Review: The 10.5-inch iPad Pro is much more “pro” than what it replaces

Performance

Like many iPads before it, Apple has given the new Pros a special high-performance variant of its latest, greatest iPhone chip: the A10 Fusion from the iPhone 7 becomes the A10X Fusion in the iPad Pro. The A10X jumps from four CPU cores to six and doubles the number of GPU cores from six to 12.

As in the standard A10 Fusion, not all of those CPU cores are created equal. Three are larger, faster high-performance cores that do most of the heavy lifting, and three are smaller, slower low-power cores intended to save battery life. In the world of Android and generic ARM chips, this configuration has been common for a couple of years now; the difference is that many of those chips allow the big and the little cores to operate at the same time, while Apple only allows three of the cores to be lit up at once.

Apple’s big cores are so much better than anything anyone else is shipping that this doesn’t really matter, in the end. As we do our performance comparisons, though, it’s important to remember that from the point of view of the operating system, the apps, and the developer tools, the A10X is a triple-core chip like the iPad Air 2’s A8X, not a true six-core chip (or a dual-core chip like the A9X).

The A10X in the 10.5-inch iPad Pro runs at around 2.38GHz according to Geekbench, a modest increase from the 2.26GHz reported for the A9X.

Between the clock speed boost and the architectural improvements, single-core performance is up by 25 percent or so. That's modest but respectable compared to the smaller year-over-year gains we usually see in chips from Intel and Qualcomm. If you’re using an app that can hit all three of the high-performance CPU cores at once, the performance improvement is closer to 80 percent. Not all apps will be able to take advantage of all those threads, but apps that can should have plenty of power to work with. Compare that to the dual-core Intel CPUs in the MacBook and 13-inch MacBook Pro.

The A9X was able to draw just about even with the Intel chips of the day, but with the A10X Apple is pulling firmly ahead and setting the pace for the rest of the chip industry (at least when it comes to thin, light, fanless devices). Intel is headed in the same direction with some of its “Coffee Lake” CPUs later this year—that family will include some quad-core CPUs that fit in devices where Intel currently only offers dual-core chips. That we’re now waiting for Intel to catch up with Apple’s performance is a sign of just how far Apple’s in-house chips have come in the last few years.

The GPU requires less explaining: there are more cores, so it’s faster; as advertised, it’s right around 80 percent faster in all of our graphics and GPU compute tests. Now that we have better benchmarks that use Metal rather than OpenGL, it’s also easier to make comparisons between the iPad Pros and the Mac lineup. The A10X Fusion holds its own with, or slightly beats, the Intel Iris GPUs in the 13-inch MacBook Pros (the model here is from 2016, but the as-yet-untested 2017 versions won’t change much), but it can’t approach the level of the dedicated GPUs in the 15-inch Pros.

Finally, Apple has fixed one aspect of the 9.7-inch Pro that drew complaints from the professional crowd last year: the 10.5-inch Pro comes with 4GB of RAM, same as the 12.9-inch version. RAM doesn’t directly speed up iDevices, at least not like it does in regular computers, but it helps keep things running smoothly by allowing more tabs and apps to stay loaded in memory at once before Apple begins purging them. There are also signs that iOS 11’s multitasking is slightly more versatile on iPads with 4GB of RAM, allowing as many as three active apps and a picture-in-picture window onscreen at once.

The 9.7-inch Pro’s 2GB of RAM was and is still a decent amount for an iDevice, and in the here-and-now it still doesn’t feel limiting. But as time goes on 4GB devices will obviously be more capable, and for the sake of the lineup it’s simpler to make the smaller and larger iPad Pros identical in everything but size. Giving both Pros more memory also draws a more visible line between them and the much cheaper entry-level $329 iPad, which still includes 2GB of RAM.

Battery life and fast charging

The new iPad Pro acquits itself well in our battery tests, easily outscoring every other iPad (including the iPad 5) in the Wi-Fi browsing test and beating most others in the more intensive WebGL test. The score for the browsing test may be a bit inflated because it loops what is primarily static content, allowing the screen’s refresh rate to drop to lower rates more often than might be possible in reality.

Another factor is the 30.1WHr battery, which is around 10 percent larger than the 27.5WHr battery in the old 9.7-inch Pro. The 12.9-inch Pro’s battery capacity likewise increases from 38.5WHr to 40.1WHr—we haven’t been able to test it, but between the more efficient chip, the better screen, and the bigger battery, its battery life should look quite a bit better than its predecessor’s.

To add a brief note about charging: Apple ships its default 12W iPad charger (complete with USB-A port and cable) in the box with the iPad Pro, but at the keynote it mentioned that you could charge both tablets more quickly by using a MacBook or MacBook Pro USB-C charger instead.

