Comparing the iPad Pro 2020 vs MacBook Air 2020 may seem odd but it actually makes a lot of sense. And if you don’t need all the bells and whistles added in the 2021 models, the iPad Pro 2020 paired with a Magic Keyboard offers a decent laptop-like experience — complete with a trackpad. If you can afford to wait a bit, the recently revealed MacBook Air 2022 may change the calculus on this decision. The iPad Pro also offers a Wi-Fi + Cellular option that adds built-in LTE connectivity, something the MacBook Air doesn’t have. When it comes to resolution, the iPad Pro’s display is sharper at 2732 x 2048 pixels, compared to 2560 x 1600 for the MacBook Air. The iPad Pro also pulled ahead in terms of the sRGB color gamut (122% vs 114%), so you should expect more vivid hues from Apple’s tablet.
The iPad Pro’s optional Magic Keyboard uses the same scissor mechanism as the MacBook Air and offers the same 1mm of travel, and provides a similarly pleasant typing experience. The iPad Pro attaches magnetically to the Magic Keyboard’s floating cantilever design, allowing you to adjust the display’s angle up to 130 degrees.
The iPad Pro runs iPadOS, which is a touch-first operating system that now supports cursor input across the OS. iPadOS continues to support multitasking features like Slide Over (running apps on top of others) and Split View (running two apps side by side), and the customizable Today Screen gives you helpful widgets to stay on top of your day.
You also have a lot more choice in terms of software and what you can download on macOS, whether you choose to go through the Mac App Store or the web. The iPad Pro can also record 4K video up to 60 frames per second, something the MacBook Air can’t do.
The iPad Pro also has a front 7MP TrueDepth camera for selfies and quickly unlocking the devices with face recognition. And, unlike the MacBook Air, the iPad Pro features a LiDAR scanner that dramatically improves the performance in augmented reality apps. Unfortunately, the MacBook Air only features a low-res 720p camera for video chats, though it uses some machine learning smarts to improve the quality of your stream. And you can’t use your face to log in; instead, there’s a Touch ID button on the keyboard deck.
Again, though, when talking special features, the ability to run iPhone and iPad apps on the MacBook mean the Air can’t be cast aside easily. On our battery test, which involves continuous web surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of screen brightness, the iPad Pro lasted a very good 10 hours and 16 minutes.
iPad Pro MacBook Air Price and Value (20) 13 18 Display (20) 19 15 Keyboard and touchpad (10) 8 9 Ports (10) 7 8 Performance (10) 10 8 Software (10) 6 10 Camera and Special Features (10) 9 7 Battery Life (20) 13 20 Total 85 95 But after comparing this tablet and laptop in multiple categories it’s clear where these devices excel — and where they don’t.
The iPad Pro is the better option for those who want to travel light and who want a touch-first experience with a superior display.
But that being said, the MacBook Air has pulled ahead of the iPad Pro when it comes to sheer speed and battery life.
iPad vs Laptop: Pros and Cons
In general, an iPad is better suited for touch screen applications like drawing or photo editing, as if you wanted a laptop for either of these, then you would also need a drawing tablet to get that fine control that a mouse or laptop touchpad can’t deliver. Video editors might value outright computing power the most, while students might value a light weight as the most important characteristic. These devices have more storage capacity, they come with a bigger screen and also a lot more computing power when compared to an iPad. But this increases the need to have bigger cooling mechanisms, like noisy fans, and that’s what adds to its size.
Laptops also have better graphics compared to an iPad which means you want to pick these if you are a gamer or are trying to perform video editing tasks on your device. iPads are good if you need to execute simpler tasks like streaming music or movies, use social media or browse the internet. iPads also have touchscreens, which is a massive bonus for anyone that needs to draw, or who would make use of the Apple Pencil. To replicate this with a laptop, you would need an additional drawing tablet which would really add to the weight and cost of your setup. You can open up an iPad and start using it right away, but if you want to work on a laptop, you will have to wait for it to boot up.
iPads do not come with a keyboard out of the box, and are entirely touch screen devices, which is tricky if your work needs you to type a lot. And if you get a Bluetooth keyboard, you will be carrying an extra item that defeats the purpose of portability. The battery takes a lot of space inside the device and it aims to have a long life.
