Somehow, Apple has managed to make the new iPad Pro (bottom) even thinner compared to the 2017 model (top). More noticeably, home button had to make way for FaceID because the top and bottom bezels are now smaller. If you get the 11-inch model, the size is larger than A5, which basically means, you will have a drawing area of A5, and additionally, there will be space to show the user interface elements such as menus, panels, toolbars and buttons. Contrast and colour vibrancy aren’t affected by bright fill light.
After an hour of use, mine was filled with fingerprint smudges that are difficult to wipe off even with a micro-fiber cloth. The screen protector gives you a textured surface to draw on so you get the paper-like feel, and that also provides you with more control since the Apple Pencil tip on glass is quite slippery.
The magnet is strong and shaking the iPad Pro vigorously will not dislodge the pencil. The first time you snap Apple Pencil to the side, it will perform the initial one-time pairing with the iPad Pro. Subsequently, it will just display a label telling you how much battery life is left, and of course, it will charge wirelessly. This flat side also prevents the Apple Pencil from accidentally rolling off the table.
With Medibang Paint Pro, Paper by FiftyThree, those tapping actions don’t call up any shortcuts. The new iPad Pro is the best tablet in the market right now for digital artists, but it’s also quite expensive, significantly so compared to the previous generation.
If you are thinking of getting a digital sketchpad today, I would recommend the 2017 iPad Pros instead because they are significantly cheaper, and the drawing experience is the same. I did a search on Amazon and found sellers selling the 2017 iPad Pro 12.9-inch at US $1,049 with 256GB storage ( space gray | gold | silver ) and Apple Pencil included. You’re a photographer and you import lots of RAW photos for editing, then it may be better to get more internal storage. You won’t be limited by the idiosyncratic file management system of iOS.
You could be a photo and video editor who uses Apple Pencil, but seriously, you know you will be more productive with a proper laptop. Yeah the iPad Pro is much lighter, but do you want to trade time with how light your device is?
But if you’re budget conscious and still want to get a tablet for drawing, I highly recommend getting the 2017 models and save hundreds of dollars from not getting the new one.
iPad Pro 11-inch (2018) review
Why you can trust Creative Bloq Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Armed with the best iPad Pro apps, it gives digital illustrators a powerful sketchbook on the go and allows architects to show their complex ideas without needing to wrestle a cumbersome laptop around. If you want to up the storage to the maximum 1TB, then you’ll be easily spending over a couple of grand – and this is for a tablet that doesn’t quite have the capability to fully replace a Windows machine or MacBook. In our benchmarking tests it outstripped the nearest device by nearly double, and thrashed a number of capable Windows laptops too – including the Microsoft Surface Pro 6 and the HP Zbook X360 G5.
However, these are being quickly eradicated now the iPad is on the market, and we’d expect the raw power to be fully exploited by developers as they get their hands on the new tech. Apple loves to create a more natural look with its screens, with the P3-level color display definitely erring away from the sharper, punchier colours of tablets like the Samsung Galaxy Tab S4.
The result is that things can look more muted on the display in comparison, but for those wanting truer colour reproduction for creative projects, Apple is claiming industry-leading quality in terms of the vibrancy and saturation on screen. The peak brightness of 600 nits is a little on the low side these days though, as it means the screen is not HDR-compliant – although it is capable of playing back HDR content, just to confuse things.
The main changes are useful though: it now magnetically clips and charges to the side of the iPad Pro, and there’s a double tap function baked in to allow you to switch between modes in apps. Variable pressure levels and the capability to use the edge of the tip give a new dimension to input, and the range of apps set up to take advantage of the Pencil (with Pixelmator and Procreate strong favourites) are numerous. Also, the Pencil just refused to connect when being removed from its magnetic charging on the side of the tablet, which isn’t what you expect for a device of this cost. The facial recognition is swift and far easier to use, and works in any orientation, although we did manage to cover the camera most of the times we picked up the iPad Pro.
One thing to note: USB-C is now the physical connection on offer here, bringing it more in line with the MacBook and allowing for faster data transfer. The bugs in the system still irk, but if you’re after a powerful tablet that lets you get on with your job, the new iPad Pro is certainly worthy of a strong consideration.
iPad Pro Review
It’s also now sporting a USB-c port for charging and plugging in stuff. It has an opening for the camera bump and lets it lay flush.
