Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/13661/the-2018-apple-ipad-pro-11-inch-review
The 2018 Apple iPad Pro (11-Inch) Review: Doubling Down On Performance
by Brett Howse & Andrei Frumusanu on December 4, 2018 10:00 AM ESTI think it’s safe to say that in 2018, the tablet market has not shaped up like anyone had expected, not even Apple. Tablets weren’t the next smartphone – and indeed the sales of dedicated tablets are downright soft – and yet at the same time tablets have successfully carved out a meaningful niche for themselves. But more importantly still, the tablet concept is everywhere even if “pure” tablets themselves aren’t. One needs only look at all the various PC 2-in-1s and convertibles to see the influence tablets have made on the traditional laptop market, forcing these many clamshells into becoming something more.
As a consequence of the introduction of modern tablets and their subsequent efforts to secure their own place in the market, we’ve essentially seen the tablet and tablet-alike market bifurcate into two real clusters of tablet designs. On the one hand are the cheap content consumption devices – the iPads, Fire TVs, and myriad of cheap Android tablets. On the other hand is the far more exclusive market for high-end, productivity-oriented tablets; devices that don’t just consume content, but create it as well. This market has been slower to develop, but it’s also important for its own reasons, as it’s the real crossover point between tablets as envisioned by the iPad, and the traditional PC laptop market.
Apple for their part has opted to go after both of these markets, and has done so successfully. The traditional 9.7-inch iPad needs no introduction, and while the iPad Pro is a little less known, the difference isn’t by much. Built upon the shoulders of the original iPad, the iPad Pro family takes things one step further, building towards not just a bigger and better iPad, but by giving the tablet the features that are needed for productivity and content creation, at both a hardware and a software level. The iPad Pro doesn’t try to be a traditional laptop, but it certainly tries to capture a lot of their usefulness, and this is especially the case for the 2018 iPad Pro.
With the introduction of the latest iPad Pro models, Apple’s iPad lineup for 2018 offers arguably the largest design change since the original iPad launched. The new design offers a much higher screen-to-body ratio than ever offered before, mimicking what they’ve done with the iPhone lineup. As a result, Apple has more or less reinvented the iPad Pro design, and offers plenty of new features inside and out.
Apple’s ambitions with the iPad Pro start with their chip design team, which has created the Apple A12X System on a Chip to power the latest iPad Pro. As outlined in our iPhone XS review, the A12 series of SoCs are already well ahead of the ARM competition, and Apple clearly has its sights on the performance levels of x86 CPUs from Intel. A12X features four Apple Vortex CPU cores, double that of the regular A12 in the iPhone, and seven A12 GPU cores which Apple says provides the power of an Xbox One S in a device with a far smaller power budget.
For better or worse, the iPad Pro is attached at the hip with Apple’s mobile operating system iOS, and unsurprisingly the iPad Pro ships with the latest version, iOS 12.1.
Apple’s iPad Pro lineup has also been their test bed for their newest display technology, and the iPad Pro keeps the 120 Hz ProMotion display, which offers variable refresh rate down to 24 Hz, along with P3 display gamut coverage tied in with their color managed software. Apple also keeps their True Tone option to dynamically adjust the white balance of the display to match the lighting conditions of the room it’s in.
Apple iPad Pro Comparison |
||
iPad Pro 11-Inch (2018) |
iPad Pro 12.9-Inch (2018) |
|
SoC | Apple A12X 4x Apple Vortex 4x Apple Tempest 7 core A12 GPU |
|
Display | 11-inch 2388x1668 IPS LCD P3 D65, 120Hz |
12.9-inch 2732x2048 IPS LCD P3 D65, 120Hz |
Dimensions | 247.6 x 178.5 x 5.9 mm 468 / 468 grams (WiFi / LTE) |
280 x 214.9 x 5.9 mm 631 / 633 grams (WiFi / LTE) |
RAM | 4 GB (up to 512 GB Storage) 6 GB (1 TB model) |
|
NAND | 64GB / 256GB / 512GB / 1TB | |
Battery | 29.37 Wh | 36.71 Wh |
Front Camera | 7MP, f/2.2, Smart HDR, Wide Color Gamut, Retina Flash | |
Rear Camera | 12MP, f/1.8, PDAF, Smart HDR, Wide Color Gamut, True Tone Quad-LED flash |
|
Cellular | 2G / 3G / 4G LTE (Category 16) Intel XMM 7560 Modem |
|
SIM Size | NanoSIM | |
Wireless | 802.11a/b/g/n/ac 2x2 MIMO, BT 5.0, GPS/GLONASS | |
Connectivity | USB-C Apple Smart Connector |
|
Launch OS | iOS 12.1 | |
Launch Price | Wi-Fi: $799 (64GB) $949 (256GB) $1149 (512GB) $1549 (1TB) Wi-Fi + LTE: $949 (64GB) $1099 (256GB) $1299 (512GB) $1699 (1TB) |
Wi-Fi: $999 (64GB) $1149 (256GB) $1349 (512GB) $1749 (1TB) Wi-Fi + LTE: $1149 (64GB) $1299 (256GB) $1499 (512GB) $1899 (1TB) |
Apple has also taken the opportunity to switch the iPad Pro lineup over from their proprietary Lighting connector to the more ubiquitous USB-C port, making this the first iOS device to offer USB connectivity. Where they give, they also take away though, and the 3.5 mm headset jack has gone the way of the Dodo, and for more or less the same reasons.
For those that want to work on the go, Apple continues its excellent tradition of offering cellular connectivity with the iPad Pro, and those that need a lot of storage will be happy to see models up to 1 TB, which is more important because the iPad offers no way to access external storage to increase this.
What first set the iPad Pro apart from the rest of the iPad lineup was the ability to use the Apple Pencil as well as a first-party keyboard solution. For the 2018 iPad Pro, both of these accessories have gotten refreshes as well.
The iPad Pro for 2018 is a major change from the outgoing models. Let’s dig in and see how it fares.
