Review: iPad 2019 (7th generation) By Brad Colbow

The latest entry-level iPad is a nice incremental update over last year's iPad. But is it good enough to be your main art tool? Let's check it out: hello, I'm, Brad and I review tech for creative professionals, illustrators designers, people who pronounce the word gift with the heart G- and this is the 2019 iPad, also known as the seventh generation iPad like last year's. This one has Apple Pencil support, so you could use the Apple Pencil with it. We also get a slightly larger screen. Ten point five inches and with that slightly larger screen comes a slightly larger screen resolution 2224 pixels by 1668 pixels. They also added some connectors along the side, so it can be used with smart keyboard covers which makes a ton of sense since Apple has historically promoted this as its school friendly iPad wait.

This sounds just like the iPad Air. What's the difference aside from price, that's a good question. Let me where did I put that print out a Wikipedia across the board? The specs are lower than the iPad Air. There are two big things: I'm going to be focusing on. The first is the display.

The air is supporting a bonded display that uses Apple's, true tone, tech, and this one doesn't. The second is that the air has a newer, faster, a12 chip. Well, this is still rocking. The old a10 ships which bring us to on paper. This iPad looks pathetic.

Has that crappy old-school 810 chips from the iPhone 7? It only has three gigs of RAM and the lowest configuration only comes with 32 gigs of hard drive. Space Amazon makes talking rings with better specs than this, and if this was a Windows computer ill and have a rough time just booting up come on Brad, that's not an apples to apples comparison, and you know it yeah, you're, right, I'm, sorry, iPad, I didn't mean it I. Guess that is my point paper specs, don't really tell the whole story a Windows or Mac computer and how it uses its system. Resources are so much different from how iOS or iPadOS works. Ios take most of its system resources and pulls it to the app that's open and away from background processes, making that you're using at any given time very quick and responsive- and you add that with the lighter-weight iPad apps in general- and you get perfect performance, drawing and procreate affinity, designer or even Adobe's new fresco is just as buttery smooth.

Here as it is on my iPad Pro I do get more brush lag on the newer live brush features in Adobe fresco, it's faster on the iPad Pro for sure, but this isn't horrendous. It's not glitching or stuttering, or taking forever to render the crazy thing like really crazy. Here, if you've ever used, a large texture brush in Photoshop like a 500 pixel brush like what I am using here even on a good computer, you're going to see way more lag, I didn't know, it would be this bad. This is my iMac Pro its rendering this brush it's not even as complicated as what's on the iPad. Its nuts come on Brad, that's not an apples to apples comparison, and you know it I thought.

We've read this comment. I know. My point is, as appall has done, a tremendous job even on its lowest end, Hardware of having their OS run, buttery smooth, no matter what you're doing and at the end of the day, it's not a bunch of numbers on a piece of paper. It's the experience you have using the products another place that the lack of RAM shows up are in the limitations. Procreate puts on its file sizes, and it's layers in order to keep performance high, the larger your files' resolution, the fewer layers that you get to work with so, for example, a 2732 pixel by 2048 pixels canvas is going to give you forty-three layers here on this iPad, but on the iPad Pro same size, canvas you're, going to get 91 layers because of this limitation, it's really hard to get procreate, not to run smooth all the time.

Now there wasn't a layer limit in fresco. So, let's see if we can break this thing when I started, laying down paint and adding layers to this I thought, I was going to see lag. That was my idea of breaking fresco. When can I get to the point where the lag is so bad that I can't do this anymore? Unfortunately, that never happened, I got well over a hundred layers and I really didn't see. Any more lag than I was seeing in the early layers that I was laying now so after 20 minutes of just drawing layer after layer I decided to export it and see how big the file was, and that is what finally broke.

This iPad at crashed fresco even after I opened fresco back up, I got the saving screen for quite a while, and eventually he gave me this error saying that it couldn't save the file. The other thing I wanted to test out is how old is this iPad perform on Apple's, new sidecar feature, and I got a say it works just as well, here as it does on my iPad Pro I have been using the sidecar beta I'm, reserving judgment until it actually comes out, but I have to say so far. I'm not impressed with the drawing performance. The second screen in performance is fantastic. The actual drawing performance is kind of lacking, we'll see what happens when it's actually released, that 32 gigabytes of storage space could be a problem, especially if you're taking a lot of photos and videos.

