Review: iPad Pro — the largest iPad ever, with support for Apple Pencil

Typically when I purchase a new Apple product, it takes me a few days to get a good sense of what I do and don’t like about it, and then I post a review.  Thus, when I purchased an iPad Pro on Wednesday, November 11th, I fully expected to have a review posted by Monday, November 16th.  For the iPad Pro, however, that simply wasn’t possible.  In part, that was because I wanted to see how it works with Apple Pencil before writing this review, and I didn’t get my hands on one until Nov. 19th when just two units showed up at my local Apple Store.  (Supply of the Apple Pencil is still very limited, but we are finally starting to see more of them available for sale.)  But mainly, I needed more time because it has taken me much longer than normal to understand the pros and cons of the iPad Pro. 

I cannot emphasize enough that this is not just another iPad.  Because of its size and other new features, this feels like a fundamentally different iPad.  It has unique pros and cons, and that is why I suspect that this is the longest review that I’ve ever posted on iPhone J.D.  Also, during my more than 10 days of heavy use of the iPad Pro, my viewpoint on it has changed, mostly because it takes a while to get used to the larger size.  As you will see below, the unique advantages that it has over every other iPad are, for me, enough to outweigh the drawbacks associated with its larger size, especially because of the Apple Pencil.  But this will not be the iPad for everyone, much like many people (myself included) consider the iPhone 6 Plus / iPhone 6s Plus to be just too darn big for an iPhone.  If you are trying to decide whether the iPad Pro makes sense for you, my hope is that after reading about how I use it in my law practice and at home, you’ll have some additional insight into whether this is the right iPad for you.

The model that I purchased is the 128GB Space Gray Wi-Fi only.  My opinion is that 32GB is too small for an iPad for anyone who plans to put photos and videos on it in addition to documents, so it was easy for me to choose the 128GB model over the 32GB model.  On the other hand, I don’t need to spend the extra $130 for cellular because most of the time that I use my iPad I have Wi-Fi, and for those few times that I don’t I can tether to my iPhone and use its cellular connection.  I also purchased an Apple Pencil and an iPad Pro Smart Cover, both of which I discuss in this review.

The size

Let’s start with the most obvious feature that makes this a fundamentally different iPad.  When I purchased my iPad Pro, I noticed immediately that the box was larger than a typical iPad box.  And then when I opened the box, my first thought was:  “What have I gotten myself into; I cannot believe that this thing fills the entire huge box.”  I had seen the iPad Pro in the Apple Store, and yet I was still taken aback by how large it was.

It is hard for me to even take the traditional iPhone J.D. picture of the product on an legal pad, because the iPad Pro covers most of a legal-size legal pad, and is just a tiny bit larger on all sides as a letter-size legal pad.

For pretty much the entire first day that I used the iPad Pro, I found myself having trouble accepting just how big the iPad Pro really is, and several times that first day I said to myself that it was just too darn big and that buying it was a mistake.  As I started to use the iPad Pro more, I found that many iPad uses are significantly improved with a larger screen, and I also discovered some circumstances in which the size got in the way.

I mention this because I’ve seen other iPad Pro reviewers recommend that you go to an Apple Store to see one in person and decide whether the size is right for you.  Unfortunately, I don’t think that this is a realistic recommendation, especially if you are used to using another iPad.  The iPad Pro is so much larger that your first impression is likely to be that it is simply too big.  The harder part is figuring out whether you will grow to appreciate that larger size, or whether you will continue to find it too large, too heavy, too awkward to hold, etc.

After 10 days of heavy usage every day, here are the main pros and cons that I see to the larger size.

    • The Pros

Over the last 10 days, I’ve grown to really appreciate a number of advantages to the large size.

Full size documents.  The biggest advantage has been working with documents.  The iPad is the #1 reason that I have a paperless law practice today.  Everything that comes in to me on all of my cases is either already in a digital form, or my secretary scans it for me.  I can work with those (mostly PDF) files on my computer, and of course I do that every day, but what makes a paperless practice really work well for me is the ability to read and annotate documents on my iPad.  Reading a document on an iPad is much better than reading it on a computer screen.  Using various apps on my iPad — GoodReader, Dropbox, Microsoft Word, Transporter, Mail, TranscriptPad, etc. — I find it far more comfortable to lean back in a chair and read a document on an iPad, or even put the iPad at an angle on my desk and read the document as if I was sitting at my desk reading a paper document.

