The iPad has now gone as far as its software will let it. The new 9.7-inch Apple iPad Pro (starting at AED 2,299) is a powerful, portable tablet with high-end features and a high-end price. But the limits of iOS and iOS apps mean it's no laptop replacement. Like its big brother, the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, it's more expensive than the iPad or Android tablets, but isn't as capable as Windows 2-in-1s in a similar price-range.
So while the iPad Pro 9.7 has a terrific processor, a gorgeous screen, and is more affordable than the larger iPad Pro, the apps available for iOS don't justify its high price. We received the 256GB, Wi-Fi+Cellular version for review, which costs AED 3,999.
The 9.7-inch iPad Pro comes in six models. Wi-Fi-only versions are AED 2,299 for 32GB, AED 2,899 for 128GB, and AED 3,499 for 256GB. Cellular versions cost AED 2,799 for 32GB, AED 3,399 for 128GB, and AED 3,999 for 256GB. The Smart Keyboard cover adds AED 579, and the Apple Pencil stylus is AED 399.
The Pro 9.7 is the exact same size, shape, and weight as the iPad Air 2: 9.40 by 6.60 by 0.24 inches (HWD) and 435-gms. It comes in dark gray, gold, rose gold, or silver. The most visible change from the iPad Air is how the camera lens slightly protrudes from the tablet body, because the Pro is using the 12-megapixel iPhone 6s camera rather than the 8-megapixel iPhone 6 camera on Apple's other recent tablets. (No, it doesn't rock when it's set down on a table.)
The front camera has been upgraded to the 5-megapixel unit from the iPhone 6, too. If you look along the edges of the tablet, you can see the new quad speaker setup. As with other iPads, the only port is a single Lightning connector.
The True Tone display is new, too. It's the same 2,048-by-1,536 resolution screen as you get on the Air 2, but it's less blue because of ambient light sensors that change the display's white point to respond to surrounding lighting. You can turn that off (which makes the display bluer). It's a nice feature, but far from a must-have. The screen certainly has a wider colour gamut than previous iPads.
The most useful advance that I found from the iPad Air 2 is the new speaker arrangement. Not only are the speakers about 6dB louder than the iPad Air 2's speakers, their more diverse placement makes for a richer sound that surrounds you much better than the speakers on the iPad Air 2 do.
The Pro also works with the Apple Pencil, which is smoother and better than other available tablet styli. The Apple Pencil is solid and well-balanced, feels more realistically grippy on the screen, and has options for tilt and shading sensitivity that other styli lack.
Like the iPad Pro 12.9, the Pro 9.7 has dual-band 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi with MIMO. In practice, I got the same excellent Wi-Fi speeds and performance on this iPad as on the 12.9-inch Pro, and significantly better performance than I saw on the iPad Air 2. While the iPad Air 2 topped out around 120Mbps on a 150Mbps connection, the Pro models were able to get 150Mbps; they also got significantly faster speeds at the edge of the Wi-Fi cell, sometimes to the tune of 60Mbps versus 10Mbps.
For LTE connections, the Pro 9.7 comes with a SIM card slot on the right edge of the device, which can be ejected using the SIM slot tool bundled with the device. Once you have ejected the SIM tray, you can use any SIM card from your choice of telecom operator to start using 4G LTE data connection.
The iPad Pro 9.7 uses a 2.26GHz Apple A9x processor with 2GB RAM, which provides performance in between the iPad Air 2 and the 12.9-inch iPad Pro. With Geekbench scores of 3,081 single-core and 5,294 dual-core, it's still faster than any Android tablet. The Pro 9.7 benchmarks better than Intel Atom-based Windows tablets or the 12-inch Intel Core M-based MacBook, and competitively with a two-year-old MacBook Air.
Its graphics hardware is also strong, notching 32fps on the GFXBench OpenGL ES 3.0 Manhattan test, just like on the 12.9-inch iPad Pro. In other words, this is completely laptop-class hardware, able to crunch numbers and generate images as well as Macs or Windows devices.
But, of course, it's running iOS. We have a full review of iOS 9.3, and its split-screen multitasking is an absolute must for anyone trying to get work done. iOS still has better-written, better-looking tablet apps than Android does, with more and better business and productivity apps available. In terms of gaming and multimedia playback, the Pro is spectacular: Streaming video and immersive driving games that use the built-in tilt sensor pair gorgeously with the bright screen and quad speakers.
The 12-megapixel camera on the new iPad is very similar to the one on the iPhone 6s and the iPhone SE. The most standout new features are 4K video recording and continuous autofocus. With tablets, don't think about using the main camera for family snapshots—think of it rather as a tool for computer vision or augmented reality. More pixels can really help there.
The front-facing camera on a tablet, meanwhile, is for video conferencing and live streaming, among other things. While the sensor has bumped from a grainy 1.2MP up to 5MP, it's still only capable of 720p video, which is disappointing. There's no obvious reason for that, especially since most conferencing and live streaming platforms now support 1080p or better.
In our battery test, which streams a video over Wi-Fi at maximum brightness, I got 5 hours, 38 minutes. That's much better than the 3 hours, 51 minutes I got on the larger iPad Pro, and slightly better than the 5 hours, 15 minutes I got on the iPad Air 2. Remember, cutting the screen brightness to half—as you do most of the time in real-life usage—generally almost doubles that, giving you the 10 hours of battery life that Apple predicts.
Apple is pushing the iPad Pro as a laptop replacement, but it isn't. The iPad Pro simply doesn't do the kind of work we do on laptops as well as a laptop does. But it does new kinds of work, tablet-centric work, that's still relatively inchoate and hasn't entirely been defined yet.
Big-name professional apps are now appearing on iOS, but they're generally de-featured in some way. Microsoft Office is great for basic document creation, but it doesn't include all of the features you find on Office for Windows. (I rely a lot on Excel macros, for instance.) Pro artist apps like Photoshop, Procreate, and Sketches get basic document creation down pat, but fall short when you need to do the kinds of layering, correction, editing, and export tasks that many artists need to finish their jobs.
There are a lot of PostgreSQL database clients, but none are quite as convenient to use as Postico on the Mac. You can absolutely edit multiple 4K video streams, but the workflow in the touch-only iMovie is awkward when you're managing a large library of clips (and you can't attach an external hard drive with footage). In the professional world, there's also a huge library of line-of-business apps that have always been custom Windows solutions, including chunks of our own content management system here at PC Mag Middle East.
The best "pro" apps I've seen on the iPad are usually designed to be used standing up or walking around, including point-of-sale apps, airline or hotel check-in apps, architecture and real estate CAD or viewing apps, astronomy apps, and others. These are apps that never worked well on laptops anyway.
And for these apps, I find the 9.7-inch iPad better than the 12.9-inch iPad, because it's more portable. The 12.9-inch model is great if you're working on a drafting table or at a desk, but it's unwieldy to hold in the crook of your arm. The 9.7-inch model can be used with the Pencil to take notes while standing up without awkwardness, for instance. So on one level, it is more Pro than even its bigger sibling.
The 9.7-inch iPad Pro is more powerful than the iPad Air 2, but I'm having trouble justifying the increased price for most buyers. For the same price, you can get a 64GB iPad Air 2 with similar size, shape, and performance. The Pro's sweet spot is the 128GB model.
If you intend to draw or take notes with the Apple Pencil, which provides an unmatched stylus experience. I'd also suggest the price premium might be worth it if you intend to use the internal speakers frequently, as the new quad speakers are a major improvement over those in the iPad Air 2.
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