iPad Pro review roundup

But after a few days of using the iPad Pro, I started to look at iPad differently. The large tablet pretty much demanded it. I've always been a bit of an iPad skeptic, never understanding how people can use them all the time for productivity, even with a Bluetooth accessory keyboard attached. By day three with the iPad Pro, I had started to wonder, Could this replace my MacBook?

On one particular day, I used the Pro to handle all my communications and web browsing, watched a movie that lasted over two hours, participated in a company-wide video call, typed up pages of notes, and played hours of music. And it lasted over 12 hours.

The iPad Pro does everything a smaller iPad can do, but its size, especially when paired with the Smart keyboard and Pencil, offers benefits tiny tablets can only dream of.I honestly like the iPad Pro, but not because I have so much screen real-estate. I like it because I could use it to get real work done.

It's an amazing tablet for artists, however, and this is what the iPad Pro might really be best at: a larger canvas for graphics work, with an input tool in the Pencil that's as good as it gets.For everyone else, it has its limitations -- like any other iPad.

Never has the cry of 'it's just a bigger Apple thing' been more applicable than it has with iPad Pro – this is literally a bigger iPad. But that approach to thinking about it is also reductive. The Microsoft Surface has blazed a sort of hybrid path – for people that don't want to compromise having a laptop experience. The iPad pro, on the other hand, is unapologetically tablety. The keyboard feels solid but it's no substitute for a MacBook. The muti-app experience, on the other hand, is far and away better than on any competing system — and the way that it enables creatives to alternate between the various 'modes' is unique to this platform.

The device I've used every day for a year to get my work done for this site now seems tiny and limited, with small apps, less content shown on screen, and a constrained multitasking interface. I know that it's only been a week, and I do believe that the Air 2 is a great device for lots of people, but I feel like all the work I've done on the iPad and iOS has led me to this point. I'm ready to take my iPad setup to the next level, and I think my workflow can benefit from improved hardware and a more capable version of iOS.

That's why answering "So… what is it?" is so hard. The Pro may seem wedged between iPads and MacBooks, but it will be your main computer in the future. As our phablets push smaller tablets into retirement, the big tablet and its accessories will do the same for our traditional computers. For now, however, it may be easiest to step back and see the Pro as a… really good, really big iPad.

It's best to think of the iPad Pro as a starting point, especially for iOS 9. These multitasking features are still brand-new, and there's a lot of low-hanging fruit to pick in future iOS 9 revisions and into iOS 10. My biggest gripes with the iPad Pro are with the software rather than the hardware, and that means that most of them can be fixed given enough time and enough feature requests. It took Microsoft three tries to really nail down the Surface Pro concept, and given a couple of iOS updates the iPad Pro has room to grow into a more versatile laptop replacement without necessarily giving up the things that people like about iOS.

The iPad Pro is plenty powerful, and it's plenty big. But to call it "just a bigger iPad" is like calling the Millennium Falcon "just a bigger falcon." In making it bigger, Apple made the iPad Pro different. This is Cupertino's attempt to prove a tablet can replace and outgun your laptop. Perhaps more importantly, it is Apple's best idea about how to give you a tablet that is more than a slightly bigger version of your big smartphone. This tablet does things your phone and your laptop can't do. Are they solutions in search of a problem? Perhaps. But the iPad Pro is the best tablet, and the best case for tablets, anyone's ever made.

The majority of tablet/laptop hybrids leave much to be desired in terms of display sensitivity, image clarity and clunky keyboards you have to remind yourself to charge - the iPad Pro nails all of these. In its current form, it's not an enterprise device in the way the Microsoft Surface is, but, and this is important, neither is it trying to be. The original iPad changed the way we browsed the internet because we didn't have to consciously boot it up every time we wanted to look something up in the same way we did on a laptop. The iPad Pro takes this one step beyond, from accessible, tactile and intuitive browsing into practical, creative productivity.

But a bigger screen, attachable keyboard, and stylus do not add things I want or need to a tablet, nor do they evolve the iPad into credible competition for my still-perfect MacBook Air. The Smart Keyboard is clever, but a little clumsy. You can't really use it on your lap, much less perched on your legs while sitting in bed. The stylus is maybe the best stylus ever, but I can't draw and don't see that changing anytime soon.

The iPad Pro is "pro" in the way MacBook Pros are. Genuine professionals with a professional need — visual artists in particular — are going to line up for them. But it's also a perfectly reasonable choice for casual iPad users who just want a bigger display, louder (and now stereo) speakers, and faster performance.Anyone tying themselves in knots looking for a specific target audience for the iPad Pro is going about it the wrong way. There is no single target audience. Is the iPad Pro meant for office workers in the enterprise? Professional artists creating content? Casual users playing games, watching movies, and reading? The answer is simply "Yes".