 |
| Top: iPhone charger. Left: iPad Pro 10.5" (2nd Gen.) charger. Right: iPad Air (5th Gen.) charger. |
After much shopping around and even deeper thought, I decided a few days ago to upgrade the iPad Pro I've had since late 2017 early instead of waiting until after October. This was when B&H (where I was getting the iPad from) was closed for Passover and Apple had just announced its upcoming iPad event on the 7th of May.
I had my sights on an iPad Pro, my thought process being that after Apple would announce its new range of allegedly expensive iPad Pros, people would be snatching up existing models like it was a run on the bank. Granted, this iPad Pro, with its full terabyte hard drive, was going to carry a significant cost. Put simply, though, if the rumors are true, this terabyte model would have cost the same as a baseline new iPad Pro with maybe 128GB of storage.
The more I thought about it, though, and the more I looked around at other iPad models, I came to the realization it may not be as good of an investment as I was previously thinking. My current iPad Pro has 64GB of storage, and in the 7 or so years I've and it, I've taken up 41GB of it. Most of this consists of drawing applications. I have a few games, but I think the largest file size on any of them is 2GB (and there's less than a half-dozen in total). Overall, I'm very deliberate and intentional with how I use my iPad. It's a drawing device, not a communication device like my iPhone, and not a multimedia workhorse like my Mac mini. I don't like having all my eggs in one basket, another reason I decided against splurging on a higher-end iPad Pro. If I really needed something for, say, editing videos or 3D modeling, I'd just upgrade my Mac mini, which I may well do at the end of this year depending on how I feel when the time comes. I prefer a mouse to a stylus when it comes to 3D modeling, anyway.
Then there's how the iPad range has evolved from 2017 when my second generation iPad Pro was the fresh face in the crowd. At that time, only the Pro series offered support for the Apple Pencil. After using a number of third party styluses over the years, I can say with certainty that the Pencil is the best of them, and it made the iPad Pro worth its asking price. Now, all of the iPads offer Pencil support. I'm still waiting for, at the very least, Pencil support on an iPhone Pro model, but that may well never happen. I wouldn't want a Pro line iPhone anyway. Pro has become a very flimsy word with Apple. When the iPad Pros were new, you got Pro features, such as the aforementioned Pencil. Nowadays, a Pro iPad still has a number of "exclusive" features, but one of those features is storage space, which makes the whole offering feel a little bit... unbecoming, for lack of a more tactful term. Like I said, my iPad Pro is 64GB, which was the lowest amount of storage available at that time. I wasn't bothered by this as it not only kept the price down, but I was only going to be using it for drawing anyway, and as a rule, drawing apps aren't very resource intensive. However, even being careful with what I put on the tablet, I knew this wasn't going to be sustainable, that I'd eventually run out of space.
With my iPhones, I have a rule to double my storage with each upgrade, as I'm way less choosy about does or doesn't get installed on it. My current iPhone, a 12 mini, has 256GB of storage (I don't remember my previous iPhone 7's storage. I only think it was 128). Many iPhones go higher than that (512GB) before we have to start adding Pro or Max to their numbers. As for iPads, any model that's not a Pro only has 2 sizes available, 64GB and 256GB. I was worried this would fill up quickly, but then I remembered those posts on social media that compare just how much a billion is compared to even a million. They usually use grains of rice or counting seconds, but you get the idea.
Taking that as a starting point, I made a graph to put into perspective just how much 256GB is compared to my current 64GB, and how much my 41GB after 7 years to build up actually was in the grand scheme of things.
The iPad Air is a strange entry in the iPad series. I'm not even sure Apple knows exactly what it's supposed to represent. When it first launched, its claim to fame was being thinner and lighter and more powerful than other models of iPad. This was long before the Pro series came out and the price of the standard, adjective-less iPad was going down into the budget-friendly range. Against its more premium Pro compatriots, I suppose you could say it's the premium device without the premium price. It still has Pencil support and the display is actually slightly bigger than my 10.5" Pro model. Supposedly it's not as bright, but it's by a factor so small and in a unit of measure so poorly understood, I wouldn't have known if it hadn't told me. Speaking of the display, the other trade-off is that it's not as smooth and flowing as a Pro model. I'll save you the block of technobabble and just say that the screen of an iPad Pro refreshes at a rate of 120hz (pictures a second) and so animations look smoother than a typical refresh rate of 60hz, which is what other iPads and most displays you've seen in the wild have on offer.
To put this in perspective, and at the risk of gushing about iPads, even the very worst iPad screen is better than most high-end premium Android-based tablets. Samsung has some models that come close, and the Surface lineup from Microsoft is a damn good competitor, but dollar for dollar, the displays on iPads are leagues above everyone else. Android tablets can be had for pretty cheap, but the display is always the biggest corner that gets cut, especially in the overall resolution.
For perspective on that, a Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite has a total resolution of 2000 by 1200 pixels and goes for about 250USD. A current (10th generation), adjective-less iPad has a total resolution of 2360 by 1640 in roughly the same size screen as the Galaxy tablet, and starts at around 330USD. That's fairly close and it's taken a long time to get to this point. There's other differences to consider, and I don't pretend for an instant this is a perfect 1:1 comparison, so take the numbers with a grain of salt. The point is, in terms of a digital drawing experience, there's fewer compromises on the iPad and you do get your money's worth if you're willing to pay that little bit extra.
I've only had my iPad Air for a day as of this writing, and I honestly can't tell the difference in displays between it and my old Pro. I wouldn't care anyway. Similarly, I don't care that the camera's not as good as a current Pro offering because I don't take pictures or shoot video with my tablet anyway, except maybe to snag a quick reference for while I'm drawing, and I'm just as likely to grab my phone and use Airdrop to send it over.
As for the 7th, I'll certainly watch and see what Apple's got on offer. I'm bound to use up 256GB eventually.