When I work with documents using an iPad Air — pleadings, contracts, transcripts, exhibits, etc. — the documents are always smaller than they would be in paper form, so I often need to pinch to zoom and scroll around to see everything.  But with the iPad Pro, documents are actually larger than normal when my iPad Pro is in landscape mode (although you don’t see all of the document at once).  And when my iPad Pro is turned to portrait mode, I can see the full document, and it is essentially full size.  For this reason, I use portrait mode on my iPad Pro much, much more often than I ever used it on my iPad Air.  In portrait mode, I can see all of a page, and all of the page is large enough to read because it is virtually the same size as if I had printed out the paper.

The larger screen is also very nice when you are working with a Word document on the iPad pro, especially if you are using an external keyboard, a topic I discuss below.

The large size of the iPad Pro is great for attorneys because we work with so many documents related to litigation or other areas of the law.  I’m sure that it will also be attractive to other professionals who work with their own kinds of documents.  For example, one of my hobbies is to play the piano, and I will sometimes use an iPad to display sheet music, or just lyrics and chords, for a song that I am playing.  The large, bright screen of the iPad Pro works amazingly well on a piano, far better than any other iPad models.  I’m sure that there are many similar examples in other fields.

Let me emphasize this one more time before I move on:  reading a PDF file on an iPad Pro in either landscape or portrait mode is the best experience that you can currently get as a paperless attorney.  Documents look great.

The big picture.  I don’t just use an iPad for work; I also use it as a consumption device for entertainment.  Photographs look incredible on the iPad Pro; essentially every picture that you view looks like an 8×10.  Watching a movie or a TV show on the iPad Pro is far better than using a smaller device.  It’s essentially like watching a large HDTV because the image fills just about the same field of vision, given that the iPad Pro will be closer to your eyes than a TV. 

If you read books on an iPad, such as in the iBooks app, I don’t see a big advantage to the iPad Pro because these apps already have good tools for adjusting type size.  Even on an iPad mini, you can make the text large enough to read.  I wouldn’t get an iPad Pro just to read iBooks.

But if you happen to enjoy reading comic books, which are now having somewhat of a renaissance thanks to Comixology and other comic book apps, you will love the iPad Pro’s large screen.  I myself am not much of a comic book reader, except that there is one series that I have been enjoying for the last year or so called Saga, which is sort of like a cross between Star Wars and Game of Thrones.  (And which is, by the way, not appropriate for kids.)  Comics look amazing on the large, bright screen of the iPad Pro, far better than on the iPad Air 2.

If there is some other video or photographic media that you currently enjoy on an iPad, I suspect that you will enjoy it even more on an iPad Pro.

Sound’s good.  It’s not just the image that is better; it’s also the sound.  While I often watch videos using headphones so as to not bother my wife or someone else around me, when I use the built-in speakers on the iPad Pro they are far, far better than ever before.  The iPad Pro actually has four speakers, one near each corner.  Having speakers on each side gives you stereo sound, and the iPad Pro is large enough that the speakers can be far apart to get good stereo separation.  And the iPad Pro also sends the treble to the top speakers and the bass to the bottom speakers (adjusting for any orientation that you are holding the iPad).  The end result is a much louder, richer sound experience, far better than any other iPad.  Does it beat the 5.1 surround speakers that you might have in a dedicated TV room?  Of course not, but it is still incredible satisfying for a mobile device.

More space to split.  Another advantage of the larger screen on the iPad Pro is the iOS 9 split screen feature.  Although you can use this feature on some other iPads such as the iPad Air 2, the larger screen on the iPad Pro makes the feature truly useful.  After all, the size of an iPad Pro in landscape orientation is essentially the same as two iPad Airs in portrait orientation right next to each other.  As a result, although I never really found split screen mode useful on my iPad Air 2, I find myself using it frequently on the iPad Pro.  I sometimes have Mail or Tweetbot (a Twitter client) on the left while Safari is open on the right so that I can click on links in messages and see the website on the same screen.  I also sometimes have a Word document open on the left and a PDF file open on the right, so that I can type while I am also viewing an exhibit or a case.

