I played with one at the weekend and will definitely be upgrading, just waiting on the 'Back to School' promotion starting.
If you can suffer the now old model Costco have 128gb for £399 so don't pay that for 2nd hand.
Thinking of treating myself to a new iPad and the new Pro looks appealing, has anyone got one?
Seen a few of last years model going for around £400 2nd hand so just trying to gauge opinion if it's worth the extra?
I'm drawn to the pencil mostly as I'm a proper jotter in work and like the idea of all notes being in one place and digital.
cheers
I played with one at the weekend and will definitely be upgrading, just waiting on the 'Back to School' promotion starting.
If you can suffer the now old model Costco have 128gb for £399 so don't pay that for 2nd hand.
If for work and handwriting then do yourself a favour and get a surface pro and desktop onenote. I'm unaware of anything which even comes close to desktop onenote for note taking and organization. The features and functionality are unparalleled. Although given it is designed to do both tablet and laptop, the tablet mode is naturally not as refined as apple or android, but it is still great none the less.
I bought a 10.5" iPad Pro last week along with the Pencil (which I got in the US) and the British Smart Keyboard cover. I'm really happy with it. The new screen is a revelation. It is so much better than the iPad Air 2 I had before. The 120Hz refresh rate really helps with pencil latency too. It's down to 20ms lag and feels almost perfect. iMore has a good comparison of the old vs new Pencil:
It's taken from their review at https://www.imore.com/105-ipad-pro
I didn't use the old iPad Pros at all but if you have any specific questions I'm happy to answer them.
The new iPad Pros have less latency than the new Surface (20ms vs 21ms) so note taking is actually better on the iPad now. See https://www.imore.com/apple-pencil-v...ats-difference
As someone who has used an sp3 and sp4 for university taking notes all day, the latency debate is irrelevant. The inking works just great. No different to the arguments about tilt, pressure levels etc. Those are only a concern for serious artists. For taking notes, it means little to nothing and is in no means problematic. And as I say, nothing comes close to desktop onenote. In terms of productivity, dedicated mobile apps will probably never be in the same league as desktop applications due to the emphasis on big button touch-centric.
Last edited by hafle; 22nd June 2017 at 21:40.
The imore pencil video is a bit misleading. For a start, the new iPad pencil gif is clearly being drawn on the screen more slowly than the old one, exaggerating the difference.
I own a 9.7 Pro, and I use the Apple pencil extensively for photo editing and note taking, and I've now spent some time with the 10.5 doing the same tasks.
Being honest, the 10.5 screen is a nice improvement in size and lack of borders compared to the 9.7. It's definitely brighter, but whether you need the extra brightness will depend on where you plan to use it.
The 10.5 screen is marginally more responsive and scrolls more smoothly than the 9.7, which you do notice when they're side by side. It's faster to update than the old screen using the pencil, but there's still a lag if you're fussy. I don't find the old one bad to be fair.
I'd say, and what I've decided for myself, is that if you already have a 9.7 Pro, then it's probably not worth the upgrade. The 'old' 9.7 Pro is still a superb device and you really aren't 'suffering' whilst using it.
If I didn't have a 9.7 Pro already, I would of course seriously look at the new one, but I'd also be very interested in the old one at the right price.
Apples problem is that their tablets became plenty good enough a while back, and we're not upgrading as quickly as they'd like, but they're struggling to find ways to encourage us to make the change.
Another thing to consider is that the new 10.5" and 12.9" Pros have 4GB of RAM. When iOS 11 is released in September, they will be able to have 3 apps on the screen at one time, two in split view and one in slideover. The only other iPad to support this is the 1st gen 12.9" Pro. The 9.7" Pro only has 2GB of RAM.
I've been using the Pencil to annotate documents that I've been checking all week and have found the Pencil to be great. I've used GoodNotes, Notability and PDF Expert for this. All have worked really well.
Do you already have an iPad? If so which model?
The only downside I've found so far is the anti reflective coating. It is a lot less refelctive than the iPad Air 2 I've upgraded from but does show fingerprints more. Apart from that, this is a fantastic device.
I'm enjoying the Smart Keyboard a lot more than I expected. I am also pleased with the slip case. It's really handy to have a sleeve which holds the iPad which Smart Keyboard cover and Pencil together.
I've gone from a Mini 4 to a Pro 10.5, and my wife has an Air 2. Funnily enough, I've also got a Surface Pro 4 for work.
