What can you do with an iPad Pro 2021

Rating: 9/10 | Price: from £749 at Apple, John Lewis and Amazon

WIRED

Outstanding display; absurdly powerful; excellent apps and accessories

TIRED

A little unwieldy; can get very expensive; poor external display support

Apple / WIRED

Sorry to break it to you, but the iPad Prohas never been about replacing your laptop. And it still isnt. This isnt borne out of technical capabilities the latest model has few limits in terms of raw power but by decisions Apples made in how iPadOS works and the inherent limitations that imposes.

So what is the iPad Pro? From a design standpoint, its the same refined rounded rectangle of metal and glass it became in 2018 just fractionally thicker. The 12.9in model is comfortable and solid, if a touch heavy and unwieldy in the hand. The new mini-LED display is stunning: bright; detailed; amazing with HDR content. (Note: the 11in model doesnt get that upgrade.)

The four-speaker set-up gives you a stereo image no matter which way up the tablet is. A fancy new ultra-wide selfie camera system follows you around the room on video calls, despite the iPad Pro remaining static, which is a combination of mind-blowing and eerie.

Inside, theres an M1 the same chip that powers Apples latest Macs. Plump for a 1TB or 2TB model and once your bank account has stopped screaming youll have the headspace to fiddle with benchmarking software and discover theres 16GB of RAM inside. (The other models make do with only 8GB.)

The iPad Pro was no slouch before, but the combination of M1 and RAM provides headroom for the most demanding of apps, whether editing 4K video in LumaFusion, chaining together dozens of synths in a digital audio workstation, or crafting complex high-res multi-layered images in Affinity Photo. Or perhaps doing all those things simultaneously, like a true power user. Theres even a Thunderbolt port now, unlocking access to a wider ecosystem of hardware and blisteringly fast file transfers from external storage.

But then you plug the iPad Pro into an external monitor even Apples £4,600 Pro Display XDR and discover 99.9 per cent of apps dont fill it. Your iPad work sits centrally in its 4:3 confines, flanked by black bars. Its absurd. But Apple seemingly doesnt really want you using the iPad in this way, because its not a Mac. What Apple wants is for you to buy an iPad and a Mac.

This conclusion becomes apparent when you consider WWDC21s iPadOS 15 announcements. Beyond finally making iPad multitasking coherent and adding a snazzy new feature to take notes whatever app youre in, the standout iPad addition was Universal Control. You sit your iPad next to a Mac, move the Mac cursor across to the iPads display (no set-up required), and can then control the iPad with your Macs keyboard, even dragging back documents and other content. This action, notably, cannot be started on an iPad, which makes the iPad sound like an accessory.

It isnt. In fact, the iPad reigns supreme in the right hands, particularly in its Pro incarnation. If youre a digital artist, youll love drawing with Apple Pencil. If youre a photo, music or video editor, youll be frustrated by the screens confines, but appreciate the means to escape from a desk and work wherever you please, on powerful hardware, directly interacting with your creations. If youre someone who likes focus (a major Apple theme of late), the two-up app limitation and just one in full-screen most of the time moves you far away from the relative chaos and distraction found on a desktop PC or Mac.

The iPad, then, has (currently) settled as a superb primary option in specific contexts, and as a capable, powerful ancillary machine within a multi-device set-up. It might look like a laptop when magnetically connected to a Magic Keyboard (the new white version looks sharp, despite remaining wallet-thumpingly expensive and getting grubby mighty quick). Some aspects of iPadOS might even make the iPad Pro work more like a laptop and macOS and iPadOS first-party app design is increasingly unified. But the iPad Pro isnt a laptop and it doesnt want to be.

Apple / WIRED

What Apples ultimately doing is seeding elements of familiarity and trying to finesse the transition between its platforms, with all your hardware and software working together. You might take that as an admission that Apple wants to eventually merge the two or replace MacBooks with iPads. Thats missing the point. Apple is trying to make moving between Mac and iPad as smooth as possible. The iPad Pro exemplifies a strategy of using the right device in specific contexts, all within part of a greater ecosystem.

Its commendable but frustrating, and a strategy no-one has yet fully cracked, but Apples discipline brings it close. Its also a strategy you might disagree with, yet its clear and clever, if expensive for the user. However, its an approach that invites criticism. It eradicates the notion of modular computing the one Apple device that can be anything.

It makes press imagery showing the iPad Pro connected to a £4,600 Apple display farcical, given the lack of full external display support. Theres an ergonomic impact, since you cannot use the iPad Pro like a desktop, despite it being as powerful as the latest iMac. And it knocks pro-grade iPad apps, since users would kill for a bigger-screen option, yet there are often no macOS versions.

In short, the iPad Pro the best tablet Apple, or anyone else, has ever made is not always fit for purpose. But if youre still waiting for this tablet to become a laptop or desktop, stop because youll be waiting for a long time.

However, do note that line the best tablet Apple or anyone else has ever made. Because it is. In certain contexts, theres nothing like it. Even as a solo device, it offers more scope for most users than a MacBook its wonderful to work with and use. And that M1 might be overkill today, but people say similar whenever the iPad receives a major spec bump, yet ambitious developers always rock up and take advantage of all that power.

So, should you buy it? Do you like using an existing iPad but hanker for more power, a better display, superior audio, or buckets of storage? Are you content with the inherent limitations within iPadOS, even after WWDC21s revelations? Are you keen on the idea of focus, ambitious touchscreen apps, a superior mobile media consumption device, or a tablet to integrate increasingly seamlessly into an Apple set-up? If so, buy an iPad Pro. Its peerless.

But if you still want the iPad Pro to finally be a laptop replacement, or run macOS, or cannot deal with any of the limitations of the system, the reality is you dont want an iPad Pro at all or at least not the iPad Pro Apple is willing to make.

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