Apple doesn’t release specs on things like pressure sensitivity for this which is all good by me , those metrics don’t really tell the full story of how good or bad a stylus is. I draw a lot of ink lines so I’m looking for things like smooth lines with no jitter, good beginning and end points to fast hatch lines, being able to hold a pressure level consistently and the Apple pencil passes those test with flying colors. But now the charging is wireless by magnetically attaching to the side of the iPad. I like this because the hit area is big, it works on any side of the pencil and since it’s a double tap I haven’t had any false positives.
That second part is a real bummer and doesn’t makes sense, Obviously you would now need a dongle to charge but still sometimes Apple feels like it’s price gouging because they can and this is a perfect example of that. Today’s question: There are a ton of iPad styluses out there, which one is as good as the Apple pencil?
I’m sorry to be the bearer of this bad news but my days of reviewing bad iPad styluses with palm rejection that only works half the time or questionable accuracy or pressure sensitivity that kicks in two seconds after you press on it are over. Apple doesn’t let other stylus makers use the tech in the iPad to make competing pencils, the one exception being the logitech crayon, but that doesn’t work on this new iPad.
It has a really high refresh rate so animations and drawing in general is really smooth. I’m hoping with familiarity I learn to adjust and get this action right more often than wrong.
A lot of apps aren’t optimized for this screen yet and there are black bars along the side, top and bottom making the tiny bezles look a lot bigger in most apps. Con 2: I don’t see a huge performance jump going from my first gen iPad Pro, which is now 3 years old and this. But I feel like I need to address it, for creatives, the iPad is a companion device. The iPad Pro has really grown up in the last 3 years, mostly because of the app ecosystem. Procreate has emerged as one of the most fun drawing and painting app to use on any platform and with every update it keeps getting better, they just added clipping mask and quick shapes. You have the power of the desktop apps but with an interface designed for the iPad. I don’t expect it to be anywhere near feature complete on release but it sounds like Adobe plans on cranking out a lot of updates to get it there. And I haven’t had time to mentioned Clip Studio, and Astropad and it goes on and on.
Going in between the desktop and the iPad used to be painful but a lot of apps have figured that out, with iCloud/dropbox/Google Drive integration it’s really seamless. It’s little brother the new 2018 iPad is really nice, and it works with the old apple pencil is great if you’re on a budget then you can save a lot of money going that route.
iPad Pro & Apple Pencil artist’s review: A decent Wacom alternative for digital production
While graphics tablets are the standard tool of the trade for digital artists, the Apple Pencil and iPad Pro could be considered an all-in-one package that combines the peripheral and a computer into one easily carriable device. I am fortunate to have a large fanbase and a rogue’s gallery of clients who keep me busy working in my home office, and in the days before the pandemic, I maintained a healthy travel schedule for conventions and appearances. Back then, in the “before times,” it was fun to pack up and hop onto a plane for a long weekend — or longer for an event like GenCon. Taking along a mobile workstation for digital illustration was a bit more of a chore than holding a video call in a hotel lobby.
Add in the stress from potentially damaging expensive equipment when on the go, and the prospect never made me feel at ease. In years past, we have seen the arrival of hardware from various manufacturers attempting to produce all-in-one options for digital illustrators on the go.
While some came close, their high price tags and fragility did not make them an industry standard, so the search continued. If you wade into this process with a brand-new iPad, there would be a little bit of extra time needed to set your accounts, emails, and preferences, of course.
The Pencil is lightweight and durable, unless you are the type of person who gets buck wild when drawing, with a flat edge for easier grip and gesture response features. With every break, I would place the Pencil back on the iPad for charging, just in case, but I had no issues with battery life not meeting work expectations.
I did, but a learning curve still presented itself, and while this is not a full review of Photoshop for iPad or Adobe’s other mobile products, I will offer a few thoughts on my Photoshop-on-iPad experience. The UI is clean and minimal to make the most use of the iPad real estate, but there is a period of adjustment to learn how the menus behave.
I initially worked purely with the UI and pencil commands and after an hour, I had to pair a keyboard and use the muscle memory I have for speed and ease of use. I have created other pieces with this configuration and each time I sit down with it, everything is a little smoother and more refined, with fewer growing pains. With a wide range of illustration software on the market for iPads and the Apple Pencil, I recommend you do your own research to find the perfect app to meet your needs.
