I do some scrolling on the left here,
again, there's a little bit of stuttering every now and then
but I'm really struggling to see
a major difference between this and having it
natively on the M1 Mac's display.
Okay, so let's go a little bit crazy.
Let's see if we can cram multiple windows onto each display,
and see if we can have four things going at the same time.
Okay, so as you guys can see,
we are pretty crammed right now.
So on the left, you can see I have a script
for an upcoming video on YouTube on Google docs.
I've also got my Notion app open with a video player.
This is how I plan all of my videos, by the way.
I've also got YouTube running,
and I've also got another Google doc on the right.
And guys, this is totally fine.
Like I could actually use this very easily.
I can read it, the text is clear, it's super responsive.
So to give you an idea of just how responsive it is,
just check this out.
So I'm typing now onto the Google doc,
then I can instantly switch over here.
I can open up one of my Notion templates.
I can pause and scroll this particular video.
I can scrub, and then I can play.
By the way, this is in 4K.
And then at the same time,
I can come down here on this other script,
and I can type away to my heart's content,
and that works totally fine.
So guys, hopefully you enjoyed this really brief video.
It's not supposed to be super in-depth,
I just wanted to show you the current state
and functionality of an iPad Pro in Sidecar,
and as you guys can see, it is pretty impressive.
So this is really cool because it's going to
unlock a lot of possibilities for traveling professionals,
or those who just want a second screen,
and I'm actually really excited to see
what comes out in WWDC,
because if it's working this well right now,
once we get access to pro apps
and a new updated version of iPadOS,
I think this is going to be really, really cool.
Anyway guys, hopefully you enjoyed this video.
Apart from that, I'll see you in the next one.