Design
Arguably the largest change to the new iPad is in its design choices, and Apple has made some bold choices here which deviate significantly from the previous models. Apple calls the latest iPad Pro a “Window onto your work” and the company has taken design inspiration from its iPhone lineup with the reduction in the screen bezels to achieve this window onto your work.
The smaller bezels preclude the use of the Home button, which had already been deprecated in the iPhone, so it isn’t a surprise to see it removed here as well. The removal of the Home button also introduces the use of the same gesture based navigation already seen in the iPhone, except in a larger form factor. It also introduces Face ID to the iPad for the first time.
Due to the fact that the bezels required for a tablet are proportionally larger than a phone, there’s no need for a notch, and the Face ID camera sits almost hidden in the upper bezel. Unlike on the iPhone though, there’s no guaranteed way that you’ll be holding the iPad, and if you are holding it in landscape it can be very easy to have your hand over the camera. If that’s the case, iOS will let you know the camera is covered and show an on-screen arrow pointing to where it is. And, of course, the same caveats that go with any facial recognition system come into play with the iPad Pro. You have to be sure the camera can see you, so if the tablet is sitting on a table as you are using it, you may have to contort yourself slightly or pick it up if Face ID is required. It’s not quite as simple as Touch ID was, but it’s very quick and reliable.
If there is one major annoyance with Face ID on the iPad Pro it is the login process, which is overly cumbersome. Turning on the iPad will initiate a Face ID login, but Apple requires a swipe-up gesture to finish the unlock process. This is compounded on the iPad by the fact that the swipe must originate from below the bottom of the screen as if you were going to Home. Since your hand is likely not to be there, it is a less than ideal gesture for something that must be done so many times. If Apple just allowed the swipe up anywhere on the screen, it would be a big improvement.
Still, the removal of the Home button does make for a much more modern looking device, with the smaller bezels we have gotten used to over the last couple of years, and Apple continues its attention to detail by having the display corners match the radius of the device corners.
The other big design change with the iPad Pro is that Apple has moved to an almost-squared off edge, compared to the more rounded, tapered edges on the older models. This design change was almost certainly to facilitate the new Apple Pencil storage location, which has it magnetically attach to one side of the device. There’s a small RF transparent window there to allow the Apple Pencil to wirelessly charge when attached to the iPad, and a new pencil will sync with the iPad just by attaching it, which makes it a very seamless experience to get it up and running.
The squared off edges don’t provide the great in-hand feel of tapered edges though, but the iPad is thin enough that it is not a huge issue. It’ll also likely spend most of its life in a case, which is unfortunate since it is a great looking piece of technology. Apple has also done a great job of incorporating the various antennae into the design with symmetrical lines on the top and bottom which separate the metal at the top and bottom with the rest of the device.
Finally, Apple has continued its use of a quad-speaker arrangement on the iPad Pro, although with most things on the new iPad, they’ve been refreshed as well. There is now two speakers at each corner, with both a tweeter and a woofer which Apple says offers better sound with less space allocated for the speakers.
Overall the design of the latest iPad is quite striking, and the reduction in bezels provides a much more modern looking tablet. It keeps all of the attention to detail that Apple designed devices are known for. The iPad continues to lead the segment in design, and 468 grams for the 11-inch model we have for review, it is very easy to hold in one hand and use. The lack of rounded sides is somewhat masked by the 5.9 mm thickness, and despite internet rumors, the iPad Pro won’t bend in half just by holding it. The squared edges make it feel quite sturdy, although if you tried to bend it you likely could. But since it will likely live its life in a case of some sort, the proper care to prevent this shouldn’t be extreme.
Accessories
Apple has come out with a new lineup of accessories for the iPad Pro, which isn’t surprising with the design changes they’ve made on the new model. All of the major first-part accessories have gotten an update for the iPad update.
Apple Pencil
The Apple Pencil has gotten a nice update for the latest incarnation. Gone is the silly Lightning port and cap on the end of the old Pencil for charging and syncing. The new Pencil simply magnetically attaches to the right side of the iPad (when in portrait layout) where it wirelessly charges and syncs with the iPad. There’s no other way to say this other than the new method to add a Pencil to the iPad is about as perfect as it can get. There is no buttons to hold, settings to go into, or waiting. You just attach it, and the display will show a Pencil is attached, and then you can start using it.
The Pencil now has a single flat side to allow it to connect to the iPad securely, which is a great way to store it. But as with any magnetic connection, be careful that the Pencil doesn’t get knocked off in a bag and lost, because it isn’t inexpensive to replace, especially with its $30 price increase over the old model.
This single flat side also includes a capacitive button which can be mapped to various functions depending on the app in use, which would let you do things like quickly erase, or change the pointer size, just by tapping on the side of the accessory.
In use the new Apple Pencil works just like the old one, and that isn’t a bad thing. The latency is low, and the thin display stack keeps the refraction to a minimum. Apple’s Pencil continues to offer a great writing and drawing experience. Comparing it to the Surface Pro, the Pencil feels slightly better in the hand, and the capacitive button is easier to use than the physical button on the Surface Pro. However Microsoft does offer interchangeable tips on their stylus, including a softer tip which gives a better feeling that you are actually drawing on the device, rather than sliding over the display like the Pencil does.
The Smart Folio Cover
The other accessory for the iPad is the normal cover, the Smart Folio, which offers the same origami folding experience that customers have likely become accustomed to on the iPad. There isn’t much to say here, other than the cover only lets you stand the iPad up in landscape mode, although you can also use it to prop up the top end to use it like an easel for drawing, which is nice. Compared to the integrated kickstand in the Surface Pro though, the stand is wobbly and takes more time to get set up.