I can sit on my patio on nice days and sketch with no issues or take the show on the road when travel and conventions return.
This was the goal for me anyway: To have a great way to enter meetings or attend conventions without an entire Pelican case of equipment to set up. I can tell you that I know other professional artists who have made the jump with larger iPads, Apple Pencils, and their software of choice, and never looked back.
So, there remains a place for desktop machines and tablets to handle the larger files and complex documents.
An illustrator’s review of iPad Pro VS Wacom. Plus my favourite drawing apps.
Portable and easy to use, iPad Pro helped me draw and deliver illustrations while on the aeroplane, on the beach, in bed and in beautiful cafes around the globe. Creating print-ready illustration on the go is now possible with an initial investment into an iPad Pro, Apple Pencil, and a few free Adobe apps. Thanks to these new tools being an illustrator don’t mean living an isolated home-bound experience like it used to be.
I purchased the iPad Pro after my first illustrated picture book, Make a Face, was finished. iPad Pro functions independently from your laptop or PC, so you will have a self-sufficient drawing device everywhere you go.
Artist’s Review of the iPad Pro
The iPad Pro is light and portable, but can be a fully capable artist’s workstation – perfect for international travel. The app selection is broad, and you can still access Windows on it by remotely connecting to a cloud instance.
The journey toward a highly portable, powerful and flexible digital artists workstation has taken quite a few years, but I think we’re finally there with the iPad Pro. The good news is the iPad Pro handles painting really well, and hasn’t negatively impacted my ability to create art professionally.
I don’t think the pressure levels of the Apple Pencil are public knowledge, but from my experience they are indistinguishable from the 4000 or 8000 on a Wacom or Huion stylus. I don’t think I’ve once run out of battery with my Pencil – I just clip it to the iPad overnight and whenever I take a break, and that’s enough to keep it topped up just fine. Apple have somehow managed to remove the need for cursor calibration, and there isn’t any noticeable parallax either, so the Pencil is technically very accurate – however, there is no cursor when drawing and the Pencil’s nib is fatter than a Wacom or Huion stylus’, so it’s hard to say which is more accurate. Unfortunately but not unexpectedly, despite the iPad being super portable the screen doesn’t do that well in direct sunlight and other bright environments, so you can’t really use it outside.
I painted using a Windows PC with Photoshop for over a decade, so the idea of finally having to switch to a different art software was really unappealing and I wasn’t looking forward to it, but for the most part it’s been easy! I haven’t used Procreate that much yet due to lack of travel, but in the future this might get more use out of me – it’s certainly very popular software and the poster-child of iPad painting apps. The iPad’s software was my primary concern before I bought it – I wasn’t sure iPadOS would be able to replace all the different things I did on a Windows device, a lot of it necessary for work. Obviously, you can’t use the same programs on an iPad as you would on Windows, but I’ve found app versions or alternatives of most of the tools I used on my PC.
It takes a while to get used to the differences, like the unique way it ‘sticks’ on buttons, but it means that you can now actually use the iPad for basic mouse-and-keyboard tasks like word processing. The main downside to IPadOS is that it’s a really strict operating system – you can’t access all the settings you might want to if you are used to Windows PC.
Being able to easy rotate the iPad between landscape and portrait can sometimes help, but generally you’ll find you only have space to work in 1 app at a time. In addition, you can play online videos in picture-in-picture mode, which creates another smaller overlay that you can position around the screen, or swipe to be off-screen as well.
Google Docs as the left window, Clip Studio Paint as the right, Vizref as a third swipe-in overlay window I’ve placed on the right hand side, and a picture-in-picture video I’ve placed on the bottom left. Effectively, with a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard connected, it feels as if your iPad is suddenly a Windows PC, with a small amount of lag.
You can customize the hardware specifications as you like – pick your amount of RAM, graphics card etc – install whatever programs you want, and boot up and shut down the instance as you please. As long as you don’t need a really powerful PC it’s pretty inexpensive – for an instance with basic specs you’ll only pay around $0.07 for every hour of use. I only need to use Windows for the occasional thing, mostly when I’m working on this website as some of the tools aren’t available on iPad, and only spend a few hours using it most weeks – it only costs me $5-10 per month, but without a cloud instance like this I wouldn’t be able to be iPad-only.