As far as my art files go, it's not a huge problem.32 gigs is what I had on my original iPad Pro when I got it just a couple of years ago it took about a full year before I ended up filling, that entire hard drive, and then I just took all my files and dumped him off onto the cloud and started over again. I would say that the average art-style file size for me using procreate was started. Around 5 megabytes went up to about 20 megabytes, so it's usually somewhere in the range. Sometimes when I had huge files, I might get like 40 50 megabytes of file, so it will fill up, but it will also take some time. The Apple Pencil is great, even though this is using the original Apple Pencil and not the fancy new one.

The drawing experience is pretty much identical, meaning if there's a difference, I can't really perceive it palm recognition is world-class pressure. Sensitivity is world-class. Tilt control is world-class recharging. The pencil is world cut. Okay, you got me there.

The pencil charge is better on the new one. The Apple Pencil does come with a little adapter doodad that you can plug it into a cord. So you don't have to charge it up by plugging it into the back of the iPad I'd lost mine, because it's its small, and I just didn't it was. It happens. Okay, and even though several of you asked no I did not use the Apple Pencil as a selfie.

Stick this time and no I'm not gonna. Try it learn my lesson last time. The one thing worth noting is the iPad screen. It's lit glass, the Apple Pencil, it's plastic! It really does slide around on that glass screen. You don't have much drawing control there.

I prefer to draw on a textured screen and that's what today's sponsored paper-like. Does itbe a matte screen protector for your iPad? That gives you that paper-like feel I've been using them on my iPads for years, and you can get them in any? Is from the big 12 point: 9 inch, bro all the way down to the iPad Mini and, of course, even on this seventh generation iPad that I'm using here, people like also just released their version 2, which they expect to be in store, soon check out the link in the description down below to order your paper like today, okay, what the specs and all the important stuff out of the way. Let's get to my opinion, what do I think of this, and I'm going to say the same thing that I said last year with this entry-level iPad, when they brought it out with the Apple Pencil support. Is that dollar for dollar I think this is the best bargain in drawing tech, you're going to find the iPad is 329. The Apple Pencil is another $100, so you're talking about 429 dollars, I can't think of anything in that price range.

That's this good! There are some pen displays that are under this price range that are pretty good, but they're, not portable. You have to plug them into your wall. You got to plug them into your computer, they're only going to be as good as the computer that you're plugging them into there's some pretty good Android tablets out there with styluses. Furthermore, you can probably find like a year old, Android, galaxy or Samsung Galaxy s4 comes with a Wacom stylus, perfect hardware, perfect to draw on the downside is I. Don't personally think the apps really measure up to what you can get on the iPad procreate clips to do the new Adobe fresco, Adobe Photoshop is coming eventually.

Furthermore, you also have the sidecar stuff that Apple's doing it's just there's nothing like that. Quite on Android Windows tablets at this price point. Ah, you know I, just don't think. So. If you go a little more expensive, you can get some really nice windows hardware, but I wouldn't really go for anything.

That's under $1000. There I think if you're trying to decide whether the iPad is a good fit for you. What it comes down to is. Do you need desktop apps? If you do, this is not the direction that you want to go if you need to be doing some animation or 3d rendering or that sort of thing the iPads not there. Yet if you need a laptop replacement, I, don't think the iPads there yet for most people it might be for you, I think it's getting there.

I still think. We've got a couple of years before we really hit that point, though at least for most folks, but if you just want like a spotless fun to use drawing experience, that's poor that you can take anywhere here. You go. This works great, the question I know: I'm going to get is, should I get this or so forget the iPad Pro, or should I get the iPad Mini air which one's the right fit? For me, here's my breakdown, if you're working on huge pieces- and you need a lot of layers, you're using procreate, I- think you need to go with a pro you're. Just going to get a higher resolution to more layers that way more to work with I tested, the iPad Mini, which has the same specs as the iPad Air and I, was getting just as many layers on the iPad Mini as I was getting on.

This current iPad makes it a lot harder to make that jump, though. The one thing you want to keep in mind there, the iPad Air does have the better screen does have the better processor, probably last you a little longer and the other thing that should probably want to check out there is that the new iPad that I'm reviewing here it makes a lot of noise when you draw on it. So if you're one of those people who will be driven nuts by the clacking sound of your pencil hitting that screen yeah, you probably want to go with the air. So that's the seventh generation, iPad I think it is an incredible value for the price that it is. What do you think? Let me know down below in the comments.

Thank you guys for watching. I really appreciate it, and I'll talk to you in a couple of days.

Source : Brad Colbow