Smart Folio Keyboard
Apple has changed the design of their keyboard cover to remove some of the complexity, and the new Smart Folio Keyboard is a fairly straightforward design. You simply open the cover, slide the iPad forward a bit, and lock it into one of the two notches of the cover to provide the desired iPad angle. It is a big improvement over the outgoing one in terms of ease of use, although it is still not the easiest accessory to deploy. Offering two different angles is also a 100% improvement, although it is still somewhat limiting, and having the keyboard in the more vertical arrangement leads to a very wobbly tablet. The keys themselves haven’t changed much from the old version, offering very little travel, but they still offer a good typing experience. If you are someone who wants to type a lot on the iPad Pro though, the smaller model is somewhat cramped.
Much like the Apple Pencil, the keyboard has also increased in price, up to $179. At this price, it still doesn’t offer any backlighting either, which is unfortunate since the competition does. If you opt for the larger iPad Pro, the 12.9-inch keyboard is $199. It seems like a high price to pay for a keyboard which is, at best, average.
iOS keyboard integration still leaves something to be desired as well. There are still very few keyboard shortcuts, and with no pointer support, you will find yourself reaching up to the screen quite often. Even things that have been sorted out years ago on the PC side are a new frustration on the iPad, such as opening a new tab in Safari. If you do open a new tab, the address field is not pre-selected, so you then have to tap into it to begin typing. This isn’t the case if you open a new tab with the keyboard shortcut, at least, but other apps like the App Store function similarly, where if you hit Search at the bottom, the search field then has to be tapped to actually type. The keyboard does give you the option to type with proper feedback, unlike the on-screen version, but it really does feel like an add-on to iOS still.
This entire section was written on the iPad using the Smart Folio Keyboard, and with the auto-correct functionality in iOS and Word, it worked quite well. It isn’t as easy to use for pounding out documents as a PC would be though, although you can always connect a real keyboard if needed over Bluetooth, or even USB.
Powering iPad Pro: A12X
Section by Andrei Frumusanu
Apple’s new A12X SoC continues the tradition of representing an up-scaled version of the newest generation phone SoCs, in this case the A12. We’ve covered the A12 extensively in our review of the iPhone XS and XS Max, including more extensive coverage of the microarchitectural characteristics of Apple’s newest generation Vortex and Tempest cores.
The A12X, microarchitecturally, looks to be largely sharing the same generation IP blocks as the A12, with the only big difference being that the number of units has been increased in all major aspects of the SoC. Apple now for the first time employs a total of 8 CPU cores on the A12X, and compared to the A12, the figure was achieved by doubling the amount of the big Vortex cores from a dual-core to a quad-core setup. On the GPU side of things, we’ve seen the core count increase from 4 cores in the A12 to a 7-core setup in the A12X. Most important for GPU performance though – and a key aspect of the A-X series from Apple – is that the company has doubled the memory interface width 64-bit wide to 128-bit.
CPU Frequencies
In terms of CPU frequencies, Apple largely follows the same scaling pattern as on the A12, with the only difference being that there’s of course two more big cores at play. Here the A12X can support up to 8 total threads without having to resort to time-slicing their processing times.
Maximum Frequency vs Loaded Threads Per-Core Maximum MHz |
||||||||
Apple A12 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
Big 1 | 2500 | 2380 | 2380 | 2380 | 2380 | 2380 | - | - |
Big 2 | 2380 | 2380 | 2380 | 2380 | 2380 | - | - | |
Little 1 | 1587 | 1562 | 1562 | 1538 | - | - | ||
Little 2 | 1562 | 1562 | 1538 | - | - | |||
Little 3 | 1562 | 1538 | - | - | ||||
Little 4 | 1538 | - | - | |||||
Apple A12X | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
Big 1 | 2500 | 2380 | 2325 | 2325 | 2325 | 2325 | 2325 | 2325 |
Big 2 | 2380 | 2325 | 2325 | 2325 | 2325 | 2325 | 2325 | |
Big 3 | 2325 | 2325 | 2325 | 2325 | 2325 | 2325 | ||
Big 4 | 2325 | 2325 | 2325 | 2325 | 2325 | |||
Little 1 | 1587 | 1562 | 1562 | 1538 | ||||
Little 2 | 1562 | 1562 | 1538 | |||||
Little 3 | 1562 | 1538 | ||||||
Little 4 | 1538 |
On a single CPU core, the A12X clocks up to an identical 2500MHz as the A12. The similarities continue with two active big cores where the peak frequency is limited to 2380MHz. Finally, when three or four Vortex cores are active, the peak frequency on the A12X is limited to 2325MHz. The small Tempest cores see an identical frequency scaling as on the A12, with one core clocking up to 1587MHz, two to three cores at 1562MHz and finally 1538MHz when all four cores are active.
Cache Hierachy
Another way of scaling performance of a SoC is not only increasing the amount of computation blocks, but also changing aspects such as the amount of cache available to the various blocks. Let’s see if the A12X differs from the A12 in this regard:
Analysing the memory latency behaviour of the A12X and comparing it to the A12, it looks like Apple hasn’t really changed the cache configuration. The L1 caches are still at 128KB – but that was something to be expected. What is more interesting, is it seems the L2 cache also has an identical size to the A12.
The A12 L2 cache was quite unique in its behaviour in that it seemingly is of 8MB of physical size on the SoC die, however there looked to be a sort of logical partitioning in a way that a single core only has access to 6MB at fast access latencies. Furthermore in the latency graph we also see the separation of the L2 cache into two banks, with the second half of the 6MB region being slightly slower for full random access patterns.
Overall there’s a bit of a conundrum here, as we can’t really reach an accurate conclusion: Has Apple maintained the L2 cache at 8MB, or do we simply not see more of it because of a continuation of this logical partitioning? While we don’t have access to a die shot of the A12X to confirm this, I still think this is simply a case of Apple maintaining 8MB of L2 and sharing it among the four Vortex cores.
One of the A12’s big improvements was the new system level cache coming in at 8MB and employing a new microarchitecture. It looks like this part of the memory cache hierarchy has also remained unchanged as we just see minor differences in the latency behaviour past 8MB (Past the L2).
SPEC2006 Performance
We’ve extensively covered the SPEC2006 performance of the A12 in our review of the iPhone XS/XS Max and analysed the microarchitectural characteristics of the new Vortex CPU as observed in the performance results of the various SPEC workloads.
