The much speculated 10.5 inch iPad Pro has finally been released at the WWDC keynote event. Along with the expected design tweaks, Apple has made some impressive hardware upgrades to the already powerful Pro lineup. Let’s take a look at what’s new and is it worth an update.
Newish Design
Although the new iPad Pro comes in an entirely new screen dimension of 10.5 inches, it’s not a redesign by any stretch of the imagination. The larger screen size has been achieved by reducing the bezels size (by 40%). So, for all intents and purposes, it’s still the good old 9.7 inch iPad.
However, it doesn’t mean that the bigger screen size doesn’t bring in any added benefit besides the increased surface area. As Apple made sure they pointed out that the 10.5-inch screen size means allows for a full-size keyboard (on the iPad and smart keyboard both).
Improved Screen
The screen brightness has been bumped up to 600 nits in the new iPad Pro models. It’s double the configuration of last year’s models. Other display resolutions remain the same.
It’s difficult to tell how noticeable is the display improvement without comparing the previous and new models side-by-side, but our guess is that the change will be marginal.
Enhanced Power
As you can see from the comparative chart above, the new iPad Pros are 30% faster and have 40% better GPU performance than the previous models.
While these the impressive numbers, you won’t feel much of a difference during day-to-day tasks as the older iPad Pros had plenty of power already.
120Hz Refresh Rate
This was the feature that impressed us the most. Incremental screen and performance improvements are expected with every new model, but Apple has gone a step further this time and doubled up the refresh rate of the iPad Pro line-up.
Higher refresh rate means smoother interactions, lesser lag time even in high-end tasks, and better response time for Apple Pencil. The performance is so improved now that Apple couldn’t demo it because the projector screen wasn’t capable of replicating the new iPad Pro’s refresh rate!
iOS 11 Ready
Apple has introduced some big improvements to iOS on iPad with iOS 11. Many of these new features like drag and drop between apps require high-end power to run smoothly. The new iPad Pros are ideally suited to leverage the new functionalities of iOS 11.
All in all, the 10.5 inch iPad Pro is a decent update with enough of noteworthy updates. It would be difficult for the existing iPad Pro users to justify upgrading to this new model, but it’s a perfect choice for someone who is in the market for a high-end tablet.