This week, I bought a new iPad Pro 9.7″ to replace my iPad Mini 2. I use my iPad at home for at least two hours every day, mostly for web browsing and reading magazines, so it didn’t feel like a stretch to spend the not-inconsiderable £619 to get an upgrade. I was particularly interested in the iPad Pro’s new screen (40% lower reflectance than the Air 2, maybe 70+% over the Mini 2; laminated display; etc.), the Apple Pencil support, and most importantly, a 3x speed increase compared to what I have now.
Has my Mini 2 gotten slower since I bought it two and a half years ago? It feels like it, but according to benchmarks, iOS 9 actually increased the speed of the Mini 2 for my most common activity, web browsing. Perhaps the benchmarks are wrong, but it’s also likely that I just expect much more from my devices every year – not just because web pages and apps are becoming more complex, but due to the ratcheting-up of performance on my other devices. When I first got my iPad Mini 2, I’m sure it made my iPhone 5 feel slow in comparison, but my iPhone 6 now makes the Mini 2 feel slow.
And now the iPad Pro makes my iPhone 6 feel slow(ish). That’s to be expected, but more surprisingly, in my tests it loads webpages just as fast as my 27″ iMac from late 2012, which has 24GB of RAM; the iPad Pro has ‘only’ 2GB. Last night I used FaceTime while browsing the web and scrolling in Twitter, and there was nary a hiccup. I’m sure I could make it slow down with, say, a dozen Safari tabs and Grand Theft Auto, but that’s not a common use-case for me.
The display is just as good. Yes, it has lower reflectance, which makes for a more pleasant reading experience (no getting distracted by subtle reflections in front of the text); yes, it can go brighter. But the real MVP is the True Tone feature, which basically white-balances the display by sensing the colour temperature of your surroundings. It’s not headline-grabbing but as soon as you turn it off, you realise just how blue the display would be without it. The ultimate effect is less eye strain because it makes the iPad feel more like a piece of paper rather than some artificial glowing rectangle. I wouldn’t be surprised if True Tone was introduced to all new Apple displays in the next couple of years.
Naturally, the world wouldn’t complete without Apple fanatics who are deeply, personally offended by the iPad Pro not having, say, USB 3 support or 4GB of RAM or a faster Touch ID sensor. Without them, it’s apparently not a sufficiently impressive upgrade over the iPad Air 2 from 18 months ago. I think that’s arguable, but what’s more interesting to me is that there are people who really want to upgrade a 1.5 year old tablet.
Now, we all know people who upgrade their phones every year, and while I don’t care enough to do that, I can understand the impulse because it still feels like there’s a rapid pace of improvements in smartphones. But I don’t know anyone who upgrades their computer every year. In fact, it wouldn’t even be possible to do such a thing on many Macs, because they don’t get updated that often – and in any case, the upgrades would get you a scant 10-20% speed increase.
Tablets occupy a middle ground. Since they share the same core processors as phones, they share the tremendous speed improvements. But their other features are changing less rapidly; people just don’t care as much about the camera or touch sensor on tablets as they do on their phones, because they use their tablets less frequently and for a narrower range of tasks. So I find it baffling that anyone would even want to upgrade their iPad every release.
I suppose people are upset because it’s called the iPad Pro and that Apple are marketing it as a replacement for your computer. If so, that’s unfortunate. ‘Pro’ is a marketing term; the iPad Pro is no more meant for ‘professionals’ than the Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro laptop is meant for professionals. The iPad will never be a true replacement for a traditional computer until it’s much more flexible and runs a windowed operating system… but… who cares? Many people don’t need a traditional computer any more, and most people are using traditional computers far less – I know I am. For the rest of the time, I’m happy using my tablet.
mssv 
I upgrade my iPad every cycle, because it’s the device I use most, and the improvements are meaningful to comfort. It’s the same reason you shouldn’t skimp on mattresses or shoes.
My iPhone is on a 2 year cycle, possibly longer now that carrier subsidies are going away. My desktop Mac is on a 5 year cycle, in fact I’ve down cycled my 2008 home Mac Pro as my work Mac
I have the 12-inch iPad Pro but it’s just not viable as a mobile device, so I still keep the iPad Air 2 in my jacket pocket. If the 9.7″ (it really should be the ISO B5 vs ISO A4) iPad Pro had the 4GB RAM, I would have upgraded. The RAM is more likely to make an improvement in my browsing habit of juggling between tabs than the enhanced CPU.
That’s fair – if you’re using it a lot, it makes sense to buy it for the improvements. But if you already have a big iPad Pro *and* an iPad Air 2, I think it’s a little more marginal – you can already use the Apple Pencil right now, for example.