Arguably the new Pro is a bit overspecced for what I use mine for - internet and media mainly, but I'm probably not going to change it for a good few years, so I thought it's a better bet for a bit of future-proofing. Not that I think the outgoing Pro is going to be outdated any time soon. I agree that picking up a discounted 9.7 on one of the current deals is probably the sensible option, probably better bang for the buck than the regular iPad (ex-Air) - although at £339 that seems pretty good value for an Apple product.
The 10.5 vs 9.7 screen size is a useful gain though - it's more noticeable than the 0.8" suggests. I'm not 100% that the 120hz makes as much difference as the reviewers make out - I've never had an issue with lack of smoothness anyway. I'm not sure about True Tone either - I'm not sure it makes the right adjustments for me.
The Surface Pro vs iPad Pro question is a bit apples vs oranges (groan!), especially as I've got the 10.5 instead of the 12.9, so screen size isn't quite comparable. The SP is a laptop with some tablet qualities, whereas the IP is more of a tablet with some laptop functionality, so any pro vs con reflects this IMO. E.g. you can't beat the range of programmes a full W10 OS allows compared to iOS's closed system, but iOS is much easier to just pick up and use. The Surface is a bit big and heavy to use as a conventional tablet though.
I bought the 10.5 pro last week, upgrading from the IPad Air 1. As far as the screen's concerned it's no contest - this is far easier on the eye and much smoother scrolling. Which is really why I bought it in the first place. The four speakers offer a very good sound too for a tablet. Bought a decent ESR cover for a quarter of the price of Apple's ripoff.
im going to look for a 9.7 pro I think- love my ipad
I've got a 9.7 pro with pencil and now apple keyboard.
Very good kit and very flexible in day to day use.
I've stopped using the pencil as I prefer the keyboard. But when I was using the pencil it was no problem. Very quick and accurate
Jim
Can anyone point me to a good deal on a 9.7" pro please.
Jim
Thanks for all the info lads, looks like a no brainer with the new iOS coming out, I'd rather the extra oomph to run it!
Will pop to JL tomorrow and take a look, so many options but I'll probably just go for the cheapest one.........
Yes, it seems like fairly good value (by Apple standards). 256 is handy for taking videos on trips away etc
I did buy a wifi hard drive a few years a ago for that purpose though i.e. you can store movies etc on a portable hdd, then the iPad accesses them via a wifi link. Nice in theory, but it's a bit buggy unfortunately. Better to be able to bung them on the iPad.
So any benefit in swapping an aged MBA out for one or stick with a new Pro
Pitch
Argos has £50 off all 1st gen pro's
Saw the new one today
It's awesome
Both in apple shop and JL
Os11 will max it they were saying in apple
Anyone know when the 'Back to school' deal is likely to happen? I have had a good search on the web but can't find anything for this year.
Well I've order one, 256gb, pick it up from Argos tomorrow with a pencil. Thanks for all the info!
Any recommendations on productivity apps?
Id also like some good note apps and one where I can write on PDF's?
Cheers
Notability and GoodNotes are both very good note taking apps. Apple's own Notes app is good too. PDF Expert 6 is also very good.
It's just a matter of time...
The Pro also has TrueTone which measures the ambient light levels and matches the white balance.
I had the Pro but couldn't get on with IOS or the terrible keyboard, so i ended up with a maxed out Surface Book that never gets used but which i vastly prefer due to an I7 processor and 16gb ram, Windows, and an excellent keyboard with glass trackpad. I have no use for the pen or tablet mode so i'll probably just sell it as i only ever use a MacBook.
They are a good concept if you use the pen and don't mind being restricted to IOS or have the need for a proper keyboard, trackpad etc.
This has been an interesting read for me, I'm currently typing on my four year old iPad which has been faultless, but it will soon be handed down to my one year old daughter to watch tellietubbies in the car, which gives me the green light to upgrade to a 64gb iPad Pro thanks to the info in this thread.
Thanks.
Andy
Well, I've got and wow! Superb device!
Any owther decent apps to recommend?
I have the Smart Keyboard cover and the Apple leather sleeve. The sleeve is expensive but very good. It keeps the pencil with the iPad.
Do not buy the Logitech Slim Combo keyboard and cover. It gets terrible reviews.
Linea is a superb drawing. Affinity Photo is an excellent photo editor.
Bit of help please!
I need an app I can import a (several page) PDF from Dropbox and write on it etc and save as another version, ideas?
GoodNotes or Notability? AGH!
Why can't there be a demo download..........
There's a good article on Notability here:
https://www.macstories.net/ios/ipad-...f-note-taking/