iPad Pro 2020 Review: Is Apple's best iPad worth the upgrade? By Brian Tong

What's up everybody, Brian Tong here with Apple's new iPad Pro review. Look, you see it here. It looks beautiful, and you can tell we got the dual lens right here and the iPad has really been one of my favorite Apple devices since it pretty much first came out and the iPad Pro now just ranks even higher than that, so you're talking to someone who just loves and adores the iPad Pro and if you're looking for my magic keyboard review. Well, so am I but that's: going to have to wait until May now. The question here is this their best iPad Pro yet absolutely, but then is it worth the upgrade that answer it depends on now. This is easily apple's best designed iPad from the late 2018 facelift.

So I don't think there's really any need to make any major changes to it until they bring that new display tech to it. Because do you want a thinner iPad Pro after some reported bending issues? It never happened to me, but it feels perfect in hand. As is I love the weight, and it just feels so right. The design is great. Now it comes in an 11 inch and 12 point.9-inch screen sizes like before the IPS LCD still looks great. It supports the p3 wide color gamut, with its 120 hertz, refresh rate that never gets old, and then you have true tone as well, but I've always been a big screen guy for reading comics magazines watching movies, I'm always on the go.

So this is the ultimate media consumption device. For me, the biggest cosmetic difference is its dual lens camera, the square patch. On the back side I mean you can't miss it and then there's a wide-angle, 12 megapixel camera and then ultra-wide 10, megapixel camera. You know that I've never been the biggest fan of people using their iPads right as cameras. It's like come on.

It's awkward, you could call me judgy I, don't care, but with the improved mic system. That's here, it's really becoming an even more powerful tool and content creation device, and I'm. All in for that now it's biggest new hardware feature is its LIDAR scanner that stands for light detection and ranging, and it's setting up this device for Apple's augmented reality future. It can map out your world up to five meters away, but are we really ready to jump onboard because a kit is made huge strides over the, but even after the Pok?mon go craze if you're still playing it and I know some of you are a majority of users, they aren't just using an are that often, and even if Apple forces it on us, it still doesn't mean it's gonna work now I played around with placing down furniture in a room like a grown up once, and I've pretended to already have Apple devices before they come out to make people think I got them earlier. Just using Apple's website, like I did with this iPad Pro I mean the more that I think about that's actually, when I use the AR feature the most, but I still haven't felt the need or the desire to use, augmented reality daily or weekly, not even monthly, and I'm, not crapping, on an are by no means it's amazing.

It has huge potential, and can be exciting, but there's just not enough content for me to get excited about it on Apple devices. Yet an apple, they are one of those few companies that has the loyal fan base and the ecosystem to make something like this work. But for me, there's just real concern when I'm investing in any new hardware before giving us any real killer, apps or experiences that complement it. That this is the iPad pros, big shiny new feature compared to the last generation, and you know: we've seen the demos they look all fancy and fun, but still we aren't seeing everyday people playing new AR games in an open space or on tables with iPhones and iPads at least I'm. Not now under the hood Apple touts the 12 Z processor and says it's faster than most PC laptops, the 12 X.

Well that pretty much did the same. It was faster than PC laptops from the 2018 model and also included some Apple laptops as well. We know that Apple loves to show off with its benchmarks, but they didn't do it this time, because this isn't the next jump to an 13 or higher, and over here, like I, still have my third gen iPad Pro. You can see right. We've got the single lens here, and then I have this new 4th gen iPad Pro from 2020 right.

You got it, so I decided to run the Geek bench 5 benchmark for both CPU and GPU performance 5 times on each device to really just get a get an average score for both of them now for CPU performance in the 2018 iPad. It resulted in an average single score of 1116 point for its multi-core score, got for a thousand six hundred and fifty while the new 20/20 iPad Pro had an average single core score of one thousand one hundred twenty-six and a multi-core score of four thousand six hundred ninety-four. So the difference between the two is just really minimal at best and users will not be able to feel any real difference in speed between them. Now, on the GPU side, the 12 Z, it gets an additional core for eight cores total compared to the 12. X is seven GPU cores, so the metal scores.

The different shows here, with the 2018 iPad Pro getting an average score of nine thousand two hundred thirty-three point: eight and the 20/20 iPad Pro gets an average score of nine thousand seven hundred thirty-seven point eight. So there's really a nice boost in graphics performance here. Other differences under the hood, every 20/20 iPad Pro model comes with six gigs of RAM. That's compared to the 2018 models, where the only model that had six Pizza Ram was the one terabyte storage version. The other storage capacities only had four gigs.

You also get an 802 11 ax chips for Wi-Fi 6. But do you have Wi-Fi 6 at home? Do you have a router most people? Don't if you have an iPad Pro second gen or earlier I mean this is gonna, be huge upgrade for you when it comes to just pure performance and design, pretty much everything if you're from earlier generations, but for all my 2018 iPad Pro peeps, which is me there just aren't any major performance differences. That would give a really convincing argument to make the jump in most of you won't be able to take advantage of the Wi-Fi 6 unless you have a Wi-Fi 6 router 6 gigs of ram and the UN ships are nice, but if you have a 20-18 iPad Pro I would feel pretty good about keeping mine. Now, the biggest piece of this puzzle is the iPad pros best friend. It won't be out until May and that's the magic keyboard with trackpad, but because of the iOS 13.4 software update. We can pair the iPad Pro with something like the Magic Trackpad 2 or Magic Mouse 2, and it really just gives us a sneak peek of what it'll be like with a magic keyboard case and I, just absolutely love what Apple has done to give the iPad Pro a whole new bag of tricks and functionality.

