Apple iPad Pro 12.9 2020 Review

It is not a surprise to know that the iPad has become the most popular tablet in the market. It is hard to think of any brand that can top Apple in terms of design, features, and performance. Ever since Apple introduced its first iPad device, it has conquered the world of high-quality gadgets including smartphones and smartwatches. With the release of the iPad Pro 12.9 2020, Apple has produced its best iPad to date, or has it?

Redesigning and improving the 2018’s iPad Pro was Apple’s challenge for creating a new device. Roll out the red carpet, here comes the iPad Pro 2020, with a stunning design, large screen with super-thin bezels or edges, Face ID, squared-corners, and a powerful A12Z Bionic chip processor inside for faster performance. This 12.9-inch tablet is similar to the iPhone 11 and 11 Pro’s dual back camera with light and radar technology scanner. It also has four great-sounding speakers, a USB-C port for syncing and charging other iOS devices and magnetic wireless charging for the Apple Pencil. In addition to this, it provides a smart connector for using the Magic Keyboard and 10 hours of battery life. I mean, the list goes on and on.

The iPad Pro 12.9 2020 gives you great versatility in terms of visuals and graphics with its new 10 MP ultra-wide camera and a LiDAR scanner, which boosts responsiveness in Augmented Reality (AR) as well as real-world environment apps. It uses iPadOS version 13.4 making it the fastest tablet today, and we say this hands-on heart, this thing is fast. It also supports cursor input which means that it will take a while for developers to update their apps to trackpad input. Yes, it will cost more than any other iPad, but what you get is well worth the investment. You get a tablet that will be relevant for years to come and having the ability to use accessories such as Magic Keyboard with trackpad means you can throw the kitchen sink at it, it will take it.

Features

Both 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro models were upgraded last March with a powerful A12Z chip processor, a new Ultra-Wide 10 MP camera, and LiDAR depth scanner technology. Additionally, new accessories such as the Magic Keyboard with trackpad will only help to justify making the upgrade. Storage-wise, you get 4 options, 128GB, 256GB, 512GB and a glorious 1TB, which would give you plenty of storage even the most intensive professional tasks. Below are the complete iPad Pro 2020 specs.

Key Features

• 12.9–inch screen display
• 2732 x 2048 screen resolution
• A12Z Bionic chip processor
• All-screen and edge-to-edge display without a Home button
• 12 MP Wide and 10 MP Ultra-wide dual back camera
• LiDAR depth scanner technology for real-world like experience
• TrueDepth camera system to recognize Face ID
• Available in Silver and Space Gray colors
• Second-generation Apple Pencil, Magic Keyboard with Trackpad, and Smart Keyboard Folio support

Display

Apple’s Liquid Retina Display is the best screen in the market. It produces high-quality images with a higher resolution than on any mobile/ tablet device. Only found in the iPhone XR and iPad Pro at this time, this stunning display relies on a higher pixels-per-inch level to create a super-thin paper-like screen effect that is almost invisible to the naked eye. And yet, you get clear, bright, and colorful images, and we really mean it. The visuals are mind-blowing, and one almost feels you just can’t look away. To make things better, the screen’s ProMotion technology will automatically adjust the refresh rate up to 120 Hz in order to save up battery life and make your experience that much more enjoyable.

Watching a movie with the iPad Pro 12.9 2020 is a joy, with gorgeous colors, amazing contrast ratio and brightness levels up to 559 nits. It can deliver a 122.9% wide range of standard Red Green Blue (sRGB) color space, better than rivals such as the Surface Pro 7 and Surface Pro X. Also, with a Delta-E score or color difference of 0.34, expect nothing but greatness giving you accurate colors that will blow you away.

Camera

Most tablets these days are rather heavy to carry around, taking selfies or shooting video, but with the stunning new ultra-wide camera on this iPad Pro, you might want reconsider. The ultra-wide-angle 10MP camera along with the 12MP standard wide-angle camera will give you so much to play with. To switch between the two it is as simple as pressing the zoom button and go from 1x to 0.5x. The images are sharp, well-detailed, and colorful and with little distortion around the edges.

It goes without saying that you can shoot 4K video and rest assured that this is not compromised 4K. You genuinely get sharp and detailed 4K images. We were quite surprised by the quality of the footage so we are certain that you will too.

However, we found some nagging issues with the cameras. The Portrait mode only seems to work with the 7MP TrueDepth front camera which is used for capturing face ID. Annoyingly, unlike the iPhone 11 and 11 Pro, the iPad Pro doesn’t offer Night mode, and that is a real bummer. You may get great exposure under low light but it is nowhere near as good as NightMode. Who knows, they might address that in a future firmware update. We would certainly expect that.