In between battery tests, I hooked the 10.5-inch Pro up to both its included 12W charger and the 45W USB-C charger from my 13-inch MacBook Pro; presumably the 29W MacBook charger will be able to charge it at roughly the same rate. When connected to the default charger, the Pro charges at a rate of about 18 percent every half hour. When connected to the USB-C charger, the rate increased to 23 or 24 percent every half hour. The charging rate naturally starts to slow down in the last 20 or 10 percent, so I can't quote you the time to a full charge, but it should give you some idea of whether it'd be worth it to buy a whole separate charger (it will also probably make a more pronounced difference for the larger iPad Pro).

The rest of the lineup

We’ve alluded to both the 12.9-inch iPad Pro and the $329 iPad 5 throughout this review, but let’s compare them more directly for a second. If you’re in the market for a new iPad, which should you be looking at?

The market for the iPad 5 is obvious: it’s for people upgrading from an older tablet that they’re still mostly happy with and for people who mostly intend to use the iPad for consumption rather than creation. This was what older iPads’ hardware and software were designed around, and it’s still a totally valid way to use a tablet. The iPad 5 still can be used to get work done, and the coolest of iOS 11’s new features are going to work just fine. But it’s slower, it has less memory, it has an inferior screen and camera, and it doesn’t support the Smart Keyboard or the Apple Pencil.

All of that stuff adds up, and if you intend to try to use an iPad as your primary computer (or even as your primary mobile computer), it’s worth paying to get all of it.

And that’s the audience that should really be considering an iPad Pro. The Apple Pencil is still probably the “killer app,” insofar as the iPad Pro is still the only place you can get that kind of capability within Apple’s ecosystem, but otherwise the Pro’s quality and power is necessary only if you’re intending to use an iPad Pro to replace whatever laptop you’ve got now.

There are “pros” for whom this will not be possible. Software developers still can’t get Xcode, and while there are plenty of apps here to help you create things, they’re often still “light” versions of full-fledged desktop apps like Word and Photoshop and Logic Pro and Final Cut Pro. For anyone who can live within those limitations, or who is fine with a more limited mobile computer because they have a hulking workstation on their desk at home, the iPad Pro is a high-quality machine that costs half what a MacBook does (and it remains significantly cheaper even after you start piling on the storage upgrades and accessories).

Finally, if you’re trying to choose between the larger and smaller Pro models, Apple has made your choice much simpler by syncing up the refresh cycle. The old 12.9-inch Pro had a bigger screen, more memory, and a better Smart Keyboard, but the smaller one had the better screen and the superior camera. Now the screen tech and the specifications and the size of the keyboards and the camera quality is all synced up; just pick the size you want and run with it. I’d say that if you do intend to use the iPad for its original purpose—watching movies and playing games—for any significant amount of time, the 10.5-inch option is going to be more comfortable and versatile, but that’s your choice to make.

Waiting for iOS 11

Knowing what we do about iOS 11, any review of an iPad Pro running iOS 10 is going to feel unfinished. iOS 10 neither taxes nor takes full advantage of this hardware. The iOS 9-era multitasking features (nearly untouched in iOS 10) feel clunky and anachronistic two years in, especially with foreknowledge of the altogether more natural and macOS-esque improvements that are coming in a few short months.

So we’re left to evaluate the improved hardware without the virtue of the improved software that Apple announced with it. And it is very good hardware! I mean, it’s still an iPad. It’s still a big slab that’s mostly screen. It does all the regular iPad stuff, a little faster and a little better. It’s a noticeable improvement over both last year’s 9.7-inch iPad Pro and the cheaper, more basic $329 iPad. And now that Apple has synced up the core hardware features of the 9.7-inch and 12.9-inch iPads Pro (same A10X, same RAM, same camera, same screen tech), you can now pick the size and weight you want without making any other compromises.

Those improved specs, the better keyboard, and all of iOS 11’s new features (most notably the file manager and the new multitasking features) also earn these tablets more right to the “Pro” name than their predecessors had. The new hardware won’t change your mind if you already think iPads have no business being “Pro,” but in the fall when iOS 11 comes out these tablets are going to be more computer-y than they have been at any point in their seven-year history. There are still things that you really just can’t do with them, software development chief among them, but for writers or artists or even video editors the combination of hardware and software is increasingly convincing.

The good

• The A10X is super fast, and it’s nice to have 4GB of RAM (a 512GB storage option doesn’t hurt, either).
• Bright 120Hz screen is really easy on the eyes.
• Fits in a larger screen and a full-size Smart Keyboard without being too much larger and heavier than the tablet it replaces.
• Apple Pencil has lower latency and is more comfortable to use than before.
• Great tablet camera, even if it does still have a bump.
• Excellent battery life.

The bad

• More expensive than last year, and accessories like the $159 Smart Keyboard and $99 Apple Pencil quickly jack up the price.
• Included charger is significantly slower than a USB-C MacBook charger; the included Lightning cable is also still using USB-A.
• Still can’t fit two full-size iPad apps on-screen at once.
• Pro-oriented apps are usually still light on features relative to their desktop counterparts. Software development still isn’t possible.

The ugly

• iOS 11 won’t be out for three months. Save your money for now and buy a model refurbished or on sale once they’re actually running the software they were designed for.