Apple has lots of great mobile devices — the iPhone, AirPods, and now the new AirTag. But for me, it is the iPad that is truly special. It has become an integral part of my law practice, and it is the #1 reason that I virtually never use paper and I virtually always have the document that I need at my fingertips. This has been especially true since 2015 when Apple introduced the first generation of the 12.9" iPad Pro. The large screen is fantastic for viewing documents such as the brief filed by opposing counsel, exhibits, transcripts, etc. And the Apple Pencil, also introduced in 2015, makes it so easy to annotate those documents. The 12.9" iPad Pro took a big step forward in 2018 when the third generation was introduced. The much smaller bezels meant that virtually all of the screen was usable for viewing content, and the flat sides work great with the second generation Apple Pencil 2. Because the fourth generation introduced in 2020 was a minor update, I know a large number of attorneys who, like me, skipped that model and continued to use the fantastic 2018 model.
The fifth generation 12.9" iPad Pro is now available, and I've been using one since this past Friday morning. Unlike the 2020 update, this 2021 update is substantial because of two key advances: the much better screen, and the faster M1 processor. Plus it contains everything that I have loved about the 12.9" iPad Pro since it was introduced in 2015, including the great design introduced with the third generation in 2018.
Overall
The look of the 2019 fifth generation 12.9" iPad Pro is virtually the same as the 2018 third generation and the 2020 fourth generation. The fifth generation is a tiny bit thicker (0.25") than the prior generations (such as the 0.23" third generation). It is also slightly heavier (1.5 pounds) than prior generations (such as the 1.39-pound third generation). However, I did not notice these changes in normal use of the fifth generation. The only way that I could tell the difference is if I switched back and forth between the third and fifth generation, and even then, the difference was minor, although I could notice it.
Battery life seems unchanged from prior models of the 12.9" iPad Pro. (Apple says 9-10 hours.)
The 12.9" comes in Space Gray and Silver. Storage sizes are 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, and (for the first time ever) 2TB. The models come with 8GB of RAM, except that the 1TB and 2TB models come with 16GB of RAM. I purchased the 512GB version, which is a step up from the 256GB models that I've used since 2017. I purchased the Wi-Fi model (no 5G) and it costs $1,399.00. However, Apple is paying me $535 to trade in my third generation 12.9" iPad Pro, so that reduced the overall cost to $864 for the upgrade from the device I've been using since 2018.
There is also a new 11" model, but I've been using the 12.9" model since 2015 and that is what I prefer. Also, the 2020 11" version of the iPad Pro does not have the new mini-LED screen discussed below.
Better screen
In 2017, Apple introduced the iPhone X with an OLED screen. OLED screens are great for contrast because when a portion of the screen is supposed to be black, it is truly black — no light is used for that part of the screen. And that was part of the reason that The iPhone X brought support for HDR (high dynamic range) to increase the contrast between parts of the screen that are supposed to be dark and parts of the screen that are supposed to be bright. HDR support has improved from the iPhone X to the current iPhone 12, but if you are using any of those models of the iPhone, then you have a sense of what HDR can look like on a mobile device.
For a number of technical reasons, Apple has opted not to use OLED for an iPad screen, so it has instead used LEDs. LED screens are good — you probably also use one on your computer monitor — but they don't have the contrast of OLED and typically don't support HDR. But in the newest 12.9" iPad Pro, Apple is using a new display technology called mini-LED. And it is a big step forward over the display technology that Apple previously used with the iPad.
First, the dark colors are very dark. It is not quite as good as the OLED screen on a modern iPhone, but it is darn close. In the past, when your iPad was supposed to show an all-black screen — such as the night sky or space in a movie — what you instead saw was just a very dark gray. It is easy to see this if you are using an iPad that has a black bezel. Compare the true black of the bezel to what is on the screen when your iPad is trying to display black and you can see the difference. But with the mini-LED display on the new 12.9" iPad Pro, there is almost no distinction between the black bezel and the screen. You can still see it if you look for it, so it is not quite the pure black that you get with the iPhone's OLED screen, but it is a huge improvement over the previous display technology.
Second, the bright colors are very bright. Brightness is measured in nits — or, if you want to be more technical, candela per square metre. The first model of the 12.9" iPad Pro supported 400 nits. The fourth generation model supported 600 nits. (The current version of the iPad Air supports 500 nits.) This new fifth generation 12.9" iPad Pro will typically work in a 600 nits mode, which is plenty bright when you are working with documents or surfing the internet. But when you display HDR content, the entire display can go up to 1,000 nits. And better yet, Apple can highlight up to 40% of the screen up to 1,600 nits. That's better than even the OLED screen on the iPhone 12 line, which goes up to 1,200 nits.
