The Apple iPad Pro is a smaller and an excellent product. It is a smaller version of the larger 12.9 inch Apple iPad Pro which launched last fall. Releasing this product now seems like a quick solution to Apple iPad sales problems. The sales peaked during 2014 and it has been flat ever since then. Therefore, in case you are thinking that Apple developed this smaller Pro in a hurry, you would be wrong.
You can safely assume that this product has been in the pipeline ever since Apple introduced the first iPad Pro. The big and clumsy, $799, Apple iPad Pro with a display of 12.9inches hasn’t been a big consumer hit and frankly speaking, no one really expected it to be so. Apple desperately needed a fresh start for its flagship iPad lineup and the 9.7inch iPad Pro seems to be it. Keep in mind that Apple hasn’t discontinued the iPad Air of the iPad Mini lineup.
However, there is so much power and utility in the new iPad Pro that it’s hard to conceive why people would even wish to buy an iPad Air 2 at the moment. Meanwhile, if you are thinking about the price, keep in mind that the extra hundred dollars not only gets you double the storage space of the base iPad Air 2 model but also increases the processing power and gets you the best iSight camera from Apple with 4K video recording ability.
The newly released 9.7 inch iPad Pro looks exactly similar to the iPad Air 2. The dimensions of both these devices are same and both of them weight an incredibly light 0.96 pounds. The home button is Touch ID enabled and supports Apple Pay for all sorts of in-App purchases. There are various design cues like chamfered edges on the top and curved edges which lead to a flat bottom.
The volume rocker as well as the Power/Sleep button is unchanged as well. The antenna is made up of the same aluminum that is present in the rest of the body. It seems to add a rather pleasant touch.
The 9.7inch iPad Pro has four powerful speakers exactly like its bigger sibling and it comes with two grills on each short edge, besides the top and bottom. The device houses a powerful 12 megapixel iSight camera. The 9.7inch display has a resolution of 2,048 x 1,536 pixels and it same as the resolution in iPad Air 2.
The display is actually an upgrade over iPad Air 2 and the 12.9 inch iPad Pro. However, the latter has a higher resolution of 2732×2048 pixels. The new iPad Pro also has a much brighter (500 nits, as measured by Apple) screen that’s noticeable to the naked eye. It has a wider color gamut and True Tone while the reflectivity is reduced but not to the point of killing reflectivity altogether. True Tone’s impact is a lot more noticeable.
The tablet’s ambient light sensors are used by this technology to adjust the screen color for a better simpatico hue which further reduces eye strain.
In the Display and Brightness setting, True Tone can be turned off. The device uses Apple’s top-of-the-line A9X processor and in comparison the iPad Air 2 still makes use of the A8X chip.
The benchmark numbers are almost similar to the 12.9inch Apple iPad Pro in spite of the fact that the 9.7 inch iPad Pro has half the amount of RAM. At the same time, the tablet starts with twice as much storage space as the base model iPad Air (32GB instead of 16GB). The camera shoots sharper images along with 64 megapixel panoramas.