A laptop battery, on the other hand, does not take up as much internal space because there are other essential components to give you the performance you want. So, an average laptop can only give you about 4-5 hours before you need to find a place to charge it. For the device to be portable, the manufacturer has to make some compromises and after performance, storage is the next thing to be reduced.
And if you look at battery life, the iPad Pro will give you 10 hours if you’re watching videos and surfing the web. And it has an M1 CPU that is lightning fast on optimized programs and it is more than what a lot of laptops have to offer. You will have some luck with web broswers and email clients but there is not a vast range of software available as there is for a laptop.
If you want to edit videos with Final Cut Pro or use a full version of Photoshop, iPads are not the best choice, yet. If you want to try out games like World of Warcraft or League of Legends, tough luck with an iPad. Now, this one is also not for everyone and blanket statements can be dangerous, but if you are looking to replace a laptop with an iPad Air, here’s what you should consider. The smaller screen size and lack of a full-sized keyboard will always be a strike against it if your work involves a lot of typing. If you want to use more than one app at a time, you will need more computing power and that does not come with an iPad Air. So, the iPad Air works well for everyday operations like streaming music or videos.
It also has some interesting features like compatibility with the Apple Pencil for those who create digital art, and of course, there’s Siri. This one is not the same as having a laptop but it can be a good choice depending on your priorities, particularly if you are on a lower budget, but still want something ultra-portable. In terms of size and portability, iPads are thinner and lighter than Macbooks which makes it easy to carry them around. The interface of an iPad is also intuitive and suitable for people of all levels of tech savviness and age. Laptops are also better if you are producing music or editing pictures or videos because of the bigger screen and better computing power. Laptops are also superior in terms of graphics and give you the option of an upgrade, which you will certainly benefit from if you intend to keep your device for more than two or three years. And finally, laptops come with more components like a better processor and more RAM for better performance, and a keyboard and trackpad, which make using it easy. Does not run the software that laptops do, which usually are more feature rich than what the iPad apps have to offer
A five or ten year old iPad will be essentially unusable, as modern apps will be unlikely to be compatable, and it is so underpowered when compared to a laptop. The only place where iPads can be better than laptops is for photo editing, thanks to the touchscreen and stylus support.
Taking Notes iPad vs Paper
Enclosed below is a table that lists both paper and iPad as note-taking options and the advantages and disadvantages: Criteria Paper iPad Comment Writing Experience Feels most services Table Comparing Paper vs iPad Note-taking Options
25 Amazing Study Tips to Improve Academic Performance – The Productive Engineer
If you are looking to pick up an iPad but don’t want to spend a ton of money or looking to sell your current device for a fair price, you should check out Gazelle. For more information on how to buy or sell a device on Gazelle, click the link below: There is a wide variety of paper types, pencils, pens, and markers each with their own experience and you can really personalize the feeling of writing itself in terms of texture, writing resistance and feel. You can have a nearly infinite number of options in terms of notebooks, journals, and pads. Writing on glass with a stylus, such as the Apple Pencil, feels a little strange at first. The biggest thing I felt when I first started writing on the iPad is the lack of resistance. Paperlike is an iPad screen protector engineered to mirror the feel of writing on paper. Ali Abdaal (one of my favorite YouTubers) did an awesome video review of the Paperlike.
Notebooks and pads are extremely portable as are pens, pencils and highlighters. You can certainly do this or simply carry a single, multi-subject notebook and a pen with you to mitigate this potential issue.
The iPad is about the same size as a notebook (maybe a little bit bigger for the 12.9 inch versions).