Apple Pencil

Just like previous versions of the iPad, support for Apple Pencil remains, and that is really cool (and expected too, we would be fuming if the Apple pencil was not supported). This is great for those who are keen on drawing, writing and marking up documents. Charging the Apple Pencil is a piece of cake, simply magnetically attach the Pencil to the top of the tablet and it will begin charging immediately. This is a very useful tool made especially for artists so if you are one of them, you are in luck, the integration is incredibly good.

Magic Keyboard

One of the biggest upgrades for the 2020 version of iPad Pro is the Magic Keyboard support. It has the same floating design and scissor-style mechanism as found in the MacBook Air 2020 and Macbook Pro. You can adjust the iPad Pro 12.9 between 85 to 130 degrees so having that flexibility is actually really handy. Although it is a great alternative to the MacBook, the letdown is that touchpad lacks the ability to activate the dock for third-party apps to perform well. Hold fire before considering this a MacBook killer, not just yet.

The combined weight of the 12.9-inch iPad Pro and the Magic Keyboard is almost 3 pounds, which is about as heavy as the MacBook Pro. We really enjoy the integration and functionality that you get.

Light and Radar (LiDAR)  Scanner and Augmented Reality

Another first from the iPad Pro 12.9 2020 version is the LiDAR scanner, also known as time-of-flight sensor. So basically, what it does is to measure the time it takes light to reach the subject and reflect. The aim behind it is to create more exciting and elaborate AR apps as well as make a substantial difference with existing apps.

Without the LiDAR scanner, starting an app usually takes a few seconds in scanning the floor and surface. Thanks to the LiDAR scanner along with the A12Z Bionic chip processor and Apple’s Neural Engine for handling specific machine learning algorithms, AR placement can be done instantly.

The only thing that is missing at the moment but we hope developers will get their hand on soon is Apple’s new ARKit 3.5. It does make Augmented Reality content better, more attractive, and more realistic. The ARKit 3.5 can create a topological 3D mesh of an entire room and also any object occlusion. This means that AR content could go behind and/ or in front of large objects, go through them or even go through people.

Mouse and Trackpad Support

With the iPadOS 13.4, a specialized circle cursor appears on the screen that lets you click and interact with the apps using a mouse and trackpad. To show on-screen clicks, you must enable the Assistive Touch and set your mouse as a pointing device. If multi-tasking is your thing, you can also activate the Slide Over and Split View gestures. You can divide the screen between two apps, simply drag to either left or right of the screen ad you are good to go.

Design

The most noticeable difference between iPad Pro 12.9 2020 to its older version is the size and the dual-camera at the back. This new iPad Pro measures 11.04 x 8.46 x 0.23 inches, weighs 1.41 pounds, and has ultra-slim bezels or edges. It has only one port on the right for USB-C, The front camera has TrueDepth for Face ID, and at the back is the dual camera and LiDAR scanner. All neatly packed in the rather gorgeous Apple style.

Performance

The overall performance of the 8-core CPU and a new 8-core GPU on Geekbench 5, renders a score of 4,720 on multi-core and 1,126 on single-core. While on a BaseMark GPU Test, it scored 21,009 which means it can seriously boost the graphics performance. The A12Z Bionic chip processor inside can pack quite a punch. To illustrate this, exporting a video from 4K to 1080p with one color filter applied only took 34 seconds, so you can expect a fast and reliable performance form this new iPad Pro on pretty much anything you use it for.

Battery Life

Battery life in the iPad Pro 12.9 can last up to 10 hours with continuous wireless web surfing. In further testing, we also set the brightness to 150 nits and it also survived for more than 10 hours. Impressive.

We put this to further testing and after a day of heavy use streaming videos, taking photos, and constantly checking emails and using apps, pretty much non-stop, the battery was down to about 39% halfway through the day. This is great because this was not how a normal person would use an iPad. It means it packs enough life inside to last you most of the day if not all day.

Conclusion

It is not every day that you find something worthy of its price tag. The iPad Pro 12.9 2020 may be highly-priced but in the world of tablets, it truly is the best there is. Offering now a real keyboard with touchpad, it has turned it into a competitor with the Surface Pro 7 and Surface Pro X. The battery life and camera is better than anything any competitor can offer and its AR capabilities set it apart.

As a whole, we highly recommend the iPad Pro 12.9. For those who love typing, we can confirm that the Magic Keyboard works amazingly well. It is a game-changing accessory and you will love it as much as we did.

If this is too much of a tablet for your day-to-day and you are looking for something different, why don’t you check out other tablet reviews in our Tablets Reviews section? We are convinced that there is something for you in there.

Where to buy the iPad Pro 12.9 (2020)?

Buy it now in USA – Amazon

Buy it now in USA – Walmart

Buy it now in USA – B&H

Buy it – Rest of the world