Now, once you've paired with a trackpad or mouse over Bluetooth, you don't even have to do a thing, and you'll instantly see this semi-transparent circle. That represents your pointer and it's contextual. So when I move it over apps it'll disappear and then the apps will kind of swell and get a little bigger. You also see the same kind of animation over apps and the docs and then arranging your home screen is faster because you don't have to do a long press and hold to move the app you can just click and grab an app from the trackpad and move it instantly with a pointer. It's super slick now when I moved it around over the background.

If you look at this, you can see that it changes color so that you can see the circle depending on. If your background color is dark. Well, then, that circles light if the background is light that circle becomes dark. Now the gestures on the trackpad are different from the gestures when you're directly touching the iPad screen, so there's going to be times when you'll probably mix them up, get them a little confused at first, for example, on the trackpad, you can use a two finger swipe left to right to see your widgets and then three fingers to take you back home. But if you're going directly on the iPad, you just use a single finger swipe once to see it and a single finger swipe to get rid of it.

Now on the trackpad. Also, you have a three finger swipe left to right. That takes you to previously used apps. If you go directly on-screen, that's four or five fingers. Another thing on the trackpad, a three finger swipe from the bottom up, takes you back to the home screen or if you drag your pointer to the bottom, you can actually click on that bar, and then it'll take you home, whereas when I just go directly to the screen, I take a single finger and swipe from the bottom to the top takes me back home.

So there's going to be this learning curve, but it's very slick how the trackpad works, and it's contextual, depending on what it's moving over, and you'll, probably like end up remembering different gestures depending on the TAS are doing. But it's not going to be consistent between the two all so doing. Anything related to copying and pasting text with a trackpad is infinitely better than any touch gesture that they've come up with. So I can see myself using the iPad like I, normally do but then jumping over to the magic keyboard trackpad when I need to get some emails or script writing done, or maybe using the Notes app and maybe even more than new apps come out. You can also jump into the accessibility settings of iOS 13.4 and go into pointer control to change everything from the contrast to when the pointer hides its size, its scrolling speed and more, and it's not easily found, so I just wanted to show you where to tweak it. But you can easily see how much of a game-changer that this is going to be for the current iPad Pro owners once the magic keyboard is available.

Now, playing with the UI for the trackpad and pointer, it's just again super slick, and I'm, just even more juice. Now for the magic. You know what I'm just going to call it the magic from now on. It's that good. So it's not going to have a row of function, keys and act like a PC I've heard.

A lot of you complain about that specifically, but Apple has really made this trackpad and mouse support its own thing with the iPad. We knew that they were always going to do this, and it's a polished, experience and I know that even I still have to get used to it, but I'm just excited for it. Now for digital artists and people planning to use the Apple Pencil with the new iPad pros, you're going to need the second-generation Apple Pencil to use it with a new model. That's an additional $129! It supports the 11 inch and 12 point 9-inch, iPad Pro models from late 2018 as well. So look at all the pricing here.

The iPad Pro 11 inch starts at $799, and then you have $299 for the magic keyboard. If we're talking about the twelve point, nine-inch iPad Pro that starts at nine hundred ninety-nine dollars and then the magic keyboard for that is three hundred and forty-nine dollars. The iPad pros obviously jump up in price, as you add more storage space, and then you also have Apple Care Plus, that's an additional $129! So look if you love the iPad family, and you've been looking to make the upgrade from maybe a regular iPad or older iPad Air, or a second gen iPad Pro and earlier you're gonna just love. This upgrade like I can absolutely say that with confidence. But then, if you're, someone like me who owns the 2018 iPad Pro I, look at all the differences here and y56 is nice, but it won't matter if I don't have a Wi-Fi 6 router, the U one chip will be nice, but it's still not active the design and the screen they're about the same.

The battery life is about the same depending on use in the performance is pretty much the same. Well okay graphics is a little better, but does that make a noticeable difference? And after using the new iPad Pro I really didn't do a single thing, different, and I didn't feel like I gained anything more. It was really I OS 13.4 that got me the most excited because it just gave us this peek into the future, and the only thing staring at me right in the eye. This thing: the dual lens camera and the LIDAR sensor for AR it's there, but it still didn't change how I use my iPad in. Maybe there will be more iPad photographers I'm, one of them at least not yet, but I really can't say that this is an iPad that everyone should upgrade to.

If you have a 20-18 iPad Pro like me, it's just smarter to hold up until it makes that next true leap in performance, because the magic that's going to lock so much more for you. We know, though, the future of hardware for Apple is here, maybe AR takes off, but we'll have to wait for Apple developers to really deliver on that promise, and this is still Apple's best tablet hands-down, if you're ready for an upgrade you're going to love it, but the game changer. For the iPad Pro is the magic keyboard and that's the upgrade that I'm waiting for you.

Source : Brian Tong