Apple has always appealed to the creatives, and the Pencil is one of the best mainstream tools to encourage creativity. I used to enjoy drawing as child, but had moved on from the hobby for over 20 years. The Apple Pencil re-ignited my passion for sketching simply by being so easy to use: a couple of years ago, I drew a comic for my girlfriend entirely on (an older) iPad Pro. I made plenty of mistakes along the way, but because it was all done digitally I was able to un-do mistakes without hassle. I don’t think I would have had the patience to finish the task if I had tried on a real paper and pencil. I think the Pencil 2 will continue to make me want to sketch.

Unfortunately, the Pencils are locked to their respective generation of iPads. You can’t use the older Pencil on the new iPads, and you can’t use the Pencil 2 on the older iPads. I’m not sure why that is — the two Pencils have the same level of pressure sensitivity and functionality — I suspect this might be another profit-driven move by the company that won’t include a fast charger or a headphone-jack adaptor (aka dongle) in the packaging of its $1,200 iPhones.Speaking of that 3.5mm audio port, the iPad Pro has got rid of it, too (and no, there is no adaptor dongle included in the packaging). But the good news is that the new Pro uses USB-C instead of Apple’s own Lightning port for charging and connectivity. This is great because USB-C is simply a better port than Lightning: it can deliver more power, transfer data faster, and is compatible with a bunch of other accessories. The same cable that charges my smartphones can now charge my iPad.

The entire tech industry decided years ago USB-C should be the port of the future. Apple has just been stubborn about using it because the Lightning port is its own technology. But Apple finally using USB-C on all its large computing devices is a sign that Apple is finally willing to concede. We may just be a year or two away from USB-C iPhones, too. That means sometime in the near future, we should be able to use one cable to charge every gadget in our lives.

The USB-C port on the new iPad Pro is restricted in some ways, however, which I’ll touch on in the last section.The USB-C port is much better than the Lightning port used in older iPads.BEN SINThe iPad Pro has four speakers and they pump out arguably the best sound in any mobile device. There are lots of little smart touches, such as the iPad knowing which direction the iPad is held and pumping out mids and highs from the top speakers at all times. Apple doesn’t disclose battery size, but from my testing, watching a full two-hour movie with both screen brightness and sound output at around 75% only drained about 25% battery life, and using the machine as a normal laptop (for typing and web surfing) only drained about 10% of the battery per hour.

• Sony VGP-BPS2 Battery


• Sony VGP-BPS13 Battery


• SONY VGP-BPS21 Battery


• SONY VGP-BPL26 Battery


• Sony VGP-BPL10 Battery


• Sony VGP-BPL9 Battery


• Sony VGP-BPL8 Battery


• Sony VGP-BPL2 Battery


• SONY VGP-BPS22 Battery


• SONY VGP-BPS21A Battery


• Sony VGP-BPS13/S Battery


• Sony VGP-BPS9 Battery


• Sony VGP-BPS8 Battery


• SONY VGP-BPL22 Battery


• SONY VGP-BPS26 Battery


• SONY VGP-BPS21/B Battery


• Sony VGP-BPS13S Battery


• Sony VGP-BPS13B/S Battery


• Sony VGP-BPS13B/Q Battery


• Sony VGP-BPS13B/B Battery


• Sony VGP-BPS13AS Battery


• Sony VGP-BPS13A/S Battery


• Sony VGP-BPS13A/Q Battery


• Sony VGP-BPS13A/B Battery


• Sony VGP-BPS13/Q Battery

With excellent speakers, battery life, and display, the iPad Pro is an excellent media consumption device — except for the no headphone jack thing.Apple has been marketing the iPad Pro as a computer/laptop replacement since the line made its debut in 2015. I initially poked fun at the claim because iOS was too limiting an operating system to let the iPad Pro be much more than a super-sized iPhone. But then iOS 11, released in 2017, finally brought split-screen capability to the iPad, and since then, the iPad Pro has been a serviceable work machine for me whenever I needed portability above all else.