Put these two together and you get quite an impressive result. If a part of the screen is black but there is also something bright taking up 40% of the screen or less, the contrast is outstanding and life-like. And it is not just about brightness; it is also about color. Colors on the mini-LED display can really pop. The pictures in my Photos app have never looked better. And speaking of pictures, I hate that I cannot put a picture of the new screen that I have taken myself in this section of my review. Although I tried, I just don't have a way to capture how good it looks in a way that you will be able to see it on whatever screen you are using right now. You need to see it with your own eyes to see how good it looks.
Having said that, if have a recent iPhone, you can get a sense of what this all looks like by viewing an HDR video on YouTube such as this one by Jennifer Gala. When I watch that video on my third generation 12.9" iPad Pro, or even the nice 27" screen of my 2019 iMac with Retina 5K (which goes up to 5oo nits), it looks good. But on the OLED screen on my iPhone 12 Pro, the image quality is jaw-dropping. And even though the blacks are a little better on the OLED screen of my iPhone 12 Pro, the image is even more impressive on the fifth generation 12.9" iPad Pro — not just because it goes up to 1,600 nits instead of 1,200 nits, but also because the 12.9" screen is SO MUCH BIGGER. There is a limit to how much you can be impressed by a smaller iPhone screen. But a big, beautiful, 4K HDR image on a 12.9" screen is really something.
When you are looking at HDR content, the fifth generation 12.9" iPad Pro is stunning. Movies and TV shows look fantastic in 4K Dolby Vision HDR, whether it is space battles in one of the Star Wars movies or even just incredible color on the soccer field during an episode of Ted Lasso. But over the last few days, some of my favorite content has been content that I created myself. The iPhone 12 line of phones can record in HDR with Dolby Vision, up to 30 fps (frames per second) on the less expensive models and up to 60 fps on the iPhone 12 Pro. All of the videos that I have taken with my iPhone 12 Pro for the last seven months have been in HDR Dolby Vision 60 fps, but up until now, I could only appreciate that quality on the iPhone itself. (The TV at my house is only 1080p, so it is not 4K and does not support HDR.) Those videos look amazing on this new iPad. For example, in a video I took a few weeks ago when my daughter competed in her middle school track and field championship, the video quality is so amazing that I feel like I am there again, cheering her on again as she earned the gold medal in one of her events. I now wish that I could go back in time and re-record 4K HDR video of my kids when they were younger.
So this new screen is very impressive when you are viewing 4K HDR content. If your job involves creating the next Star Wars movie, that would be a reason to use this iPad. But what if your job is just to be a lawyer: reading and annotating PDF files, composing emails, using websites, etc. Does this new screen make a difference?
It does make a difference but in a more subtle way. You are not going to be experiencing 1,600 nits when you look at a PDF document. But you will still experience a better screen. The prior models of the iPad Pro (and even the newest 11" iPad Pro model) use 72 LEDs to light the screen. The fifth generation 12.9" iPad Pro uses over 10,000 LEDs, grouped into 2,500 different local dimming zones that can brighten or dim based on what is being shown on that zone of the display. There have been many times during the last few days when I have looked at this screen — even something as mundane as my home screen — and I found myself pausing to appreciate that the screen looks so much richer. Black looks really black. Colors pop. Everything looks its best. And while I cannot tell you that using this iPad will improve the quality of your legal work — a lot of smart lawyers have drafted impressive legal briefs using crappy computer displays — it can help you to have a nicer, more enjoyable experience. Indeed, considering that an iPad is all about the screen — that is what you look at all the time, that is what you touch, that is what you hold in your hands — a significant improvement to the quality of the screen is easy to enjoy.
You don't need to eat at a good restaurant, drive in a premium car, or live in a nice house. Unless you are lucky enough to be in a situation where money is no object for you, you need to pick the parts of your life where you consider it worth it to pay for nicer experiences. But if you decide that you want a premium screen on an iPad, this new iPad Pro really delivers.
Faster
This new iPad is faster for three reasons. First, it uses Apple's M1 processor, the same chip that Apple is currently shipping in its newest iMac and MacBook computers. According to tests run by Jason Snell of Six Colors, the M1 processor helps this fifth generation model to be up to 60% faster than the fourth generation model (which was, for most tasks, very close in speed to the third generation model). And it's not like the third and fourth generation iPad Pro models were slow.
Second, the storage on this new iPad is faster. It can read and write from the internal SSD memory about twice as fast.
Third, the new iPad has more RAM. The 2018 third generation 12.9" iPad Pro had 4GB of RAM, unless you purchased the 1TB model which had 6GB of RAM. The 2020 fourth generation used 6GB of RAM for all versions. The 2021 fifth generation uses 8GB of RAM for most models and 16GB of RAM for the models with 1TB or 2TB of storage. With more RAM, there is a greater chance that information that you need will already be in memory, so the iPad can display it even faster. when you switch between applications, or switch between tabs within an application, this can make a difference.