Even though I use split screen on the iPad Pro more than I ever used it before, I still don’t use it enough for this to be a reason to justify getting an iPad Pro.  Nevertheless, this feature works so much better on the larger screen (and faster processor) of an iPad Pro that it is almost as if the feature doesn’t exist on other iPads, even though I know that you can technically use it on other models.

Bigger = Taller.  This is minor, but I noticed that the large size is nice when the iPad Pro is on a desk just because it is taller.  When propped up on a desk (for example, when using the Apple Smart Cover in a triangle formation to hold up the iPad), the top of the screen is higher than any other iPad which I find makes the whole screen easier to see.  With my iPad Air 2, I had been using the Stabile PRO by Thought Out to give it more height.  Although that product also works fine with the iPad Pro, I’ve found it far less necessary to use.

    • The Cons

The larger screen of the iPad Pro is not all good, and that’s what makes this review difficult. 

Heavier and more awkward to hold.  The biggest disadvantage of the larger sized screen is that the iPad Pro is more awkward to hold.  You can feel the weight difference from the iPad Air.  It is about the same weight as the original 2010 version of the iPad.  Because that weight is distributed across a larger area than the 2010 iPad, the iPad Pro actually seems lighter than you would think it would be from just looking at it.  But when I am holding an iPad Pro in my hand, I feel fatigue faster than I do with an iPad Air.

The size also contributes somewhat to the awkwardness, although I have gotten more used to that over the last week.  With the larger size you need to hold the iPad Pro differently.  Unlike my iPad Air 2 which I often just hold in a hand, with my iPad Pro I find myself propping it partially on my arm, which at times made me feel almost like Bob Ross holding a painting palette, if you’ll forgive the slight exaggeration. 

Note that when Bob Ross held his palette, there was a hole in the palette so that he could hold it more easily.  There have been many third party products for prior models of the iPad that make it easier to hold an iPad.  For example, I enjoyed using the FreeOneHand with the iPad 2 and iPad 3, and I recently reviewed the 360 Tablet Kickstand by Lynktec.  That Lynktec product uses microsuction to attach to the iPad Air, so I thought that it would also work well with the iPad Pro.  But whenever I tried it, it would come off at some point during the day; I think that the iPad Pro is just too heavy for it.  A good third party product that gives you the option to use a handle with the iPad Pro seems like it would be a perfect way to address the larger size and weight of the iPad Pro.

But for now, the fact that the 12.9″, 1.57 pound iPad Pro is a little more awkward to hold than the 9.7″, 0.96 pound iPad Air 2 is a significant difference.  I have no doubt that some people would never get used to the larger size and weight, and no matter how much better documents look on the larger iPad Pro, the iPad Air would always be the better option for them.

New iPad accessories. Whenever Apple changes the design of a device, many old accessories no longer work.  That is especially true for the iPad Pro because it is so much larger. 

For example, for a few years now I’ve been using the Tom Bihn Ristretto for iPad, a messenger bag-style carrying case.  I have continued to use it with the iPad Pro, but the iPad Pro just barely fits in there and doesn’t fit well.  The Ristretto only barely closes with the iPad Pro in it.  As a result, I’m now in the market for something new.  [UPDATE 11/30/15: The Ristretto model that I have now is the 11″ model, which I see that Tom Bihn no longer sells.  Tom Bihn tells me that the current Ristretto that they are selling is 13″ and does fit the iPad Pro.  I have one on order and I’ll see how it works.]

Optimized apps.  Another disadvantage of the iPad Pro’s larger screen, for now at least, is that few apps take advantage of the larger screen.  For apps that are not designed for the iPad Pro, they run the same way that they do on an iPad Air but everything is zoomed to be larger.  This makes some apps feel almost comically large, but for most apps, it’s fine for now.  For example, I use LogMeIn as a remote client so that I can see the screen of my computer when I am away from my office, and having everything zoomed in a little bit more makes everything easier to see.  I’m sure that the remote screen will look even better and more crisp if and when the LogMeIn app is updated, but I’m already appreciating the app even more on the iPad Pro.  The same is true when reading transcripts in TranscriptPad, another app that works well on the iPad Pro even though it is not yet optimized for it.  And while the interface of GoodReader is not yet optimized for the iPad Pro, any documents that I view in the app look large and crisp, and do take full advantage of the larger screen.

