The allure of iPad Pro 9.7

[mixel]

I saw a video on startup times and the iPad Pro 9.7 came in 8th place out of all of the iPads. If I were you I'd just stick with the iPad Air 2, it's the second fastest iPad aside from the 12.9. The question to ask yourself is this: "$600 worth having Apple Pencil support on a smaller screen" because that is what you are spending the money on. Everything else that the iPad Pro offers is less than or equal to the iPad Air 2. In the video I think the only iPad worse than the iPad Pro 9.7 was the iPad 3 which I also owned before I got the iPad Air and just recently the iPad Pro 12.7".

That video has been debunked already. The iPad Air 2 is definitely not the second fastest iPad after the 12.7" at anything other than booting up in certain circumstances.. Even if that were true, how often do you turn off your iPad? It's hardly representative of performance in normal use. Haha.

 

[rui no onna]

What storage did you guys go for? Anyone get the 256gb?

I got 256GB. The bigger storage is one of the reasons I upgraded.

 

[baypharm]

The allure for me is this supposed screen. The balancing of brightness and color temperature is not an important thing, but if the screen is better quality in terms of better picture (increased brightness etc...)

The screen resolution is identical to iPad air which is several years old now. Can anyone confirm in what ways the baby pro's screen is better? I used the big iPad pro and LOVED the increased resolution.

 

[zhenya]

The screen resolution is identical to iPad air which is several years old now. Can anyone confirm in what ways the baby pro's screen is better? I used the big iPad pro and LOVED the increased resolution.

If you are comparing to the original Air, there are a bunch of things that have changed. The glass is laminated to the LCD so there is no air gap which reduces reflection and brings the content closer to the surface of the screen. There are now 2 generations of anti-glare coating improvements making the iPP the best outdoor readable tablet available anywhere. True-tone makes the device look a lot more natural in most lighting. It gets much brighter than the old one. IMO there is relatively little reason to increase resolution on these displays right now. They are still incredibly sharp, and you don't have people using them for VR the way phones are which drives the need for really high resolution phones.

 

[AVBeatMan]

The screen resolution is identical to iPad air which is several years old now. Can anyone confirm in what ways the baby pro's screen is better? I used the big iPad pro and LOVED the increased resolution.

I've had the air 1 and 2 and the 12.9 Pro and I can definitely tell the difference.

iPad Pro 9.7 is the superior iPad.

 

[mixel]

The screen resolution is identical to iPad air which is several years old now. Can anyone confirm in what ways the baby pro's screen is better? I used the big iPad pro and LOVED the increased resolution.

Supposedly brightness and a wider colour gamut, which is interesting - ripped from DisplayMate:



"The iPad Pro 9.7 has two standard Color Gamuts, the new DCI-P3 Wide Color Gamut that is used in 4K UHD TVs and Digital Cinema, and also the traditional smaller sRGB / Rec.709 Color Gamut that is used for producing virtually all current consumer content for digital cameras, TVs, the internet, and computers, including photos, videos, and movies. What’s more, on the iPad Pro 9.7 both Gamuts have been implemented with color accuracy that is visually indistinguishable from perfect. That’s impressive...

And not only is the iPad Pro 9.7 more than 20 percent brighter than the other current iPads, but it is the brightest full size production Tablet that we have seen. And even more important and impressive is that it has by far the lowest screen Reflectance of any mobile display, so its image colors and contrast in high ambient light will appear considerably better than on any other mobile display." - http://www.displaymate.com/iPad_Pro9_ShootOut_1.htm

I dont think most users would notice the difference, but thats not an insignificant gamut increase and you can sometimes see that sort of thing in photos.

 

[AlexJoda]

"The iPad Pro 9.7 has two standard Color Gamuts, the new DCI-P3 Wide Color Gamut that is used in 4K UHD TVs and Digital Cinema, and also the traditional smaller sRGB / Rec.709 Color Gamut that is used for producing virtually all current consumer content for digital cameras, TVs, the internet, and computers, including photos, videos, and movies. What’s more, on the iPad Pro 9.7 both Gamuts have been implemented with color accuracy that is visually indistinguishable from perfect. That’s impressive...

