IPad Pro 9.7 Inch Updated Review

The most important thing to know about the new iPad Pro isn’t the specs or the speed — it’s the price. It starts at $599 for the 32GB model. It’s difficult to even compare that price to the just-reduced iPad Air 2, since Apple has set up the storage options for these models differently — but in general you’re looking at a $150 or more price differential. And if you’re really going to use the "Pro" in the iPad Pro version, you’ll probably want to save up for the 128GB model, which is $749. Oh, and you will also probably want the Smart Keyboard for $149, and maybe the Apple Pencil for $99.

YOU CAN EASILY SPEND $1000 OR MORE ON AN IPAD PRO KIT
iPad Pro 9.7-inch
Add it all up and you can easily spend $1,000 or more on an iPad Pro kit. That’s not just computer pricing — that’s computer pricing that’s significantly more expensive than many Windows PCs or Chromebooks. If you’re going to lay down that kind of money, you had better really know what you’re going to get out of it.

That’s where the "Pro" part comes in. The difference between the iPad Pro and the iPad Air is roughly equivalent the difference between the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air: they can both essentially do the same things, but the Pro is just way, way faster. Figuring out what makes the Pro a Pro means you have to consider a constellation of features, and they don’t map exactly to what’s available on the bigger, 12.9-inch iPad Pro. Apple’s product naming strategy is confusing, but it’s got nothing on the feature matrix.

So: the iPad Pro 9.7 has the same screen size and the same basic body as the iPad Air 2, but the Pro’s screen is much better, with lower reflectivity and a wider color gamut. The Pro 9.7 also has a great new feature called "True Tone" that adjusts the color of the screen, which isn’t available on the larger iPad Pro. The 9.7-inch Pro has the same A9X processor as its bigger brother, but with 2GB of RAM instead of 4GB. It has four speakers and a smart keyboard connector, like the big one. It also has a very good 12-megapixel camera (and the concomitant camera bump), which is better than what either the Air 2 or the larger Pro have.