HEAD TO HEAD - iPad Pro vs MacBook Air (2020) By Ali Abdaal

- Hey friends, welcome back to the channel. Today we are tackling a question that's been plaguing philosophers since the dawn of time, (jazz music playing) do you get the iPad Pro 2020? Or do you get the MacBook Air 2020? Considering they both cost more or less the same price. And as usual, because I'm a huge fan of upfront conclusions and saving you time, I'm just going to tell you upfront, if I could only choose one device between the iPad Pro and the MacBook Air, it would be the MacBook Air every single day of the week, every month of the year, every year of my lifetime. That sounds a bit excessive, but that's how strongly I feel about this. I've made another video linked up there and in the video description where I talked in depth about you know, laptop versus iPad, can an iPad really replace a laptop, but the TLDR summary of that is an iPad can sort of replace your laptop, but at the significant cost of efficiency. And if you're someone who values productivity, who values efficiency, you can sort of do everything that you can on a MacBook Air on an iPad Pro, everything just takes a little bit longer.

And so if you're like me and you spend every single waking hour in front of a computer of some sort, trying to juggle 100 different things trying to be a productivity guru on the internet, then everything taking a little bit longer on an iPad, it's just completely unfeasible. I need to, you know, optimise for efficiency. If, however you like my housemate,Molly, for example, who is not a massive nerd and does things with her time other than sit in front of the computer. And when she's on a computer, she only does a very basic things like watching Netflix or typing up the occasional Word document, or very occasionally making a PowerPoint presentation for work. Those sorts of people, people like Molly, you know, the efficiency saving that comes from using a laptop compared to an iPad really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

Like, if you're only using a laptop for half an hour a day, and you're really slow using a laptop anyway, like, who cares if you can shave two seconds of that time by kind of using keyboard shortcuts and being a productivity greasemonkey, you might as well just get an iPad, and then you can, you know, type stuff with your hand because that's how you use a laptop or a computer because you don't really care about that, you know, efficiency saving. So for those sorts of people that I mean this in a entirely non derogatory way for those sorts of people who have very basic computing needs, yeah, sure, go for an iPad but I probably argue that if you're that sort of person, then you probably don't need an iPad Pro. Like there are so few people in the world who actually need an iPad Pro. And to be honest, if you're that sort of person, you could easily hundred percent get by with the budget iPad, which is so much cheaper, or the iPad Air, which is still significantly cheaper than the iPad Pro. In fact, the only reason I think we're even asking this question is because people look at these two devices, they were both updated at roughly the same time in sort of February, March 2020.

And they're both roughly the 1300 dollar kind of price tag if you upgraded with the right upgrades, and people are saying that, okay, it's basically the same price, maybe I could just get one device, and maybe that device could be an iPad Pro. But I think that's sort of an unfair comparison. And the only reason we're making that comparison is because the price of these two just happens to be the same, but it's really unfair. We are comparing a best in class literally the best tablet experience like in the world is sort of specked out to a reasonable degree with the most basic laptop that Apple sells. It's not it's not a fair comparison.

Really and if you're the sort of person who can feasibly replace a laptop with an iPad, you probably don't need an iPad Pro. If you care that little about efficiency, you really don't need my iPad Pro, just go for the budget iPad or the iPad Air. It's so much cheaper and so much better value for money. But okay, let's say for the sake of argument that you are in that category of people where you're thinking, you know, what, I'm maybe about to go to university and maybe a student, my computing needs are somewhat basic, I'm not doing anything particularly fancy. I'm not spending 12 hours a day in front of a computer doing 100 different things and requiring a high actions per minute, I'm not using so many keyboard shortcuts and using programmes like Alfred just to shave off tiny seconds of every interaction with computer.

I'm not that sort of person. I just kind of want one device that sort of gets, gets the work done. And I'm considering getting an iPad. Okay, fine. Let's kind of model what that scenario looks like with the different price points, and I'll share some thoughts as we go along.

So let's start with the 13 inch MacBook Air and so (jazz music playing) now this starts at basically $1,000 I'm gonna give prices in dollars because more people around the world are familiar with dollars, than familiar with pounds, but $1,000, The price is 1000 pounds in the UK if you're watching in the UK, but I wouldn't recommend going for that configuration, because that's only eight gigabytes of RAM and it's an I three dual core processor. Whereas if you spend an extra hundred dollars, then you get the I five processor, which is quad core, and therefore is going to last longer, it's going to be a bit faster. And what I'd actually recommend is to spend an extra $200 from that. So for it overall for 1300 dollars, you get the 16 gigabytes of RAM upgrade, and also the I five processor. So that is sort of the price tag that I would reasonably kind of recommend for people.