We continue the same exercise on the A12X: In general we shouldn’t expect too big variations here from the iPhone results, with the only big difference between the two SoCs being the increased memory bandwidth available to the A12X.
In SPECin2006, the A12X’s performance is pretty much in line with the A12, with the scores being pretty much within the margin of error, although the A12X ends up a percentage point or two faster than the A12 in some benchmarks.
The big outlier here is 462.libquantum: The benchmark workload here is characterised as heavily vectorised and extremely memory bandwidth intensive. Here the 21% increase could very well be attributed to the doubled memory bandwidth available to the A12X.
In SPECfp2006, a more significant amount of workloads are characterised by their memory and latency intensive nature. Here, the advantages of the A12X are more visible as we’re seeing an average 7% increase, ranging from 3% as the lowest increase in 444.namd up to more significant 14 and 12% increases in 433.milc and 470.lbm.
The overall SPEC2006 scores for the A12X are 45.95 in SPECint2006 and 58.78 in the C/C++ workloads of SPECfp2006 – representing 2% and 7% increases over the A12.
For the sake of comparison against the various existing mobile SoCs, here’s again a large graph overview comparison containing all relevant recent Arm microarchitectures.
Unfortunately for this review we weren’t able to probe the power and efficiency of the A12X – however I’m expecting figures not all too different to what we’ve published on the A12, meaning single-core active system power should be in the 3.6-4.3W range. Naturally this should be a bit higher on the A12X due to the doubled memory controller interfaces.
Overall, the A12X is a beast of a SoC and very much follows the performance of the A12. The CPU on the A12X seems pretty much the same as on the A12 – with slight performance increases in workloads that more heavily stress the memory subsystem, here the doubled memory bandwidth helps the A12X to rise above the A12.
Testing Notes
Before diving into the nuts and bolts of our actual review, I wanted to stop for a moment and talk about the means and perspectives on how to best test Apple’s rather unparalleled tablet. In terms of mechanical benchmarks, the path is rather straightforward – almost frustratingly so. There are only so many decent standardized benchmarks that run on the iPad Pro, and even fewer of those that overlap with other operating systems, particularly windows. This is why, as atypical and throughput-focused as SPEC is, it remains one of the better tools for determining how the hardware compares to other devices.
However when it comes to the user experience, that’s another matter. The iPad Pro is an iPad, that is also Pro. Specifically, that it has been designed and is being specifically pitched not only as a tool for the iPad’s traditional content-consumption tasks, but also professional productivity use cases as well. Document editing, content creation, photo editing, and other tasks that while not outside of the realm of a regular iPad, aren’t really its forte either.
Since there aren’t really any other serious Arm-based tablets of the iPad Pro’s caliber on the market – Android seems to slip farther and farther behind every year – for the review of this year’s significantly redesigned model, I’m opting to approach matters from the other direction: how does it compare to traditional productivity machines. This is the market occupied by the likes of the Microsoft Surface Pro and other Windows-powered convertibles; devices that have brought the Windows experience to a tablet-like form factor. And while the overlap is by no means perfect, I do feel that these sorts of devices are the standard-bearers for productivity and professionally-oriented tablets on the whole.
So at least in my eyes, the real competition for the new iPad Pros is going to be these other pro devices, rather than a smattering of large-format Arm-based tablets. And these are the sorts of devices I’m primarily going to be looking to compare the iPad Pro against.
System Performance
There’s little doubt that Apple has crafted a great SoC with the A12X, offering an eight core CPU for the first time in an iOS device. Apple claims that the iPad Pro is more powerful than 92% of the available laptops in the market. It does this in a device that is thinner, lighter, and much more efficient than any laptop on the market, which is a testament to their chip design team.
The iPad Pro ships with up to 6 GB of LPDDR4X – 6GB in the 1TB storage SKUs, and 4GB for the rest – compared to 4 GB in the iPhone XS. This is far less than most laptops, which can offer 16-32 GB of RAM with the low-power CPUs. But iOS is certainly less RAM hungry compared to the PC, thanks to the more limited applications available, so RAM is not going to be a limiting factor in most workloads.
Ultimately, despite Apple stating the iPad is quicker than most laptops, it is generally difficult to compare across these platforms because the desktop tools we normally use don’t exist on iOS, and most iOS tools don't exist on desktop OSes. Plus the locked-down nature of the operating system means that even those that do exist generally have lower system access. But we do have some cross-platform tools available.
TabletMark 2017
First up is Bapco’s TabletMark 2017, which is their latest iteration of their cross-platform performance and battery life testing tool. The 2017 version has the Windows version written entirely using UWP, and tests two scenarios for performance. Web and Email is the first scenario, and Photo and Video Sharing is the second. Each platform uses its native APIs and tools. Scores are calibrated against the Microsoft Surface 3 tablet, with four Atom cores, and that model is scored to 1000. Systems that are twice as fast would score 2000, and so on. The benchmark is sensitive to both CPU and GPU performance, but the CPU tests are mostly single-threaded.
In this test, the iPad Pro scores below the Surface Pro and Surface Book (which was run as iGPU only) which is perhaps not indicative of the actual performance of the iPad Pro, and once again points to the issues with testing cross-platform, even with companies doing their best to provide as fair of a comparison as possible.
Speedometer 2.0
And with that single test out of the way, we’re already into web-based testing, which is important, but doesn’t really give a great look at the underlying hardware due to the scripting engine having such a profound impact on scores.
The new A12X scores slightly higher than the iPhone in this test, but the two extra cores don’t offer a meaningful impact in performance in all scenarios. All of these results are well over the PC though, which struggles in this WebKit created benchmark. Our PC scores are done in the native browser, Edge, but even Chrome on the Surface Book 2 only scores 75.8.
WebXPRT 3
The latest version of Bapco’s web browser test is WebXPRT, and it offers quite a few different workloads compared to Speedometer. The performance on the PC surpasses the iPad in this test, but once again the underlying scripting engines have a large impact on the performance differences, which is why it is difficult to use these tests as a good cross-comparison.