You can easily tell if an app is optimized for the iPad Pro by invoking the keyboard.  The iPad Pro features a new on-screen keyboard that takes advantage of the larger screen by offering additional keys and a new layout, such as number keys always on the screen.  The more I use it, the more I like it.  But on apps not yet optimized for the iPad Pro, you get the old keyboard, just zoomed to be larger.  Ugh.  Here is what the new keyboard looks like:

Even for apps that are made to take advantage of the larger screen, some don’t do it that well.  A surprising example is Apple’s own Mail app, one of the most used apps on my iPhone and iPad.  Mail on an iPad Pro does get the new keyboard, as shown above.  But when you are looking at messages, the right part of the screen that displays message content adds a big white space around the three sides of your message.  This is a complete waste of space, and I’m puzzled why Apple didn’t do more with Mail before shipping the iPad Pro.  Sure, you can pinch two fingers on the screen to enlarge a message and take advantage of the larger screen, but that is a pain to do every single time.

I realize that we’ve been though this before.  When the iPhone 5 came out, many apps were not prepared for the taller screen, resulting in black bands at the top and bottom.  Then when the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus came out, we again had to wait for many apps to be optimized for the larger screen.  This will surely get better over time for the iPad Pro, although it may take longer because I’m sure that the iPad Pro is much more of a niche product than the iPhone 5 and iPhone 6 were.  For now, the iPad Pro simply doesn’t yet feel quite right with many apps.

iPad Pro = iPhone 6s Plus?  And speaking of those earlier iPhones, I was a very happy user of the iPhone 3 and iPhone 4 models, loving that I could easily touch anything on the screen with my thumb even when holding the iPhone in one hand.  When the iPhone 5 came out with its larger screen, I was skeptical at first because it was harder to reach the top of the screen, but over time I found that I preferred that taller iPhone.  And then the iPhone 6 came out with its larger screen, and once again I wondered if it was too big.  But now, the iPhone 6 / iPhone 6s size seems natural to me, and if I pick up an iPhone 4 it seems like a tiny little toy.  After adjusting to the larger screens of the iPhone 5 and iPhone 6, I found that the advantages of seeing more on the screen far outweighed the increase in size and awkwardness in holding the device.

But that doesn’t mean that bigger is always better.  While I realize that some people love their iPhone 6 Plus / iPhone 6s Plus, I always find those to be too large for me.  I find them very difficult to use with one hand.  Also, I cannot talk on an iPhone 6 Plus without feeling like I am Maxwell Smart holding up a shoe phone to my head.

After 10 days of using the iPad Pro, I haven’t yet decided if I think that the size is more like the iPhone 6, which I find to be better because it is larger, or the iPhone 6 Plus, which I find to be just too darn big for my uses.  There are times that I love the larger size and find myself so happy to be using an iPad Pro.  There are other times that it still feels too big.  I will say, though, that every time I go back to my iPad Air 2, it now feels too small in my hand and the screen seems small and compromised, not unlike the way that I now feel about the iPhone 4 and even the iPhone 5 when I use them again.  I see that as a sign that the iPad Pro size may be the better size for me.

Performance

The iPad Pro uses a processor that Apple calls the A9X.  It makes the iPad Pro significantly faster than any prior iPad.  I can’t think of a single time during my over 10 days of heavy testing when I have considered this iPad to be slow.  It is incredibly responsive to my touch, apps launch quickly, and complicated tasks are performed almost immediately.  When John Gruber reviewed the iPad Pro, he noted that “The iPad Pro is without question faster than the new one-port MacBook or the latest MacBook Airs.”  Apple VP Phil Schiller said when the iPad Pro was introduced that the iPad Pro is faster than 80% of PC laptops sold in the last 12 months.

Suffice it to say that the iPad Pro is incredibly responsive, which adds to the overall delight that you get when you use this device.

One performance enhancement that the iPad Pro does not include is 3D Touch, a feature introduced with the iPhone 6s — the ability to push harder on the screen to get a pop-up menu or other options.  That feature is especially useful on the smaller screen of an iPhone because it gives you an additional input method that compensates for the small screen size, but I could still see myself using it on the iPad Pro.  I suppose Apple is saving 3d Touch for the iPad Pro 2.

