Gadgetory

hey guys the Austin the iPad pro is a big upgrade but as much as Apple Mike claims this is a full computer it is not ready to replace my laptop just yet this is a question I took a look at a couple years ago when the very first iPad pro came out and it actually came pretty close to replacing a laptop for me but inevitably I ran into the limitations of running iOS on a nine point seven inch tablet first of all this is coming from the perspective of someone who spends a lot of time with some fairly high-grade video the iPad it just can't handle it it's not even the hardware that's the problem it really is iOS sure there are some decent editing apps such as I movie premiere rush and luma fusion for the iPad but the issue is that none of them are as powerful as the full desktop versions of premiere as well as final kinds to produce videos like this I need access to fairly high level features such as LUT support full pro codecs such as Pro res and red code raw it would be really helpful if I had a full finder set up where I can you know access the file system and import things using that handy USB C port instead well none of this stuff really works unless I want to do some very basic editing and iMovie it's fine it's definitely capable of it but I was just isn't there yet a lot of what I do every day comes down to things like writing an email and here the iPad is absolutely terrific I've always preferred the smaller iPad pro size but that does mean you have to sacrifice it on the actual keyboard it's a little bit smaller than a standard layout but I'd be using it for long enough that's not really a big issue it is still a little bit ridiculous this accessory that is basically mandatory if I want to get any work done on iPad cost a full 180 dollars but I mean I guess that's everyone at this point I mean even Microsoft doesn't include the keyboard with the surface if you want to avoid the Apple tax you can't pick up either a Bluetooth keyboard or something that plugs in via USB C or an adapter but at the end of the day I want to have a portable setup that is as close to a laptop as possible which means them stuck spending $180 on the Apple keyboard which is just okay but not really worth that kind of money something I've been kind of surprised by is the pencil updated this year with a much less annoying design as opposed to plugging it into the Lightning port to charge instead all you need to do is attach it to the top of the iPad and not only does it attach here magnetically but also wirelessly charges I will give Apple this the iPad hardware is incredibly nice this is seriously the biggest update to the iPad since the original thanks to the lack of a home button the bezels are much smaller here which means that do we have a bunch of iPhone 10 like gestures but importantly we get an 11 inch display in the same size chassis is the old nine point seven inch iPad the fingerprint sensor has been replaced with face ID which has been crammed into the top bezel along with the front-facing camera it should be no surprise that the screen is absolutely excellent importantly we still pro motion which means that the iPad pro has a full 120 Hertz display this means that the iPad screen is running at twice the frame rate and twice the smoothness of pretty much any other mobile display out there the only thing that comes close or some gaming laptops that do have high refresh rate displays as well as on the phone side the razor phone has a high refresh rate panel but in the tablet space nothing touches this and it does make a big difference things are so so smooth the screen is absolutely terrific so not only is it color accurate it gets fairly bright there's really not a lot to complain about and that goes double for the speaker's it does have quad speakers with one on each corner and this thing sounds phenomenal as far as watching video goes this is better than almost any other laptop out there gone are the days of lightening in is the glorious future of the USBC port and this is proper USB see it's 3.1 gen2 which means that does support a full tanking a better transfer speed as well as of course any kind of video out you do all the way up to a full 5k monitor it will also charge up other devices just like a laptop plug in your phone for example and the ipad will give it a full charge in classic ipad fashion however iOS does hold you back somewhat with that USB C port then you can't connect it to an external display and for some apps such as twitch and Netflix it will give you a full screen video but for the most part you're stuck mirroring the iPad display kind of helpful but nowhere near as good as it would be if I can you know put a window on the display and another window on my iPad you know like every other laptop on earth it's so close but it's so annoying I mean this is really close to being able to fully serve as a laptop right I mean for me I'll have a monitor plugged into my laptop all the time when I'm at home or at work I legitimately like that extra screen real estate and the hardware is absolutely capable of it and even the software's to a degree I mean I could put a video there but the issue is that if I'm say watching Netflix and wanting to work on something at the same time Netflix will play on the 4k display ripen to the point where I alt add to another app in which the entire thing closes it's like we're so close we're so close if we take a quick detour into garbage Tom for a sec I get the I'll remove the headphone jack on their phones a couple years ago but this is a device that's trying to replace my laptop I really do like having a pair of Wired headphones now sure Bluetooth might be the future for some people but for me I appreciate having a nice pair of headphones that have no latency something that can plug into say a MacBook Air which coincidentally does still have a headphone jack now I get that this thing is completely packed with technology it's like magnets and batteries and stuff but having a headphone jack doesn't seem like that big of a sacrifice I mean sure I could use a USBC dongle but that's annoying I could plug in my lightning headphones that I bought a couple years ago oh wait no I can't do that because it doesn't have lightning anymore it's just a weird compromise I mean it's not a deal breaker I can get away with using other types of headphones it would be so so nice if they would have kept the headphone jack on something that's trying to replace my laptop I could run through our standard suite of benchmarks which show that this is hands-down Alli the fastest mobile device we've ever tested but right up there with a lot of proper laptops but at the end of the day what good is power if you can't use it which brings us around to my main issue with the iPad pro this is where things become very dependent on what kind of work you do I legitimately feel like I could edit some proper 4k video on the iPad pro if I had those software improvements such as a full file manager as well as final kind if you do a lot of work with graphics for example it actually is a lot better there great apps such as procreate and full Photoshop is coming to the iPad but still for a lot of people the story here is less about what it can do right now and more about the potential which is kind of a bit of a shame because it's been like that for several years at this point that's just it though this absolutely can replace a laptop for some people and the iPad pro is legitimately getting better and more powerful every year but for me this is a great secondary machine but it is not a laptop killer at least not yet