Kraken 1.1
Once again you can see the combination of Apple’s Vortex CPUs combined with their scripting engine in Safari make for a potent combination, scoring well above any of the Windows 10 devices.
System Performance Conclusion
There is little doubt the Apple A12X SoC is potent. Apple claims it is faster than 92% of laptops available on the market, and there isn’t much evidence to refute this, but there really just isn’t a good breadth of evidence at all. A12X on iOS is very fast, and the less complicated applications on iOS are not going to cause this tablet to even break a sweat. A more telling test, perhaps, will be once Adobe has ported over the full-fat version of Photoshop to the iPad, which is expected next year.
Comparing it to the PC though is difficult, since there just are not a lot of good tools available. We will look into getting a proper SPEC comparison in the future which should give us a better baseline. Ultimately comparing iOS performance to the PC is similar to comparing it to Android, and you end up mostly looking at ECMAScript performance on the web.
The SPEC results we do have now though show that the A12X is roughly on-par with the single-threaded performance of the iPhone XS, which isn’t really a surprise, but that the A12X is well ahead of other ARM based CPUs. We’ll need a bit more time to make the same sort of comparison to the PC.
GPU Performance
Apple’s custom GPU in the iPad Pro is the same one found in the iPhone, but with more cores available. And with the larger surface area of the iPad compared to the phone, likely a higher frequency as well. There’s now seven of the A12 GPU cores, compared to just four on the iPhone, and Apple claims the GPU in the iPad Pro is equivalent to an Xbox One S, although how they came to thise conclusion is difficult to say since we know so little about the underpinnings of the GPU.
In rough terms, the Xbox One S is roughly 1.4 TFLOPS at its peak. But for better or worse, when the PC moved to unified shaders, the industry moved to FP32 for all GPU functions. This is as oppposed to the mobile world, where power is an absolute factor for everything, Vertex shaders are typically 32bpc while Pixel and Compute shaders can often be 16bpc. We’ve seen some movement on the PC side to use half-precision GPUs for compute, but for gaming, that’s not currently the case.
Overall, that makes like-for-like PC comparisons difficult. An AMD Ryzen 2700U SoC has a Vega GPU which offers 1.66 TFLOPS of FP32 performance, in theory. If run at 16-bit, that number would double, in theory. The iPad Pro would likely use half-precision for some of the GPU workload. This has been an issue for years and has made it difficult easily compare any cross-platform benchmark against the PC.
As with the iPhone, Apple’s peak GPU performance, even in the iPad, is still significantly higher than sustained performance. Please check out our iPhone XS review for Andrei’s deeper dive into this, but thanks to GPU compute transactional workloads in iOS, having high peak performance is a benefit even if it can’t be sustained over time.
3DMark Sling Shot 3.1 Extreme Unlimited
Here is our first look at the GPU in the iPad Pro compared to the mobile competition. Despite having only 75% more GPU cores than the iPhone XS Max, the iPad Pro scores 164% higher in the graphics result, which will be down to the clockspeed of the GPU and increased memory bandwidth. It is well ahead of everything else in the mobile world.
In the Physics result, which is more of a CPU test, the iPad Pro is still the highest result, but gap to the competition is much lower.
Also of note is that this benchmark is extremely unreliable on the iPad, crashing most of the times it is run.
3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited
Here is the first test we can use to compare against the PC, but unlike Sling Shot which uses Metal on iOS, this test relies on OpenGL ES 2.0. On Windows, it uses DX11, and of course the precision is not the same across mobile and PC with the PC version running at 32-bit and OpenGL ES 2.0 only using 16-bit.
Overall, the iPad Pro is well ahead of any of the PCs in this test, although the Physics test does show that the latest Intel CPUs still hold an edge over the iPad in this test. On the graphics side though, the iPad Pro scores over double the AMD Ryzen 7 2700U with Vega, and unsurprisingly Intel’s UHD 620 GPU brings up the rear.
GFXBench
The latest test from GFXBench is Aztec Ruins which offers both a normal mode in 1920x1080 resolution, as well as a high mode which is run at 2560x1440. It is quite a bit more complex than their older tests, and Kishonti has created the test in all of the modern API: Vulkan, Metal, and OpenGL ES 3.2 for mobile, and on the desktop it is available in OpenGL, DX11, and DX12. For our purposes, we’ll disregard OpenGL on the desktop since it is well on its way out at this point.
Peak performance of the iPad Pro is far above any of the 15-Watt laptops we tested. We’re unsure right now if the Metal version uses half-precision shaders, but Kishonti's old benchmarks did, so it likely is here as well. The gap compared to the iPhone isn’t huge though at the Normal settings, indicating that the benchmark is getting CPU bottlenecked at low resolutions. The High settings show an 80% increase in performance with the iPad compared to the iPhone XS.
Sustained Results
As hinted to above, Apple offers significantly more peak performance from the GPU than sustained, which can be beneficial for computational GPU in the OS for various functions. But for gaming, sustained performance is important.
GFXBench offers a battery rundown mode where Manhattan 3.1 is looped consecutively. For a comparative basis, if you run Manhattan 3.1 on the iPad the result is 100.79 frames per second on a single run, which is 6249 frames.
The longer test starts out high, but then decreases in performance significantly in the first couple of runs, and then starts to taper off near the end. The lowest framerate in this roughly 30-minute test is 3960.9 frames, which works out to 63.9 frames per second. That’s about a 36% decrease in performance over time.
Gaming results
All of these synthetics have a place but actual gaming is what people want extra performance for. When Apple states that the iPad Pro has an Xbox One S class GPU, that means in games, because you don’t use an Xbox One S to do transactional compute workloads.
All of the above caveats apply though, and it’s compounded by there being almost no cross-platform games available on both the PC and iPad. One exception to this rule is Civilization VI, which now offers pretty much a full port of the PC version on iPad.