Apple Pencil

For many years now, I have used a stylus to take notes on my iPad.  Why not just use a laptop computer?  While it is true that I can type faster than I can write, studies have shown that you actually retain more information when you write notes by hand instead of typing them.  Why?  Because when you type, your instinct is to create a transcript, writing down every word.  But when you write, you cannot capture every word, so your brain focuses on determining the most important concepts and that is what you write on your paper.  Thus, instead of a long pseudo-transcript, you end up with a shorter record of the key concepts.  Perhaps more importantly, even if you never look at your notes again, you remember those key concepts more than you would if you had typed them.

Why not just use a pen and paper?  Digital notes are more powerful.  You can easily use different colors, erase, move things around on the page, etc.  Also, you can keep all of your notes with you on your iPad (and keep them forever), so they are always a few taps away, and you never have to worry about where you filed away those notes from 10 months ago when you need to see them again.  It is also easy to share digital notes; just email the PDF file.  I still often use a pen and paper when I’m in court because some judges don’t want you to have an iPad in court, and I can still write with pen and paper a little faster than I can use a stylus.  But for meetings and many other contexts, the iPad is the best choice for me.

To take digital notes, you need a stylus, and that brings us to the new Apple Pencil.  The iPad Pro is currently the only iPad to support the Apple Pencil. 

The Apple Pencil feels very nice in my hand.  The barrel is as thin as a traditional #2 pencil, a good size.  Unlike a traditional pencil, the barrel of the Apple Pencil is smooth and round, which made me worried that it would be slippery, but I haven’t had a problem with it slipping out of my hand.  It is almost 7 inches long, which is a very nice length and helps make the Pencil feel like a pencil.

The tip is small and feels very nice against the iPad Pro screen.  You can remove the tip by twisting it off, and Apple includes a replacement tip with the Pencil — presumably an acknowledgment that it will wear out over time, which is common for styluses that don’t use a hard tip.

The cap on the back of the Pencil is attached by magnets and removes to reveal a Lightning port, used for charging and for initially pairing with your iPad. 

I am a little concerned about the cap getting lost.  The magnets that connect it are reasonably strong, but I can definitely imagine accidentally hitting the back of the stylus and having the cap come off.  If you are on a plane and the cap rolls down the floor, it might be difficult to find.  I wonder if Apple will sell replacement caps and how much they will cost.  (The Apple website says that you will be able to buy replacement tips in the future, but doesn’t yet say anything about replacement caps.)

You can use an Apple Pencil for about 12 hours straight before it needs to be recharged.  There is no on/off switch on the Pencil; it just always seems ready when you pick it up, and presumably it sleeps when it senses that you are not using it.  If you pull up the Notification Center on your iPad (swipe down from the top), the Batteries widget will show you how much power is left.  But you really don’t need to pay much attention to it because the iPad will alert you when the Pencil gets down to 5% power. 

Even if you do run out of power while using it, you can simply plug it in to the Lightning port on your iPad Pro for 15 seconds to get another 30 minutes of charge.  It took me about three minutes of being connected to the iPad Pro to go from a 5% charge to a 20% charge, less than ten minutes to get to 50% charge, fifteen minutes to get to 75% charge, and I hit 100% charge after just over nineteen minutes.

So essentially, you never need to worry about the Pencil having an adequate charge; a full charge lasts a long time, and it is quick and easy to recharge directly from the iPad Pro without the need for any external charger.  This alone makes the Apple Pencil better than any other active stylus.  (You can also charge from a Lightning cord connected to a power source if you want to do so; the Apple Pencil comes with a female-to-female converter to make that connection.)

The performance of the Apple Pencil is amazing.  I have tested and reviewed a large number of iPad styluses over the years, and nothing even comes close to the Pencil.  The latency (the delay between when you touch the screen and when digital ink appears) is incredibly small on the built-in Apple apps like the Notes app, and it is currently almost as good in many third party apps.  (It wouldn’t surprise me if third party apps get even better as they learn to fine tune for the Pencil.)  And the Pencil is incredibly precise, with digital ink appearing exactly where you want it, which I have never seen with any other active styluses.