I dont think most users would notice the difference, but thats not an insignificant gamut increase and you can sometimes see that sort of thing in photos.

No you cannot because no photo camera can take pictures with DCI-P3 Gamut! JPEGs are taken with sRGB, RAWs sometimes with Adobe RGB, so for photos the iPP 9.7 has no advantage at all....

 

[AFEPPL]

You can see a difference is screen quality between the 12 and the 9" IPP, goto a local apple store and take a look for yourself, its pretty clear to see.

 

[AlexJoda]

You can see a difference is screen quality between the 12 and the 9" IPP, goto a local apple store and take a look for yourself, its pretty clear to see.

If something looks visibly appealing and colorful does not mean that it has a better screen quality. For me screen quality is color accuracy. That is the reason why I don't like OLED screens. They are very colorful but always looking "wrong " regarding colors to me......

 

[mixel]

No you cannot because no photo camera can take pictures with DCI-P3 Gamut! JPEGs are taken with sRGB, RAWs sometimes with Adobe RGB, so for photos the iPP 9.7 has no advantage at all....

Me: "You can often see that sort of thing in photos" - ah, I was really just assuming from experience of increased gamut coverage within sRGB on monitors etc. Haha, that would be a problem*, thanks. XD it does well on adobeRGB too at least.. I wonder if Procreate et al will support the colour space. I guess a DAM/photo editor could process the images using it too, if they wanted to. And camera manufacturers could use the wider gamut in future? (Probably not if they haven't already.)

Saying that, the gamut on my Cintiq is comparatively dire, but still looks pretty nice still. Would be interesting to compare video set up for both gamuts too.

Edit: I might take that back? http://www.astramael.com/ how confusing. They show it making a noticeable difference with photos, so I guess raw photos must save data outside of the selected gamut or something?

 

[Apples n' Stone]

There have been more than a dozen threads on this issue since the 9.7" iPP release - take a moment to crawl through the iPad Forum and you'll find all the opinions you need, and more.

https://forums.macrumors.com/forums/ipad.137/

Oh the shade...
[doublepost=1461052698][/doublepost]You get the impression the maming scheme is getting to people when one calls it the 7" so the rest join in. iPad Mini with smart keyboard.

 

[oldmacs]

The only major downsides to the 9.7 Pro is the lack of USB 3.0 support, the higher price and the 2GB of ram. However the 2GB of ram probably won't bother you as by the sounds of it you swap your iPads regularly, and 2GB if probably more than enough for you at the moment and for the near future.

 

[Krevnik]

No you cannot because no photo camera can take pictures with DCI-P3 Gamut! JPEGs are taken with sRGB, RAWs sometimes with Adobe RGB, so for photos the iPP 9.7 has no advantage at all....

Except if you are shooting in Adobe RGB, instead of simply converting to sRGB, you can convert to DCI-P3 and get closer color reproduction that way (that is in part what ColorSync helps with).

JPEGs can have color spaces other than sRGB, but when targeting the web, you shouldn't target anything else (because most browsers will just ignore it and assume it is sRGB, or worse).

 

[Mascots]

JPEGs can have color spaces other than sRGB, but when targeting the web, you shouldn't target anything else (because most browsers will just ignore it and assume it is sRGB, or worse).

Maybe in 2008, but all major browsers support accurate color reproduction matching their profiles. I have not had a case in which that hasn't happened in over five years.

In fact, the only issue that has significant side-effects with a modern browsers and color management may be isolated to Chrome, which fails to convert anything not explicitly tagged with a profile (a.k.a. all CSS and untagged images) into the proper monitor space. Attaching a profile, even sRGB, fixes that problem. The issue for people who care is that the color profile is often just "sRGB" and you need to tag it for Chrome to reflect it properly if your monitor isn't in sRBG. All MacBook Air's that view an image in Chrome that isn't explicitly tagged will get an oversaturated image since it's failing that conversion... but I digress to say I know what I'm talking about ;]

Otherwise, I agree 100% with everything else you said.