On the iPad, Civilization VI is configured to use Metal, compared to either DX11 or DX12 on the PC. As an iPad app though, there are far fewer configuration options in iOS, but with the right tools you can access the configuration text file and make a few changes.
By default, the game on iOS runs at just a 1112x834 resolution – the non-retina resolution of the last-generation 10.5-inch iPad Pro – and there’s no way to customize the graphics through the UI like there is in the PC version of the game. You can edit the config file to unlock the Retina version of that resolution though, which doubles the effective resolution to 2224x1668. Also, because the game is a port of the PC version, you can also access the debug menu to get a look at the frame times.
We loaded up the same save game file on all devices, and the same configuration file on multiple devices, with the game resolution within 1% of the iPad, and then checked out the frame times for each:
At stock settings on the iPad, the GPU had no issues capping out the frame rate at the 27 Frames per second maximum.
Doubling the resolution of Civilization VI had literally no impact on performance. The iPad Pro can run at 2224x1668 easily framerate limited to the same 27 FPS of the non-Retina version of the game.
Intel’s UHD 620 paired with the Core i5 in the Surface Pro 6 is not framerate limited, but it is GPU bound, at just over 21 FPS.
The GeForce MX150 in the Huawei MateBook X Pro is the lower TDP version of the MX150, capping at around 1038 MHz. It’s able to achieve 45 FPS consistently.
Our last device features the AMD Ryzen 7 2700U, which has 10 Vega Compute Units in a 15-Watt TDP. It offers the highest performance at these settings, with almost 50 FPS average.
The results from Civilization VI is more or less the entire iPad Pro experience in a nutshell. The A12X SoC has ample performance, but the limitations of the implementation of this game on iOS limits what the user can achieve. With a frame lock of roughly 27 frames per second, the iPad Pro has no issues at all maxing that out at all times, and the benefit of a frame rate limiter is that the amount of power required is much lower, and therefore the battery life is better. But unlike the PC there is really no way to get around this limitation. Civilization VI isn’t the kind of game that needs really high framerates to be playable, but it is rarely up to the user as to what they can do on iOS. The game was clearly ported to ensure consistent performance on the earlier models of iPad, and when Apple drops a much faster GPU in the iPad, there’s no way to adjust the performance to take advantage of it.
GPU Conclusion
So is the iPad Pro an Xbox One S class of GPU? Likely it is. The Xbox One S is only slightly quicker than the original Xbox One launched in 2013, and that console would struggle to achieve 1080p in games of that vintage. The Vega iGPU in the Ryzen 7 2700U offers more theoretical FLOPS than the Xbox One S, although at a higher TDP of 15-Watts, compared to the iPad Pro. In the synthetic tests, the iPad Pro scored higher than the Vega GPU, albeit at a lower precision, but regardless, there’s little doubt that the GPU in the iPad Pro is quite powerful. Add in the efficiency and the lower TDP, and results are even stronger. On the sustained performance run, the iPad was averaging just under 8 Watts of draw for the entire device.
The Liquid Retina Display
Apple offers some of the best displays on the market, and the iPad Pro is arguably their best display available. What Apple calls a Liquid Retina display is a 264 pixel-per-inch masterpiece. The 11-inch model we are reviewing holds a 2388x1668 7:5 aspect ratio panel, while the larger 12.9-inch model uses a 4:3 2732x2048 panel.
There’s a lot that sets Apple apart from other manufacturers on the market. The company has taken display accuracy seriously longer than anyone outside of the professional field. The display in the iPad Pro is also a P3 D65 gamut display, but thanks to the color management system that Apple moved over from the Mac, it simultaneous offers near-perfect sRGB reproduction as well as near-perfect P3 reproduction whenever an app or image specifically says it's P3. There’s no compromise on offering the P3, and no need to change the gamut on the display to match different color spaces. It’s a P3 display where sRGB is properly mapped.
In addition, Apple’s iPad Pro offers their ProMotion technology, which means it is a 120 Hz display, but one that supports variable refresh rates in order to lower the display's refresh rate for power management purposes. The iPad Pro will go as low as 24 Hz, presumably chosen to match the framerate of most movies. Apple also carries over its True Tone functionality, where ambient light sensors change the white point of the display to make it more suited to the environment it is in. It’s one of those features you never really knew you needed until you see it in action.
The fully laminated display also offers Apple’s industry leading antireflective coating, which Apple rates at 1.8% reflectivity, improving the results outdoors dramatically over most devices, and of course there is a fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating as well.
Apple rates the latest iPads at up to 600 nits of brightness too, so pretty much no matter where you are, the combination of the high brightness and the antireflective coating should make for a great viewing experience.
To test the display characteristics, we turn to SpectraCal’s CalMAN software suite, along with an X-Rite i1Display Pro colorimeter for brightness and contrast readings, and the X-Rite i1Pro 2 spectrophotometer for color accuracy readings.
Brightness and Contrast
Under our test conditions the iPad Pro could not quite hit the 600 nits that Apple advertises, but at 500 nits it is still plenty bright. Couple that with the excellent contrast ratio of almost 1800:1, and things are off to a good start.
Grayscale
The average dE2000 of 1.43 is a fantastic result, but the gamma isn’t quite perfect, dropping off near 100% because the display was slightly too bright. Unfortunately, the red results were quite low throughout the entire range leading to a slightly cooler display white point, but this is all quite minor.
Gamut
First let’s take a look at sRGB:
As you can see, the sRGB values are almost perfectly mapped into the P3 D65 gamut, and the average error level of just over 1.09 is simply fantastic. All of the primary and secondary values are close to perfect, except red which was a bit low at 100% red, as we saw in the grayscale results.
Next up, P3 D65:
As with the sRGB results, the P3 D65 gamut is also almost perfect. The beauty of color management means that there’s no work for the user to get the benefit of both P3 and sRGB.
Saturation
The saturation sweep was run in sRGB, and as you can see from the graphs, all along all of the primary and secondary colors the error level is basically imperceptible to the human eye.