However, they are multi-purpose and can take the place of both your notebook(s) and your laptop (assuming you go for a keyboard case The iPad is light and has great battery time and, when paired with a keyboard case like the Smart Keyboard and Apple Pencil from Apple, can do double-duty of your notebook and your laptop. For more information on how you can use the iPad in your college life, check out this YouTube video from the KathPath channel:
Notion is free for students and can be the hub for your scholastic life. The editability of your notes on paper is dependent on several factors, most notably:
The writing instrument (pen, pencil, highlighter, marker) You can’t erase highlighter and marker from a page once you have written on it, which is something we have all grown used to in our note-taking journey. The end result is that you can write to your heart’s content knowing that any mistake you make is easily and immediately fixable. The customization abilities of writing on paper are wrapped up in the options you have in terms of:
The form factor of the iPad itself can’t change based on what you are writing like paper-based solutions can. However, the iPad offers tons of apps that allow you to customize how you write or draw. There are literally a ton of apps in the AppStore each with their own customizable options for writing. The cost of using paper, while possibly expensive if you choose fancy pens and journals, is generally extremely cost-effective.
Either way, cost is definitely something you have to weight when looking at the iPad option that you simply don’t have to do with paper solutions. Keeping track and storing paper and notebooks of information and drawings can become problematic over time.
Many writing and drawing apps on the iPad also support saving to cloud services like iCloud, Google Drive and Dropbox. Several of the writing applications on the iPad will OCR (Optical Character Recognition) your handwritten notes and make them searchable. As referenced earlier, the costs between paper and iPad writing is significant. The ability to quickly retrieve information or rearrange items within a page are also strong capabilities that iPad offers that may be appealing for some users. For me, I have been moving more and more of my writing to the iPad but still find myself occaisionally using physical notebooks at times. It is filled with tips and tricks on how to get the most out of the productivity apps you use every day.
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Apple iPad Pro 2021 review: It can replace the laptop, but we don’t want it to
The new Apple iPad Pro 2021 is a solid alternative to a laptop, but you might still want to hold on to your bigger machine. Which means that Apple has suited the iPad to offer as much power as its laptops and PCs, at least on paper. It aligns with Apple’s plan of essentially making its iPads replacements for real laptops.
On the 2021 iPad the M1 improves performance, making it buttery smooth to use, delivering great battery life, etc.
However, the exact improvement in performance (where it really matters) is hard to spot unless the tasks you engage in require that kind of power. For example, my daily work involves mostly dealing with Google Docs, a proprietary Content Management System (CMS), some rudimentary photo editing, web browsing, and social media.
Apple also has its developers adapting their apps to the M1, which is good for iPad users — particularly those who are actually looking to replace their laptops with the tablet. I can and have edited and written content on the iPad as well and it works flawlessly, but if I have to stare at a screen for 9 hours a day, it’s more comfortable if it’s a bigger one. If it really came down to picking one out of the two, the iPad would make much more economic sense without compromising on what it can deliver as compared to the MacBook – and that matters.
The problem areas on the 2021 iPad Pro are a slight heating issue and its front camera placement that Apple REALLY needs to change. If you are holding the iPad in your hand, you are going to end up covering the camera which interferes with the face unlocking feature unless it’s placed on the keyboard.
Windows Surface vs. Apple iPad: The Best Pro Tablets
Professional tablets reimagine the laptop as an even more hands-on device, letting you scribble notes, create stunning digital illustrations, or flip the screen on its side to page through a long document. Microsoft’s Surface Pro 8 is a great laptop replacement for productivity work such as dealing with Excel spreadsheets and marking up PDFs.
But if you already have a notebook you like, Apple’s 11-inch iPad Pro (3rd generation) is also a great choice, as it excels at creative work such as digital illustration and has a large stable of touch-friendly apps. It ticks all the boxes and offers everything we look for in a great computer, including a fast, high-resolution display, a capable processor that can handle a bunch of applications at once, and enough ports for you to charge and attach peripherals. All iPads work seamlessly with Macs and iPhones in an Apple-centric workplace, and iPadOS is easy to use and simple to update, back up, and restore. It has a huge library of touch-friendly tablet apps, including lots of options for drawing, writing, and editing photos, audio, and video.
Apple iPad Pro vs MacBook Air: Which should you buy?