Also, palm rejection is essentially perfect with the Pencil, which is important because the iPad Pro screen is so big that you will want to rest your hand as you write, just like you would do when writing on a legal pad. In fact, the ability to comfortably rest your hand on the large screen is one of the things that makes the Pencil such a great stylus.  When you are using the Apple Pencil, you don’t have to worry about stray dots or marks appearing elsewhere because your hand touched it by accident.

I have read several reviews of the Apple Pencil that talk about how great it is for artists.  (For example, Serenity Caldwell of iMore gushes that is it the best stylus that she has ever used for sketching, the one that she has been waiting 16 years for.)  I may be the son of an architect, but I’m far from an artist, so I can’t give an honest review on how well the Apple Pencil works you want to draw something, other than to say that I played with some drawing apps and the Pencil worked great. 

On the other hand, I am qualified to talk about using a stylus to take notes on an iPad and to annotate documents because I’ve been doing that for years with an iPad in my own law practice, and I’ve also reviewed over two dozen iPad styluses over the years.  For handwriting notes, the Pencil is truly amazing.

My favorite app for taking handwritten notes during a meeting or sometimes even in court is GoodNotes.  GoodNotes works great with the Apple Pencil.  For example, as you can see in the below picture, I used GoodNotes to write the words of an Emily Dickinson poem that I had to memorize in Sixth Grade and which is still somehow stuck in my head.  First, I used the $50 Adonit Jot Dash which I recently reviewed, one of the newest and best active styluses on the market from one of the leading companies making iPad styluses.  The Jot Dash is a fantastic stylus, and it works even better on the iPad Pro than on an iPad Air 2, because on the Pro the stylus has no problem making diagonal lines.  But as good as the Jot Dash is, it still makes my handwriting a little worse than it really is, and I still have trouble with digital ink appearing exactly where I place the tip.  This is a problem that I have had with all other active styluses so I had sort of become used to it.  But switching to the Apple Pencil is a dramatic improvement.  Writing is so much easier, everything is more precise with less lag, and even the overall result is better.  The following picture shows my handwriting, first written with the Dash, and then written with the Pencil, both times just trying to be as natural as possible when writing with that stylus, and you can see the difference.

The Apple Pencil is also fantastic when you are annotating a document.  It feels so natural to use the Pencil to select text that you want to highlight in yellow in an app like GoodReader, and writing notes in the margins of a document works incredibly well.

Another reason that I love using the Apple Pencil with the iPad Pro has almost nothing to do with the Pencil itself:  the larger screen makes a great stylus like the Pencil even better.  When you are using an iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil to take a full page of notes in an app like GoodNotes, you can take notes without using zoom.  On smaller iPads, GoodNotes and many other drawing apps give you a window at the bottom of the screen where you can write notes in a zoom mode that are shrunk to appear on the page at the top of the screen.  The zoom mode is essential because (1) normal iPads have screens smaller than a normal legal pad or sheet of paper and (2) styluses are typically not precise, so you get better results when you write larger.  But you don’t need a zoom mode on the iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil.  The screen is so large that you can just write directly in your notebook at full size.  And the Apple Pencil is so precise that it is easy to write even in small print. 

The Apple Pencil is also a nice alternative way to interact with the screen.  Whether you are swiping through emails or moving candies in Candy Crush, a finger works just fine, but sometimes it is a nice change of pace to use a stylus to interact with the screen.  The tip of the Apple Pencil feels great when you move it across the iPad Pro screen, and this means that the Apple Pencil is also enjoyable to use for just general interaction with the iPad.  There are a couple of things that the Pencil doesn’t do so you’ll need a finger, such as invoking the split screen mode or pulling down the Notification window, but for most of the taps and swipes that you do when using an iPad, the Pencil works too and is a sometimes a nice alternative to a finger.

I do have one minor complaint with the Apple Pencil.  I often store a pen or a stylus in my shirt pocket, so it is nice to have a clip on the side to secure the stylus in my pocket.  There is no clip on the Apple Pencil.  My hope is that a third party will make a good, simple clip that you can attach.