Put it all together and this new iPad is definitely faster. I have the 512GB model, so mine has 8GB of RAM. Most of the time that I am using the iPad, the experience is similar to my third generation model. But then I will do something like launch an app, open a new PDF file, load a webpage, and I am amazed how quickly it lunges forward. Have you ever experienced the Rock 'n' Roller Coaster at Disney World? Unlike a typical roller coaster that starts slowly, the first thing that happens when that ride begins is that you accelerate from 0 to 57 mph in less than 2.8 seconds. I found myself thinking of the beginning of that ride when I started using this new iPad because there so many times when an action would suddenly occur so quickly when I expected it to take longer. Many of these actions would typically take less than a second anyway, so the speed jump was noticeable but over quickly. Nevertheless, I've also noticed that apps like PDF Expert start-up and display PDF files much faster than before.
There are a few apps available now, and more coming in the future, that take advantage of the M1 speed not in just a burst mode, like I've described above, but also for performing long, complex tasks such as working with video. I can't wait to see what both Apple and third-party developers do to push the limits of the impressive speed of the M1 processor.
For now, most of the time, the speed of this new iPad is similar to the third and fourth generation. But then from time to time, especially when I am changing what I am doing, this new model is much more responsive. It's a nice improvement.
Center Stage
Another significant change in this new iPad is the introduction of something that Apple calls Center Stage. The front-facing camera on this iPad uses an ultra-wide lens so it can see a broad area. When you are using that camera, and when you have Center Stage enabled, the iPad will crop to focus on faces. If you move around, the cropped area will move with you. If a second person enters the camera's field of view, the cropped area will open so that both of you are on screen. It makes it appear that a professional camera operator is panning left or right and zooming in or out.
I had fun playing with this feature with my son. The best way for you to see how it looks is to look at the short videos embedded in this section of the review of this new iPad by Federico Viticci of MacStories. He used a special app that was developed specifically for him for the purpose of showing off how Center Stage. Click that link, and you will have a great sense of how the feature works. Or, here is a short video from when Apple debuted this feature last month:
The feature is neat, and I suspect that I will use it when my family videochats with other friends and family. But I don't expect to use it much at work. Even though I do participate in quite a few video conferences in my law practice, and even though I use my iPad Pro for some of them, I always try to stay in one place, looking directly into the camera. Thus, I don't need a virtual camera operator to follow me moving left and right or in and out.
Having said that, it is a pretty impressive demonstration of the power of artificial intelligence. Apple did a great job with this feature, so I wanted to devote some attention to it in this review. I expect that Apple will add Center Stage to other products in the future.
Etc.
The improved screen and speed are the reasons that I am very happy with this new iPad. But there are two other features worth mentioning.
Although prior models of the iPad Pro supported USB-C, this iPad has a USB‑C connector with support for Thunderbolt / USB 4. This allows accessories, such as an external drive, to communicate with the iPad much faster. Although I don't have a current reason to take advantage of this, I like having it there because I might have a need to use it in the future. I have often purchased a computer that had a new type of port that I wouldn't use at all for the first year or so, but then I would purchase some sort of external device that takes advantage of the port, and I'd be happy to have it there. I could see that happening for this new and very fast port. The port is also compatible with regular USB-C, so my existing accessories work just fine.
You can buy a version of this new iPad with 5G cellular support. I purchased the Wi-Fi model; if I need to access the Internet when I don't have access to Wi-Fi, I can just take the time to tether to my iPhone. But if you use cellular data with an iPad much more frequently than I do, it is nice to have this built-in. And as 5G continues to roll out across the country, it is nice that you have the ability to connect to a super-fast network if you find yourself close to a 5G microcell.
Conclusion
In light of both the features and the price, there is no question that that is the top-of-the-line iPad. The large mini-LED screen is the best screen that I've ever seen on an Apple device. Frankly, it is better than any screen that I've ever seen in person. (There are of course better screens on high-end TVs, but I haven't actually used one of those before.) And while the last two generations of the iPad Pro were fast, I frequently notice the bursts of speed with this new model. Moreover, as good as this iPad is today, I suspect that we will see it get even better in the future as Apple and other developers come up with ways to make the most of the additional speed of the M1 processor, the extra RAM, and the faster disk access.
If you enjoy using an iPad and you want to get the very best, this premium iPad has a lot to offer. Or, if you feel that this new iPad is too much for you, that's fine because the iPad Air that came out in late 2020 is also a great iPad and it costs hundreds of dollars less.
Click here to get the fifth generation 12.9" iPad Pro from Amazon.
