REVIEW: Take the best of the iPad Pro and the best of the iPad Air 2, add some features and you have the new 9.7-inch iPad Pro.
When the new Apple 9.7-inch iPad Pro arrived I soon found myself in a quandary. I placed it on my desk next to the 12.9-inch iPad Pro I bought back in November and I liked them both. Once I’d loaded my apps and other content on to the new iPad, my quandary became more intense. Which iPad would prove to be better, I wondered.On one hand, the big iPad had all of that screen real estate and the ability to display photos with remarkable resolution. The screen was large enough to display documents side-by-side, and the keyboard was good enough to use as a laptop replacement.On the other hand, the newer, smaller, iPad was far more portable and it has some features that the big iPad doesn’t have, including better cameras and handy things such as the ability to use the screen as a flash for taking selfies.Apple also included the Smart Keyboard, the Apple Pencil and a couple of attachments that addressed concerns that I’d had when I wrote about the larger iPad last year. Those attachments are an SD card reader, and a powered USB 3.0 port. The intervening time since the release of the first iPad Pro means that a number of apps, including Adobe Photoshop Mix and Fix as well as Photoshop Sketch can make good use of both the iPad Pro’s processing power and the Apple Pencil that had previously not been particularly useful because of the lack of software. There are also several other imaging and sketching apps that support the iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil. The Smart Keyboard is similar to the one that is available for the larger iPad and the primary difference is its size. Typing on it is easy once you get used to the smaller scale. Like the larger version reviewed last year, the keyboard attaches to the long side of the tablet where there are three contacts to provide power and a data path.In other respects, the 9.7-inch iPad Pro is similar to the iPad Air 2. It’s the same size and weight, the same thickness and the display has the same resolution. However, like its larger sibling, the 9.7-inch iPad Pro can handle RAW images, something earlier iPads can’t do. That coupled with the 264 pixel per inch density can result in images that are breath-taking in their clarity. In addition, the 9.7-inch iPad Pro has much better color saturation than the screen on the iPad Air 2 and according to Apple it uses the same wide P3 Color Gamut used by the new 27-inch iMac.The improved cameras are a significant difference between the 9.7-inch iPad Pro and all earlier iPads. The new iPad has a 12 megapixel camera on the back with a flash and an advanced autofocus system using Focus Pixels similar to the system on the iPhone 6 and 6S. The new iPad Pro will also shoot 4K HD video with continuous autofocus for video. On the front there’s a 5 megapixel camera.
- eWeek