 

[mixel]

but I digress to say I know what I'm talking about ;]

Which makes you a good person to ask: Is there any situation where the wider colour gamut could display .NEF files "better?" I use Lightroom and Lightroom Mobile, I'm guessing it serves mobile preview jpgs and displays things in sRGB anyway, so the potentially nicer DCI-P3 gamut is moot?

Just curious as my old 2011 iMac clearly doesn't come close to this level of sRGB coverage let alone the DCI-P3 range.

 

[Uofmtiger]

If something looks visibly appealing and colorful does not mean that it has a better screen quality. For me screen quality is color accuracy. That is the reason why I don't like OLED screens. They are very colorful but always looking "wrong " regarding colors to me......

You should read Displaymate's full review, they go into a lot of different categories.

"The iPad Pro 9.7 breaks many new records in display performance for:

Highest Absolute Color Accuracy for any display for Both Color Gamuts (1.35 JNCD), Lowest Screen Reflectance for any mobile display (1.7 percent), Highest Peak Brightness in a full size Tablet for any Picture Level (511 nits), Highest Contrast Rating in High Ambient light (301), and Smallest Color variation with Viewing Angle (all under 2.0 JNCD)."

 

[Krevnik]

Maybe in 2008, but all major browsers support accurate color reproduction matching their profiles. I have not had a case in which that hasn't happened in over five years.

Fair. I don't actually know a ton here from the web side, and looks like I misspoke based on what I've heard second hand. Thanks for the correction.

 

[Mascots]

Fair. I don't actually know a ton here from the web side, and looks like I misspoke based on what I've heard second hand. Thanks for the correction.

Nah, just the elitist web dog fight action.

...and the fact that I so many stupid lost hours to Chrome. Apparently Facebook has a big issue with it.

 

[jamesrick80]

You should read Displaymate's full review, they go into a lot of different categories.

"The iPad Pro 9.7 breaks many new records in display performance for:

Highest Absolute Color Accuracy for any display for Both Color Gamuts (1.35 JNCD), Lowest Screen Reflectance for any mobile display (1.7 percent), Highest Peak Brightness in a full size Tablet for any Picture Level (511 nits), Highest Contrast Rating in High Ambient light (301), and Smallest Color variation with Viewing Angle (all under 2.0 JNCD)."

All of this and nothing to improve the actual screen resolution and ppi....apple still has cheapened out on actually giving a true screen upgrade no matter what displaymate has stated. The ipad's screen has been 264 ppi for years and has the same dismal resolution. The exact reason why some ipad air 2 owners don't see much of a difference except better colors.....

At this point colors are fine on most high end tablets and reflectance is fine as well for the most part. OLED screens can go even brighter especially samsungs who hit 855 nits with their S7. A real screen upgrade would be similar to something like the Google pixel Cs screen with its crazy high ppi and resolution.

 

[Krevnik]

At this point colors are fine on most high end tablets and reflectance is fine as well for the most part. OLED screens can go even brighter especially samsungs who hit 855 nits with their S7. A real screen upgrade would be similar to something like the Google pixel Cs screen with its crazy high ppi and resolution.

While I agree higher PPI would be nice, if Apple follows their existing process, we'd be looking at what it takes to make the iPad 9.7" a 3x device (instead of the 2x it currently is) so that on screen elements remain the same size as they do currently. To do that, we are looking at a 396 PPI device, and the resulting hardware to power it. That's about 2.2x the current number of pixels. So I'd want a device with the following changes to maintain current functionality:

1) 4GB RAM minimum (or get rid of split view).
2) A GPU with double the performance (or take a perf hit).
3) A CPU with double the performance (or take a perf hit).