If you're going for Mac Book Air and you want it to last several years, I probably go for this version of the upgrade for 1300 dollars or if you're a student you get $100 knocked off so 1200 dollars. So that's sort of a baseline for what a MacBook Air costs. Let's now go to the other side of the spectrum and talk about the budget iPad. So the iPad starts (jazz music playing) at $329 but that's only 32 gigabytes. I would that that that's not enough storage you need to upgrade to the 128 gigabyte If you're going to not be frustrated with it every day, so that's $429 for the 128 gigabyte version, and you probably want an Apple Pencil for $100.

And you probably want the keyboard as well. So let's assume you're getting the Apple Smart Keyboard, which is 160. So overall, the budget iPad actually ends up costing $689, which you can see more or less half of what the MacBook Air costs Thirdly, we've got the iPad Air. And again, you probably want the 256 gigabyte storage upgrade, which is $650. And again, you probably want the Apple Pencil and the Smart Keyboard and that brings us to an overall cost of $910.

Now we can see that this is about 30% more expensive than the budget iPad. It's certainly not 30% better than the budget iPad, but I would this is probably the one I'd recommend. And finally for the sake of argument, let's just consider the iPad Pro and we'll see just how ridiculously expensive these things are. So let's assume you're going for the 11 inch because the 12.9 inches an extra $200 and that is quite expensive, but even with the 11 inch, let's say you getting the 256 gigabyte option that becomes $900. The Apple Pencil and the keyboard are pretty expensive.

But if you're going going for an iPad Pro, I'm gonna to assume you're going to get the magic keyboard that's coming out in May 2020 if it's not out already, and that's an extra $300. And overall, that cost a staggering $1,329. So an 11 inch iPad Pro, the smaller iPad Pro with a magic keyboard that has a trackpad and stuff in it, which is probably a big reason to go to the iPad Pro. And an Apple Pencil will cost you more money than a reasonably upgraded MacBook Air. It's absolutely absurd how expensive the iPad pros are and in terms of the things that you can do on iPad versus the things that you can do on a laptop, I personally think the cost of an iPad Pro is unjustifiable for most people, yes.

If you're the sort of person for whom money is absolutely no object, you've got a tonne of spare cash to burn and you want the absolute best tablet on the market. Then, of course go for the iPad Pro you'll be completely satisfied with it. And to be honest, admittedly, this is the reason why I've got an iPad Pro rather than an iPad Air, but if I was sticking to any sort of budget at all, it would be completely indefensible on my part to go for the iPad Pro just because it's so staggeringly expensive for what you get. And as I said at the start, if I could only choose one device, for me, it would be the MacBook Air any day of the week, because I value productivity and I value efficiency. And if you don't, and then you've got spare cash to burn and short go for the iPad Pro.

But if you don't really care about productivity and efficiency as much as I do, and you're on some sort of a budget, and if you're a student, I imagine you're probably in that camp, I would just go for the budget iPad, or even the iPad Air, basically, kind of on the grounds of what you can afford. And I think I think the costing is quite important because realistically, I don't think most people actually should be choosing between the iPad Pro and the MacBook Air just because of all the things I've talked about in this video. But if you do want to get into the Apple ecosystem and you are on a budget, then I would really consider just going for the budget iPad, because you probably could use an iPad to replace your laptop, provided you know with the caveats that you don't really care too much about optimising, squeezing out every last ounce of efficiency from your laptop, you probably could go for that. And 689 is a very reasonable price for a very amazing tablet that will easily last you through your student days. If you can fork out another $230 you get the iPad Air, which is probably going to last a little bit longer because it's great, but I really wouldn't recommend the iPad Pro.

Again, just unless you just have tonnes of spare cash to just burn on a super expensive tablet. So yeah, if you want to hear more about iPad versus MacBook and whether an iPad can replace your MacBook and you want to hear a bit more nuanced then click the video over here and if you're still considering an iPad but you're not really sure which one to get, then you should definitely check out my which iPad should you buy video which will be linked over here. Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you in the next video. Buh bye.

Source : Ali Abdaal