Gretag Macbeth
Finally, the Gretag Macbeth test is a more comprehensive test, hitting colors outside of the primary and secondary colors, including the important skin tones. The error level is practically perfect, with no single color even hitting an error level of 2.0.
Display Conclusion
The iPad Pro simply offers one of the best displays on any electronic device. Color accuracy is superb, in both the P3 and sRGB gamuts, and thanks to iOS supporting full color management, customers don’t have to worry about if they are working on a P3 or sRGB image. The addition of True Tone makes for an incredibly pleasing white point in pretty much any situation, and the 120 Hz display refresh rate makes for smooth scrolling, while stepping down to lower refresh rates to conserve power when the display is static.
Battery Life
Apple is generally quite conservative when quoting battery life, and the iPad Pro 11 and 12.9 both are rated at up to 10 hours of web usage. The smaller model offers a 29.37 Wh battery, and the larger model offers 36.71 Wh of capacity. Both of these capacities are much lower than a Surface Pro 6, which has 45 Wh, or a typical Ultrabook, which would be well over 50 Wh.
Our battery tests are performed at 200 nits of brightness.
Web Browsing Battery Life
Our iPad achieved well over the rated ten hours, coming in at 12:13 on our web rundown test. This is a couple of hours longer than you’d get on an iPhone XS Max, and well ahead of the battery life on a Surface Pro 6 on this same test. This is one area where the efficiencies of the SoC, coupled with the operating system, pay big dividends compared to the PC space.
Battery Life Movie Playback
Movie playback is a unique situation where the workload can be offloaded to fixed function hardware in the media block, which is much more efficient than doing the work on the CPU. The iPad Pro achieved just over 15.5 hours of movie playback of a locally stored video. This is a couple of hours longer than you’d get on a Surface Pro with the same workload, despite the much smaller battery capacity.
Normalized Results
One thing we do on our PC reviews is to look at the efficiency of the device by removing the battery capacity from the equation. This shows the current gap between tablets and PCs. The Surface Pro 6 is one of our most efficient devices around, offering over 12 minutes per Wh of battery capacity, and the iPad over doubles that efficiency at almost 25 minutes per Wh. Or put in other terms, the iPad, on average, was drawing 2.4 Watts of power during the web test, and the Surface Pro 6 was drawing about 5 Watts. Considering much of the Surface Pro draw is the display, it shows you how effective Apple has been in driving down all of the power drain.
Charge Time
The other end of the spectrum is the charge time. Apple ships the iPad Pro with a USB-C power adapter with 18 Watts of output. That is quite a bit lower than you’d see on a laptop, and for example the MacBook ships with a 30 Watt AC Adapter. That means that the iPad charge time is quite long, despite the small battery capacity.
In addition, Apple ships an almost comically short USB-C cable with the iPad Pro. At three feet long, it will almost certainly be impossible to charge and use the iPad unless you happen to have an outlet right on your desk. At least with the move to USB-C getting a longer cable is not an issue, but for such an expensive device, this is a bit silly.
Wireless
Apple has stuck with the same wireless solution as they offer in the iPhone, which is the Murata/Apple 339S00551 Wi-Fi controller. This is an 802.11ac 2x2:2 solution with 80 MHz channel support, and it integrated Bluetooth 5.0. The actual controller is likely a Broadcom unit, which is what Apple tends to use in its iOS devices.
Unfortunately, iOS doesn’t let us perform our standard copy script to provide peak throughput testing, so we can’t comment on that, however the iPad did lose connection the access point several times and would require a device restart to connect again. Switching to a different access point corrected this issue, but was a less than ideal solution.
On the cellular side, Apple has outfitted the LTE versions with Intel’s XMM 7560 modem, which offers Category 16 downloads.
Audio
As mentioned in the design section, the iPad Pro features four sets of speakers, with both a tweeter and woofer for each corner. There are drilled holes in the aluminum chassis to let the sound out, and the iPad offers dynamic audio based on its rotation so that the left and right channels of audio are directed to the correct side. If you turn the iPad 180°, the left and right channels will switch to keep the stereo correct. It is a great system that works flawlessly.
The actual speakers on the iPad sound very good, and on playback of a test track, were able to achieve around 85 dB(A) measured one inch over the device. There is no distortion, and the speaker range was quite good for a small device.
The bad news is if you want to connect your favorite headphones to the iPad, there is no longer a 3.5 mm jack. The reasoning behind the removal on the iPhone was due to space concerns, but on a larger device like the iPad, that seems like a weak argument. In addition, there’s no 3.5 mm USB-C adapter in the box either, so if you do want to use wired headphones, you’ll need to purchase an adapter. This is obviously less than ideal.
Cameras
Apple offers a 7 MP front facing camera with f/2.2, Smart HDR, wide color support, and "Retina Flash", which means it will use the display as a flash for the front facing camera. The front facing camera works well for Face Time, which is what it is really designed for, although the location of the camera in the top bezel in portrait means that it won’t work well in landscape, since everything is off-center. Ideally, Apple could offer two sets of cameras, which would also help out with Face ID.
The rear camera is a 12 MP f/1,8 with PDAF, Smart HDR, wide color support, and True Tone Quad-LED flash.
The rear camera is quite good, likely on-par with the iPhone XR.
Google Pixel XL camera samples
Due to the weather (it’s winter in Canada) the only samples here are from indoor shots compared against the Google Pixel XL.
Software
As I mentioned towards the start of this review, as Apple is pitching the iPad Pro as a professional productivity machine, I opted to go into this review focusing on just that. Meaning the competition for the iPad Pro isn't so much other ARM-based tablets, but rather similarly-capable business machines like the Surface Pro series or Lenovo's various Yoga devices. At this point I don't think the iPad Pro's pedigree in terms of hardware is in question. But rather it's a question of whether the software can do everything that a professional machine should be able to. The iPad is inseparable from iOS, for all the benefits and drawbacks that can bring.