A clip is often useful on a round stylus for an additional reason:  it prevents the stylus from rolling off of your desk.  (For example, I noted this earlier this year in my review of the Adonit Jot Script 2.)  Fortunately, Apple weighted the Pencil just a little more on one side so that if it rolls, it quickly comes to rest.  Imagine your childhood Weeble which would wobble but would not fall down; the Pencil doesn’t resist movement that much, but it does so enough to stop the Pencil from rolling off of the table and onto the floor unless you really push it with the intent for that to happen.

Dave Mark of The Loop recently remarked:  “Apple Pencil is the iPad Pro’s killer app.”  And Time Magazine just named the iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil one of the 25 best inventions of 2015.  I agree.  The large screen of the iPad Pro gives you lots of space to write, and when you add to that the amazingly precise and natural to use Apple Pencil, the iPad Pro + Pencil combination is simply the best way that you can take digital notes.  For anyone with the desire to write on an iPad, the Pencil is a must-have accessory, and this accessory will be responsible for selling many iPad Pros.

External Keyboards

Apple made a new $169 combination case-and-keyboard to go with the iPad Pro called the Smart Keyboard.  I played around with one in an Apple Store but didn’t order one for myself because it didn’t appeal to me.

First, it is too heavy if you are only using the keyboard occasionally.  While I have long been a fan of using an external keyboard with an iPad, I only use it occasionally, such as when I am traveling and I’m in my hotel room at night catching up on email from the day.  I wouldn’t want the Smart Keyboard to be the case that I used with my iPad Pro every day because it would add too much weight and bulk. 

Second, in my tests I wasn’t a fan of the very thin keys covered with fabric.  I’d much rather use my old Apple Wireless Keyboard.  (Or, I was in the market for something new, I’d get the similar Magic Keyboard that Apple recently introduced, which is just a normal Bluetooth keyboard, instead of the Smart Keyboard.)  Those are the same keyboards that Apple includes with the iMac, so they are normal, no-compromise keyboards.

By the way, my old Apple Wireless Keyboard works great with the iPad Pro.  iOS 9 (on any iPad, not just the iPad Pro) works better than ever with external keyboards.  For example, it is so useful to be able to hit Command-Tab to switch between apps.  Also, the Incase Origami Workstation for iPad that I have been using since 2012 also works with the iPad Pro.  (You can still buy that on Amazon, but I no longer see it on the Incase website and I believe that the product is now discontinued.  Which is unfortunate, because that was a great product.)

There are some things I liked about the Smart Keyboard, especially the Smart Connector which provides power to the keyboard so you don’t have to worry about batteries or charging, and which pairs the keyboard so you don’t have to worry about Bluetooth.  If you see yourself spending a significant amount of time using a keyboard with your iPad Pro, then you’ll definitely want to consider the Smart Keyboard and compare it with the other third-party keyboards made for the iPad Pro.  But unless you are going to use an external keyboard all the time, I don’t recommend the Smart Keyboard over other Bluetooth keyboards with keys that feel more natural.

Whatever keyboard you use, I can say that using an external keyboard with an iPad Pro is a great experience, better than any other iPad.  When the iPad Pro is sitting on a desk in front of a keyboard, it doesn’t matter that the iPad Pro weighs a little more than other iPads, and instead  you just appreciate the bigger screen.  Using an external keyboard with an iPad Pro is a writing experience very similar to typing with a laptop computer, especially when using Microsoft Word (which works great on the iPad Pro).  If you are out of the office and you need to type or revise a document, the large screen of the iPad Pro combined with an external keyboard provides a very nice experience, and for many (like me) is a reason to leave the PC in the office.

Apple Smart Cover

I’ve been a fan of Apple’s Smart Covers for earlier models of the iPad, so I purchased the $59 iPad Pro Smart Cover.  It adds almost nothing to the size and weight of the iPad Pro, but it provides some protection to the screen so that you don’t have to worry about something scratching the glass by accident. 

You can also fold it in a triangle to prop up the iPad, either at a slight angle for typing or at a bigger angle for looking at the screen on a desk.

I was pleased to see that the Smart Cover has no trouble holding up the larger and heavier iPad Pro.  And although it is easy to remove the Smart Cover (it uses magnets to attach to the side), I often keep it on even when I am holding the iPad Pro in my hand.  I can fold it up behind the iPad, and it sometimes makes it easier to get a grip on the iPad Pro to hold it.

I like the Smart Cover, and I can recommend that you use it with the iPad Pro.