This new iPad, obviously, improves on that by simply being lighter and way more powerful. I’ve been lugging it with me everywhere and have typed several articles and edited/processed several 4K videos on it with no issues.I can still get work done a bit faster on a normal laptop, but the iPad Pro is increasingly catching up, and it should be my on-the-go work machine of choice for the foreseeable future because it represents the future of computing, and I am a gadget geek who wants to jump on new trends from day one. Whether it’s slicing video clips or dragging files from window to window, there is something inherently personal and intuitive about doing it with your finger (or the Apple Pencil with its finer point).

Of course, each person has its own specific needs. The iPad Pro works for me because my work consists entirely of typing words, browsing websites, and editing video clips and photos. For others, the iPad Pro may still be too limiting, and it’s not just because of the two apps at a time max limit, but because of Apple and iOS’s stubborn quirks.We’ll start with the biggest one: Apple has crippled the USB-C port, seemingly on purpose. The iPad Pro’s USB-C port mostly does not recognize external storage. Whether it’s external hard drives or USB-C thumb drives, plug it in and nothing happens. The only exception is photos stored on memory cards. Apple will recognize those (if you buy a USB-C to card reader dongle) and allow you to import, but you must go through Apple to do so. You cannot import photos from your DSLR camera directly to photo editing apps like Adobe Lightroom CC, you must import them to iOS’s own camera roll first.

Then there’s the iPad’s file system, which is only fully useable if you are devoted to Apple’s ecosystem and use iCloud. If you’re not on iCloud, your can’t really save photos to it, you can’t do much of anything. Apple also makes its own mail app the default mail app and there is no way around that. I can download Google’s Gmail app, but I can’t save any of the files from the app. If I have an attachment in Gmail, I must go into the app and load it, which requires internet connection. I can’t ever save a Gmail file for offline viewing on an iPad Pro (or iPhone, for that matter).

• Sony VGP-BPS13/B Battery


• Sony VGP-BPS10 Battery


• Sony VGP-BPS9A/S Battery


• Sony VGP-BPS9A/B Battery


• Sony VGP-BPS9/S Battery


• Sony VGP-BPS9/B Battery


• Sony VGP-BPS2C Battery


• Sony VGP-BPL20 Battery


• Sony VGP-BPL18 Battery


• SONY VGP-BPS26A Battery


• SONY VGP-BPS22A Battery


• SONY VGP-BPS22/A Battery


• SONY VGP-BPS21B Battery


• SONY VGP-BPS21A/B Battery


• SONY VGP-BPS21/S Battery


• Sony VGP-BPS20/S Battery


• Sony VGP-BPS20/B Battery


• Sony VGP-BPS20 Battery


• Sony VGP-BPS10B Battery


• Sony VGP-BPS10A/B Battery


• Sony VGP-BPS10A Battery


• Sony VGP-BPS10/S Battery

The lack of a local file directory likely makes the iPad Pro a no-go as a work machine for actual office desk jockeys, so ultimately, the iPad Pro is too restricted to be a full computer for a chunk of the population.These iPads are expensive, too. The smaller 10-inch model starts at $799 and the 12.9-inches starts at $999. These prices are just for the base 64GB configuration, which is likely not enough for most people in 2018. That means you’ll likely need to opt for the 256GB versions which cost another couple of hundred dollars more. On top of that, everything else that make the iPad Pro hum cost extra — the keyboard case, the Pencil, whatever dongles you need to connect headphones or memory cards. These new 2018 iPad Pros are a pricey investment, but I don’t think it’ll matter. Apple products have not catered to the value-conscious for years. Apple products are for creatives, a group that usually don’t mind paying more.

Apple has, from day one, forced its vision on users. Often, its ideas of how things should be — removing the CD drive in laptops; going back to a touchscreen when the entire industry had settled on hardware keyboards — are correct and pushed the industry forward. Sometimes, their ideas are misguided and annoying, such as the removal of the headphone jack so early, or iOS’s lack of customization compared to Android.The iPad Pro is Apple’s idea of personal computing in the future — we know this because it runs an iPad Pro ad campaign that actively makes fun of traditional laptops (ironically, products Apple is still trying to sell). Apple believes that in the future we don’t need a file system because everything we do is on the cloud; that we use our fingers to move digital/virtual objects instead of mouse arrows; that no one really needs more than two or three apps on screen at once because they’ll be so optimized.