There’s slight lag, and you need a reasonably stable internet connection for it, but it’s an absolute bargain that can transform the iPad Pro into a really versatile machine. I know this isn’t really anything to do with art, but since this is a full iPad review and a lot of artists play games, I figure I might as well cover it quickly. Similar to Amazon Workspace, these lets you log in to your Xbox, Steam or Stadia account and play many of your games via the cloud, amazingly with almost 0 lag; I don’t know how they’ve done it, but I’ve tested on GeForce NOW with Subnautica, Valheim and Warframe and all run super smoothly.
Mouse input unfortunately doesn’t work properly, so you need a Bluetooth controller like a ps4 or Xbox pad, and not every game is available. This obviously depends massively on which iPad you buy, but generally speaking mine runs very smoothly whatever I throw at it. Even though the iPad specs are generally lower than my previous Windows computers, all of the iPadOS apps are so well optimized that I have rarely experienced any slowdown or lagging.
ICloud integrates with the iPadOS files browser really well, has the best user experience on iPad out of all of the major cloud storage providers that I tried, and it is also the cheapest. The main downside is that the iCloud user experience is terrible on other devices, like on an android phone or Windows PC. For anything longer you’ll need to find a mains or USB battery pack to recharge off. I don’t even need access to a plug socket to work for a few hours, unlike with a screen tablet. Folding magnetic covers do provide a bit of protection when you’re carrying your iPad around, mostly in stopping the screen from getting scratched when it’s in a bag. The iPad Pro isn’t the most expensive digital art solution I’ve ever had – that would be the original Wacom Cintiq Companion that I paid something like $3000 for in 2013 – but compared to a desktop PC and simple tablet, it is much more of a costly workstation. I did my best to limit my purchases and only buy decent third party accessories instead of Apple’s overpriced ones, but because this is my only work device I’ve bought some things that most people wouldn’t need: All of my other accessories – 13” laptop bag, magnetic cover, 2 stands, mouse, keyboard, headphones, battery pack, spare Pencil nibs and a longer charging cable – some of which I had to buy because I needed bluetooth peripherals for the iPad, cost around $250 in total. I believe Care+ can be paid for up to 2 years – I’m not entirely sure if you can continue beyond that, as there’s mixed information about it online – but if you plan on travelling with your iPad and thus increasing the risk of it breaking, Care+ is probably worth the price.
In total, my personal iPad Pro workstation cost an upfront investment of around $2000, and roughly $30 a month on ongoing subscriptions. In contrast, a capable painting setup of a simple Windows desktop PC with a budget Huion graphics tablet, mouse, keyboard, headphones and Krita could probably be put together for a total of $600 today. For me, for portability the price is worth it, as the money I’ll save by being able to work as I travel in cheaper countries will more than cover it.
I have fairly unique circumstances, as some sort of travelling artist-blogger, so the iPad Pro has been the right move for me personally – though it’s not been without its compromises and work-arounds. In a laptop bag with all its accessories, it’s still compact enough to class as a free personal item on most airlines, which makes it perfect for international travel.
iPad Pro 12.9 review (2018): The future of computing?
The iPad Pro line has been around for three years now, and Apple has been adamant that it embodies the company’s vision for the “future of computing.” That’s as big a claim now as it was when Tim Cook first made it, but with the release of the new iPad Pro, it’s finally starting to feel like Apple is making good on its word. Personally, I think this redesign goes a long way in making this iPad look more premium than earlier models, but this flat aesthetic was apparently born out of necessity. The curves found in older iPads were a physical shortcut of sorts, meant to make them feel a little thinner, and they were possible only because of the extra room inside those bodies.
After all, a slightly curved body is easy to pull off when you don’t have components pushed right up to the device’s edges, and this iFixit teardown of the original 12.9-inch iPad Pro confirms that’s the case. It certainly doesn’t hurt that its designers trimmed a full inch off the big Pro’s height and shaved around two-tenths of a pound off the body. That might not sound like a huge difference, but because Apple concentrated the tablet’s weight into a smaller footprint, this iPad feels much easier to manage. I’ve spent the past week using the Pro to work on this review, read on subways, watch election results while nursing a fever in bed and more — in short, I’ve been trying to rely on it as much as possible, and it never felt as cumbersome or unwieldy as its predecessors.
