Considering iPad Pro 12.4

Hi all,

My 2 ancient iPads (2nd gen) that is about 7 yrs old is giving up the ghost and I’m considering a replacement.

The reviews for the iPad Pro is really good but it costs quite a bit so I’m looking for justification of choosing it over an iPad.

My daughter draws a lot so I thought the pen and the 12.4’ display would be great.

Anyone have experiences using this in their daily lives?

I’m hoping for some typical use cases. Or would it turn into a white elephant.

Sorry, no experience with the 13" model, but I would get her the cheapo non-pro 9.7" ipad. It works with the Apple pencil now.

I’ve got a series of blog posts on using the iPad Pro here.

I use mine every day, usually with the Smart Keyboard and sometimes with the Pencil. Typical use cases:

Consumption:
Reading, surfing, Instapaper, RSS, Twitter, etc.
Work:
I use OneNote and Goodnotes for taking notes at work. The MS Office suite (requires a subscription on the 12,9) is adequate for most uses, but lacks a ton of features. Some of them, like the inability to insert a Table of Contents I can work around by copying the ToC from a different document. I can use the iPad for about 90% of my non-game playing stuff.
Where I think the 12,9 really shines is drawing. If she is serious about it, the large size with Procreate is amazing. Procreate is a pro-level tool for $10. Kyle Lambert used it to draw a lot of the Stranger Things posters. Especially for drawing, the larger size is worth it.

How old is your daughter? How serious is she about drawing?

I do think the pro is a better choice because it has 120hz updates, even for the Pencil. But if it’s for a younger kid and more of an “experiment”, I concur with stussy, now that the basic iPad supports the pencil, go with that.

For myself i found the Big iPad almost too big with that thick bezel, especially as i was hoping to use it as a “laptop” replacement and frankly a modern 13" laptop will have a smaller footprint and so sent it back. I did enjoy reading on it but it felt way overkill, and of course, it’s basically a desktop reader at that point.

The 10.4" whatever inch is a great size but with the scaled dimension of the iPad Mini (the only iPad i still have around).

I think if you want to replace all computers with an iPad… why not, get the big one. As a second, third or fourth device the Big iPad has a harder niche to fill considering usability, weight, and functionality w/respect to all other possible devices.

The “vanilla ipad” is essentially the old iPad Air 2 with new internals, but heavier with an old fashioned screen. OTOH its like half price of the iPad Pro; again, where this device is going to fit in kind of determines how much you’d want to spend. Like everyone has said, if serious drawing is the #1 reason, and the use case is as a canvas, that would lean toward the biggest one.

Yeah, if she’s 17 and seriously considering art school, that changes things.

She’s 11 but is taking private art lessons. She started the lessons at 6 so she’s proficient with the traditional artforms and materials like the different paint and brushes etc.

I thought I’ll start her on the digital age. I purposely kept her away from digital stuff so that she can interact with physical stuff like paper books and paint and brushes. 11 I think is a good time to start.

Thanks for the input so far. Btw, the pad will be shared with the family. But that may change if she turns up some good work on it!

Go with the larger iPad Pro. It is a fantastic tablet, though indeed big, but that’s not a downside for art.

Thanks for the link! I’ll check them out!

I’ll say (gamer here) maybe the biggest drawback of the iPad Maxi is that it’s basically too big to double hand a game without setting it in a stand on a desk. There are a bunch of games my relatives like to play (but that kind of make me want to shoot myself personally), MMOs, driving games, ect, that are pretty hard/impossible to do on an iPad of that size. Where otoh, the smaller the iPad, the better the twin stick experience.

OTOHx2, the iPad Maxi is really the only iPad with side-by-side app view worth a fig. You can write and compose without squinting at side-by-side text (say, a book report and the book you’re reading) with that size iPad. It’s also the only iPad with a reasonable sized keyboard (i say reasonable because tbh i haven’t looked if its hard keyboards are actually full size or not, which they may be). All other iPads have to make do with smaller than normal sized hard keyboards.

@Enidigm, we rarely play on the iPad. I prefer gaming on the PC and she does not play games at all, she prefers to read (for now). So the big screens should not pose too much problem in that aspect.

@Mark_Crump, is there an alternative mechnical keyboard I can use with the iPad Pro? I cannot stand the mushy non-mechanical keyboards anymore. I the iPad Pro can work well with a bluetooth Mechanical Keyboard that will be the clincher for me I think.

Yes. Jason Snell uses one.

The 12.9 is overdue for replacement, isn’t it? Seems like the pending iPad update rumors have been strong lately.

I’d seriously consider getting a Wacom tablet for her instead, if she has her own computer to work on,

She has one for the desktop but found it “unnatural” to not draw directly on the picture. I was thinking the iPad Pro will act like the highend wacom tablets that lets you draw directly on the “output”.

The last refrsh was 2017 for the iPad Pro series

Ah, like the Cintiqs. Yeah, I guess that makes sense if she finds the other weird.

Ah right — I missed that they had closed the gap in screen quality with the 10.5. So now it’s just bezel sizes (compared with the 10.5) and full gesture support with no home button (compared with the iPhone. X). I’m hoping both of those get addressed this time around.

Yeah, and hopefully FaceID also.

I think getting an iPad Air 2 is still over powered as of now, but in the end it will depend on the usage, if iPad Air 2 is too old for you then I suggest you wait because new “bezel less” ipads are coming this soon this year.