At some point you will reach some sort of breaking point where it will make sense, but I'm not really sure that is today. And even if this all happens in Sept, a question certainly could be: do I want to spend this extra headroom on a higher PPI screen, or something else? This last year, the headroom was spent on split view. I'm actually glad for that. Also, Apple tends to aim for as much being pegged at 60fps as possible. I don't really fault them for that, either. Especially since they tend to get flak when it doesn't. (And I'm thinking of the 10.0 / 10.1 days which were really bad)

 

[Uofmtiger]

While I agree higher PPI would be nice, if Apple follows their existing process, we'd be looking at what it takes to make the iPad 9.7" a 3x device (instead of the 2x it currently is) so that on screen elements remain the same size as they do currently. To do that, we are looking at a 396 PPI device, and the resulting hardware to power it. That's about 2.2x the current number of pixels. So I'd want a device with the following changes to maintain current functionality:

1) 4GB RAM minimum (or get rid of split view).
2) A GPU with double the performance (or take a perf hit).
3) A CPU with double the performance (or take a perf hit).

At some point you will reach some sort of breaking point where it will make sense, but I'm not really sure that is today. And even if this all happens in Sept, a question certainly could be: do I want to spend this extra headroom on a higher PPI screen, or something else? This last year, the headroom was spent on split view. I'm actually glad for that. Also, Apple tends to aim for as much being pegged at 60fps as possible. I don't really fault them for that, either. Especially since they tend to get flak when it doesn't. (And I'm thinking of the 10.0 / 10.1 days which were really bad)

Doesn't battery power have something to do with it, too? I think they start by saying they have to get at least 10 hours of battery from it before they do anything. If doubling the pixels requires more battery, then that could be holding them back. As they have stated, Retina is based on the typical viewing distance and not being able to see the pixels at that distance if you have 20/20 vision. As you said, they may just prioritize other features, in addition to battery, over having a better-than-"retina" resolution.

The DisplayMate review said it had "Very good" resolution, but they measured a lot of other features at "Excellent", so I do believe that they think the display would be even better if it had a higher pixel count since some people have 20/10 vision and they consider the resolution to be ideal if covers the full focal range rather than the average focal range (Note: I am pretty sure they address this in one of their links).

 

[AVBeatMan]

Here's my thoughts on this - I also have both the devices.
https://medium.com/@meluhan/living-with-2-pros-ipad-pro-9-7-ipad-pro-12-9-3b94587c4980#.xung4a3n0

Main reason I switched from 12.9 to 9.7 Pro was the portability factor. That and it being too heavy to hold in bed. I also thought it was a bit too close to my rMBP 15".

Nice article by the way.

 

[Krevnik]

Doesn't battery power have something to do with it, too? I think they start by saying they have to get at least 10 hours of battery from it before they do anything. If doubling the pixels requires more battery, then that could be holding them back.

Yes, but I'm much less certain on the details of how PPI relates to power consumption. You are right, I just don't know if the power consumption is double, 50% more, 25% more, etc. I have a vague idea on the factors involved, but nothing to make any educated guesses about, so I didn't want to focus on it.

 

[Aluminum213]

And better is subjective. I have to drive pickup trucks for work and I hate them. Certainly wouldn't want one for my personal vehicle. Now Lexus GS vs Toyota Corolla, yeah that's a money thing.

Mind, while the $220 off sale on the bigger iPad is more recent, you can actually get it for $949 or just $70 more than the Pro 9.7" 128GB LTE while the Pro was on pre-order so certainly not a make or break decision.

I'm nowhere near the "money is no object" camp but I'm fortunate enough that getting both 9.7" and 12.9" models won't cause any hardship. For now, I still prefer the 9.7" form factor. When software has improved and most apps are actually optimized for 12.9", I'll reconsider.

You're seriously getting both pro sizes? Not even Apple would agree

 

[Night Spring]

You're seriously getting both pro sizes? Not even Apple would agree

When iPad mini first came out, and someone asked Tim Cook which size to get, didn't he suggest to get both? I'm sure he'd be happy if we all bought all three iPad sizes.