This LCD is capable of rendering bright, beautiful colors, to the point where I’ve found it gives the iPhone XS’s OLED screen a run for its money. These sorts of apps effectively double the size of the bezels, making your sleek new iPad look a bit like an older model. The 7-megapixel front-facing TrueDepth camera (plus the extra bits that power Face ID) was pulled straight out of the iPhone XS and wedged above the iPad’s screen. It doesn’t hurt that this second-gen Face ID sensor is very fast at recognizing the person in front of it, even if it’s looking at them from below or at a weird angle.
This year, Apple finally adopted a standard USB-C connector for an iOS device, and it has the potential to completely change what the iPad Pro is capable of. With my trusty dongle, though, I could hook up my curved Samsung monitor via HDMI (which just mirrored the action on the iPad’s screen), import photos directly from an SD card, record audio in GarageBand through a superior, external microphone and even plug in a mechanical keyboard festooned with LEDs while writing this review. To be clear, a lot of these feats were possible with the older Lightning connector too — you just would’ve needed one of Apple’s jack-of-all-trades camera adapters. The handful of USB game controllers I tested were a no-go, likely because they require drivers the iPad Pro doesn’t support.
While I get that the company doesn’t want you to externally expand your iPad’s storage, would it have been so difficult to let you move files between devices the way you can with a more traditional computer? Hopefully, Apple will update iOS over time to make this kind of file management possible, but for now, color me frustrated.
Apple wouldn’t comment on its plans for future devices, but the sort of flexibility USB-C offers is impressive enough that I could easily see the company keeping it a “Pro” feature. Testing USB-C device compatibility involved a lot of trial and error, but Apple’s own accessories for the new iPad Pro were straightforward. I’ve never actually lost an Apple Pencil before, but I can’t tell you the number of times I thought about using it before remembering it was tucked away deep in my backpack and saying “screw it.”
Really, my only beef here is that there’s no way to save money and just buy an older Apple Pencil instead: Since there’s no Lightning port for pairing, you’ll have to shell out $130 for the new one.
I’ve gone on record in the past saying that a vast majority of people simply don’t need a $100 stylus, and after using the updated, $130 model for a week, I stand by that. I’ve never been the biggest fan of these keyboards (Dana also kind of hates them), but I wrote this entire review on it, and the process was reassuringly unremarkable.
More important, a new performance controller allows all eight of those CPU cores to light up when apps need even more horsepower, a feat that no other iPad has been capable of. It didn’t matter if I was playing Fortnite for hours or cutting together multiple lengthy 4K video clips in Adobe Premiere Rush; the iPad Pro never failed to keep up. You’d think this additional power would take its toll on battery life, but even that manages to pull ahead of Apple’s own estimates. In our standard rundown test, the iPad Pro looped a video for just under 11.5 hours before needing to be recharged, and it routinely stuck around for about a day and a half of nearly nonstop use. The tablet runs iOS 12, but since there’s no home button here, Apple adapted the gestures from the iPhone X series to work on this bigger screen instead. I could’ve cobbled together a Siri Shortcut to make it work, but time was of the essence, so I just ferried the files over to my Mac to complete the job.
That pretty nicely illustrates one of the big sticking points when you’re trying to use the iPad as your workhorse: There are ways to get all your fiddly tasks done, but they often take extra time and lateral thinking to figure out. To help keep things running smoothly, I wanted to save some documents from my work email on the iPad for my cameraman to check while he was shooting B-roll. That’s just the kind of low-level computing task we don’t really think about often, but the fact that it’s simply not doable on a machine this powerful seems a little silly.
It’s more than powerful enough for 4K video editing, photo retouching and stupidly elaborate Photoshop work, not to mention who knows how many other high-performance tasks I’m forgetting at the moment. In particular, iOS feels strangely limiting here: The hardware has become so impressive that I can’t help but expect more from Apple’s software, too. I haven’t given up hope yet, though: There’s no question this iPad Pro is a big step in the right direction, and who knows what the next software update will bring.
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