Both the iPad Pro and MacBook Air are excellent productivity companions, but if you need a new computing device for more complicated tasks than checking emails, one is naturally going to suit your needs over the other. If you add Apple’s Magic Keyboard, tack on another $299 to the total price—now suddenly you have a lower-specced machine that costs $99 more than a 13-inch MacBook Air.
If you opt for the more expensive MacBook Air, it’s still $149 less than the 12.9-inch iPad Pro with a Smart Keyboard Folio and the same amount of storage space. There are a lot of ways to configure both devices, but ultimately, the MacBook Air removes the headache of finding a reasonably-priced keyboard and you get more for your money when it comes to memory and storage.
Credit: Reviewed / Betsey Goldwasser These two Thunderbolt ports and a headphone jack are all you get with the M1 MacBook Air. After the form factor, the major difference between the iPad Pro and MacBook Air is the operating systems.
This sort of cross-platform availability largely depends on where developers decide to make their apps available, but for Apple-made programs like the ones mentioned above, it’s a mystery as to why the same version (or a version at all) doesn’t exist on iPadOS even though the iPad Pro has the same processing power as the MacBook Air (and the 13-inch MacBook Pro M1). Credit: Reviewed / Matthew S. Smith The 12.9-inch version of the 2021 Apple iPad Pro has a bright, vibrant display with mini-LED technology.
Like both iPad Pro models, its display has a wide color gamut (P3) and True Tone technology, but that’s where the similarities end. The larger model also has a mini-LED backlit display, which is about 40% smaller than regular LEDs and tends to be both brighter and more dimmable.
The 12.9-inch iPad Pro also has a 2D backlighting system with 2596 full-array local dimming zones, so contrast and colors are going to really pop on that display. If you were considering getting the iPad Pro as a laptop replacement but were concerned about the battery life, you get more for your money with the MacBook Air.
Credit: Reviewed / Betsey Goldwasser The M1 Air’s premium build, blazing speeds, and reasonable price makes it the obvious choice for most people. Along with better battery life, more physical ports, a fully-fledged operating system, and Apple’s Magic Keyboard, the MacBook Air boasts better value than the iPad Pro due to the simple fact that it already has everything you need, whether that’s sending a few work-related emails or editing videos in Final Cut Pro.
Stop Calling the iPad Pro a Laptop Replacement. It’s Much More Than That
It wasn’t the first product with that name, and it was technically still an iPad, but the A12 Bionic processor inside made it more powerful than most of the laptops you could buy at the time. Sure, it got a small update in 2020, but it didn’t change anything about the way most people use the iPad Pro. In fact, by the time Apple announced the 2021 version in April, the iPad Pro was more in need of an update than anything besides maybe the iMac.
It makes sense–surely the fact that Apple finally put a desktop-class processor inside the iPad Pro means that it can replace your computer, right?
Launching an app doesn’t require an intense amount of power, but it is something you do a hundred times a day. In terms of the overall experience of using a device, that might matter even more than how powerful it actually is for doing things like editing a podcast or exporting photos and videos.
Apple crammed 10,000 tiny LEDs, grouped into 2,500 local dimming zones, which means that the display is capable of 1,000 nits of maximum full-screen brightness. In addition to being bright, each of those 2,500 dimming zones can turn on or off, meaning that if you’re watching a movie, the blacks will be deep and the contrast will be rich.
Certainly, if you’re editing HDR footage, that matters, but if I’m being honest, I wouldn’t say that the display itself is enough of a reason to buy the 12.9-inch version.
If the thing you do on a daily basis is fill in spreadsheets, don’t get an iPad Pro–get a MacBook Air or a Mac Mini. Desktop computers are great for that, and even if you need something to fill in your spreadsheets on the go, there are a lot of really lightweight and portable laptops. If the thing you do on a daily basis is sitting at a desk and editing photos, get one of the brand-new 24-inch iMacs.
By the way, unlike some of my fellow tech journalists, I don’t think Apple will put macOS on the iPad Pro, at least not anytime soon. Think about it this way: Apple is moving away from making you decide which device to get on the basis of things like memory or processing power.
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