Apple also sells the $79 iPad Pro Silicone Case, which protects the back of the iPad Pro and is made to work well with the Smart Cover.  But I’ve never seen any need to protect the back of my iPad.  My iPads have only rarely been scratched on the back, and even if they were to get a scratch, that just adds character.  Thus, I didn’t buy and haven’t tried the Silicone Case.

Conclusion

Is the iPad Pro the right iPad for you?  It’s a tough question.

I’ve never hesitated to recommend that lawyers use a 9.7″ iPad, such as the iPad Air 2, over the 7.9″ iPad mini.  It is nice that the iPad mini is so light and portable, and it can even fit in a small purse, but I find that screen too small to read documents and do the other work that most attorneys want to do with an iPad.  I’ve met attorneys who tell me that the iPad mini is right for them, but for most attorneys I believe that the iPad Air size is better.

But now that the iPad Pro is available, it is much more difficult to choose between the iPad Air and the iPad Pro.  Using an iPad Pro really emphasizes the limitations of using a smaller 9.7″ display on an iPad Air.  Indeed, if someone told you that the desktop or laptop computer that you were going to use could only have a 9.7″ display, I’m sure that you would object strongly that a screen that size is too small to get real work done.  For years, we have gotten used to using a 9.7″ display on an iPad, and we’ve gotten pretty good with it.  In part that is because you virtually always use just one app at a time on an iPad so you don’t need the extra screen real estate that you use on a PC or Mac to display different windows and folders at the same time.  But whenever you work with documents on a 9.7″ iPad, you are making compromises because of the display size.

With the iPad Pro, being larger often means being full-size, especially for documents.  That is a huge advantage.  But it also means that you are working with a device that is heavier and more awkward to hold than a 9.7″ iPad — much like all but the tiniest of laptop computers are heavier and more awkward to hold than a 9.7″ iPad.

For me, if the only points of comparison between the iPad Pro and the iPad Air 2 were larger screen versus more heavy and more awkward to hold, it would be a draw.  Just about all of my appreciation for everything being easier to see on the larger screen would be equally counterbalanced by it being somewhat harder to hold an iPad Pro in my hand.

The Apple Pencil is the tiebreaker for me.  The Pencil is truly a joy to use, far better than any other stylus.  And while I realize that I am still in my honeymoon period with the Apple Pencil, for now it is one of those rare accessories that makes me want to use a device even more.  I look forward to using the Pencil with the iPad Pro, and the fact that I can only use the Pencil with the iPad Pro is one of the reasons that I prefer using an iPad Pro over an iPad Air 2.  I’m sure that next year we will see a 9.7″ iPad (the iPad Air 3?) that works with the Apple Pencil, and if/when that happens, then the 9.7″ iPad will be more attractive as compared to the iPad Air, but even that might not be enough for me.  As noted above, part of the appeal of the Apple Pencil to me is having that large, no-compromise screen to write on, which wouldn’t exist with an iPad Air even if it were updated to use the Apple Pencil.

[UPDATE:  In the Comments to this post, Dallas attorney Tom Mighell asks whether the iPad Pro can replace a computer for an attorney.  As I note in my response to his comment, I don’t think that is the right question.  Every attorney needs a computer in his or her office.  But tablets can do many tasks better than a computer, so I see a tablet as an additional device that attorneys can use to get work done, much like a smartphone is an additional device that an attorney should use but which does not replace the PC/Mac.  However, Tom is not alone in asking this question of whether an iPad Pro should be judged based on whether it is an alternative to a laptop computer, so I thought I should address it.]

If you are interested in using an Apple Pencil, then there is a good chance that you will find, as I did, that the iPad Pro is the best iPad for you.  If you have no desire to ever take handwritten notes or annotate documents using a stylus, then you have a tougher decision.  You need to determine what appeals to you more:  a larger screen which makes everything easier to see, or a lighter iPad that is easier to carry.  That’s a very close call, and one that I know a lot of folks will be struggling with as they consider the iPad Pro.

Click here to get iPad Pro from Apple ($799 to $1,079)

Click here to get Apple Pencil from Apple ($99)

Click here to get iPad Pro Smart Cover from Apple ($59)

Click here to get Smart Keyboard from Apple ($169)

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