Apple wants the iPad Pro to be a professional, or at least prosumer, level of device. And in order to achieve that they need not only the operating system, but also the applications available for people to get work done. The iPad’s success over the years was always offering easy access to content, but only in the last couple of generations has Apple put serious effort into letting people get work done on it via the iPad Pro family.
The Files app doesn't provide access to any files on the device
iOS has come a long way in terns of its ability to multitask, but with the gesture based navigation it can be a bit cumbersome to switch applications on the fly. Over time, you do get better at it, but it still doesn’t compare to the PC. The four-finger swipe to switch between open applications is quick, but if you have several open it can be slow to get where you need to go. iOS 12 of course still supports the Split View and Slide Over modes as well. There’s also no file system access, other than the rudimentary Files application, and Apple has decided not to allow regular USB drives to be connected and used to transfer media. You can hook up a camera card and import the photos, and there are various iOS-specific drives out there that work on an application-by-application basis, but the only way to move the files off of the iPad is generally through the cloud.
Since iOS requires the app developers to explicitly support their multitasking modes, if you want Word open with Spotify at the same time, this is your only option
What it boils down to is that the iPad Pro offers a tremendous amount of performance, but at this point it feels held back by iOS. If you have a workflow that you know works well in iOS, it will almost certainly work better on the iPad Pro. But if you have a workflow from the PC, that will need to be adjusted to make it fit the iPad.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. There are clearly people who can not only make the iPad work, but find it to be a better tool than what they had in the past, but that is not always the case. With more professional applications coming to iOS, this could improve over time as well, and Adobe in particular has been a strong supporter of iOS with their Creative Cloud applications.
Other features are also left wanting, such as the ability to hook the iPad Pro up to a 5K display over USB-C. At the OS level the only option here is to mirror the iPad display, but since the display you are connecting to likely doesn’t offer touch, and there’s no pointer support in iOS, it literally is just a cropped version of the iPad display on another screen. Apps can take advantage of the second display, such as a presentation which would offer a different experience on both displays, but it doesn’t offer the flexibility of the PC or Mac with regards to connecting extra monitors.
There are hundreds of small issues like this that you’ll run into when using iOS for professional-level productivity. Some of them will be real issues, and some of them will just be re-learning tasks. There’s no doubt you can get work done on the iPad Pro, but the question is if you can do it as efficiently as you are used to. If you can, great. This iPad is for you.
Final Words
Apple calls the 2018 iPad Pro the iPad they’ve always dreamed of building. The new iPad Pro offers a completely new design, with some great new features, so it’s not difficult to see why they say that. The first thing anyone will notice is the new thinner bezels, offering up a modern take on the iPad idea.
Let’s start with the display, since it is really a highlight of this iPad. The performance of it is simply outstanding, and Apple offers arguably the best display in any consumer device with the iPad Pro. The 120 Hz ProMotion makes scrolling incredibly smooth. The True Tone adjustment brings a pleasant look to the display in any lighting condition. And the color accuracy is pretty much second to none. Really the only thing missing is HDR – and the battery life hit that would entail in such a portable device would probably not be worth it.
Apple’s SoC efforts have been leading the industry, and the A12X in the iPad Pro offers plenty of performance, but without breaking the power budget. With four Vortex cores for performance, coupled with four Tempest cores for efficiency, and all eight cores available all the time, you get both the burst performance needed for everyday workloads, along with the incredible battery life you’d expect in a tablet. On the GPU side, the seven GPU cores offer 75% more GPU hardware than the iPhone XS, and more memory bandwidth as well. The GPU and CPU both share the sameLPDDR4X memory, with up to 6 GB, and the performance is excellent.
Apple’s new Pencil is also a nice improvement over the outgoing model. A small thing like one flat side makes the Pencil not roll away on you, and also doubles as a connection to the iPad Pro where it magnetically docks for charging. It is a much-improved design over the original, and it is double improved by having a capacitive button on near the tip which can do various functions depending on the application being used.
The new Smart Folio Keyboard is also a nice improvement, offering a much easier setup, but it is not as clear of a win as the Pencil. The extra slot for a second position is nice, but it makes the iPad a bit wobbly and unstable if used anywhere but a nice, flat desk. The keys also don’t offer backlighting, and the definitely should for the price. iOS also shows from time to time that it was not originally intended to be used with a keyboard, which can be frustrating.
And while the hardware is fantastic, iOS is starting to feel like it is holding back the iPad Pro in the productivity realm. There is a lot of performance on tap, but getting access to it can be difficult. It really comes down to the app developers to pull the performance out of this iPad, but due to the fragmented iPad market, they may just target the lowest common denominator, which is often the case. A game like Civilization VI comes by default running at a very low resolution so that it will work well with the older iPads Pros, and will take a developer update to unlock any more fidelity, since the end user has no control over that on iOS for the most part. It makes it easy, but it isn’t always the best experience.
At least on an app basis, the silver lining here is that Adobe bringing their Creative Cloud suite to the iPad is definitely a big win for Apple. Done well, and it should showcase the performance of the tablet, along with the Pencil, in ways that many other apps won’t take advantage of.
If you are a fan of iOS, and you have a workflow that is suited to its operation, there’s little doubt the new iPad Pro models are going to be a great addition, but considering the price increase over the base iPad, you really have to need that performance to justify the iPad Pro 11-inch. Apple also charges a pretty hefty sum to upgrade the internal storage, and the accessories really add on to the price tag as well.
With all of that said, there’s no doubt in my mind that the latest iPad Pro is the best iPad ever. It’s the fastest. It offers great battery life. The display is second to none. But it is still, at its nature, an iPad. Apple has been working on the productivity angle for a few generations now, and while this is their best stab at it yet, the iPad Pro is still in that awkward gap between a content consumption device and a traditional laptop or the Windows convertibles that the original iPad inspired. What you get then is a device that's certainly a lot more professional than the base iPad and a lot more useful for productivity use cases, but also something that feels more like a larger, more expensive iPad than the kind of top-tier machines the iPad Pro is intended to compete with.