Hardware

It's a big iPad. There you have it, folks, that's my review. Dana out!

I kid, of course, but I also don't know where else to begin. Because the Apple Pencil and any keyboard you choose to use will be sold separately, all you'll find inside the box will be a Lightning cable, a power brick and this oversized tablet. The build quality and design are the same as any other recent iPad, with a unibody aluminum enclosure available in the usual colors: Silver, Gold and Space Gray. Assuming you were holding the device in landscape mode, you'll find the headphone jack and power button on the left, the volume rocker and LTE SIM slot (if there is one) on the top. So far, so familiar.

It's on the bottom that things start to get interesting. There you'll find Apple's three-pronged Smart Connector, which you'll use to connect the iPad to whatever keyboard you end up choosing. (Apple has licensed the design to third-party accessory makers, starting with Logitech.) Unlike some other 2-in-1s I've seen, the connector here is virtually flush with the tablet's edge, so it's unlikely to snag on anything else you have in your bag. It makes a satisfying click when you drop it into your keyboard and because the magnetic connection is so strong, you won't have to work hard to line up the male and female connectors. The connection is so strong, in fact, that the iPad Pro passes the requisite (and ridiculous) "dangle the tablet by its keyboard cover and see if it falls" test. In case you were wondering.

Finishing up our tour, the tablet has a Touch ID fingerprint reader on the lower bezel -- the same sensor used on last year's iPad Air 2 and the new mini 4. That's a blessing, because without it, having to enter a PIN every time the screen timed out would be a real pain. In addition, there are two cameras: a basic 1.2-megapixel shooter on the front for video chatting, and an 8-megapixel one on the back. That rear camera is equipped with some decent specs, including an f/2.4 lens and the ability to shoot both 1080p and slow-motion video (the latter at up to 120 frames per second). Though I doubt anyone wants to be that guy using a nearly 13-inch tablet to take photos at a football game, I'm willing to believe that the mobile professionals Apple is targeting -- real estate agents, medical types -- might get some use out of the built-in shooter here. In a way, though, that's moot: I don't think Apple could have gotten away with selling a $799 tablet that had no cameras.

To get the most out of the iPad Pro, you'll want to also pick up the Apple Pencil, an optional keyboard or maybe both. Still, you might sometimes want to use the iPad Pro as, you know, just a very big tablet, and in those situations, the device is at once surprisingly light and yet heavier than you're used to. At 1.57 pounds (1.59 on the LTE model), it's on par with Microsoft's 13.5-inch Surface Book in tablet-only mode, though to be fair, the Surface manages to stuff inside a heavier-duty notebook-grade processor. Either way, I think we can agree that a pound and a half is pretty darn light for a 13-inch tablet. That said, 1.5 pounds is just heavy enough that I wouldn't want to hold the Pro aloft for long, even if it's 6.9mm-thick (0.27-inch) casing otherwise makes it easy to handle. Fortunately, I mostly kept my test unit either docked in a keyboard or resting on my legs -- no arm strength necessary.

Display and sound

In addition to being the biggest tablet iPad to date, the Pro also has the distinction of having the second-sharpest screen of any computer Apple has ever made. The 12.9-inch, 2,732 x 2,048 screen has 5.6 million pixels, which translates to a pixel density of 264 ppi. The only Apple product with a sharper screen is the 5K iMac. Speaking of the iMac, Apple borrowed the same Oxide TFT (thin-film transistor) technology it introduced on its flagship all-in-one last year, which keeps the brightness even throughout the panel. In addition, a variable refresh rate means the iPad Pro knows when the content on your screen is static, allowing it to cut refreshes in half and therefore conserve battery life.

Well, that all sounds fancy, doesn't it? Yeah, it's pretty nice. I confess, my eyes aren't discerning enough to notice a significant improvement in quality over the iPad Air 2, but that's not necessarily a bad thing: Apple has already shown, across all of its devices, that it knows how to produce a top-notch display.

What I can say is that I've come to appreciate the extra screen real estate. It comes in handy for everything from email to Twitter to web surfing to watching videos. Even in Slack — something you don't think of as a creative app, per se — I appreciated not having to scroll as much through messages. And because the screen is about as wide as two Air 2s, you can run two apps side by side in Split View mode and still have plenty of room for each. As it is, my daily driver is a 13-inch laptop, but after spending a few days with the iPad Pro, I feel that much more reluctant to work on a 9.7-inch screen. The thing is, I'm not sure that extra screen real estate is worth $799 to me, at least for the basics, especially if a smaller device would be easier to carry around.

If the screen quality feels like a subtle upgrade, the audio represents a noticeable improvement over previous iPads. Examine the Pro closely and you'll see four speaker grilles on the device -- one at each corner. Indeed, this is the first time Apple has included this many speakers on one of its tablets. According to the company, the speaker housings have been CNC-machined directly into the enclosure, with 61 percent more chamber space compared to previous iPads. The end result, Apple says, is a wider frequency and up to three times more output than Apple's other tablets. Lastly, the speakers recognize when you're holding the tablet in portrait or landscape, and will adjust the soundscape accordingly. Also, because each speaker grille is near a corner, you're unlikely to obscure them with your fingers.

After reading that spec sheet, then, I knew to expect some robust sound. And yet, when I first booted up the Pro, I was taken aback by how loud the audio was. It's fairly boomy too. In fact, all four speakers produce bass notes, though depending on how you're holding it, only the two at the top will play mids and highs. All told, I enjoyed listening to music on it more than I have other tablets, or even some laptops. Too bad Spotify won't work on the iPad Pro, and that you have to pay for Apple Music -- I would have streamed much more music otherwise.

Keyboards

As I began working on this review, I was using Apple's own Smart Keyboard to put my thoughts on paper (so to speak). I was struggling without a trackpad, making a lot of typos and struggling to find room for my hands on the packed keyboard deck. Boy, was I grouchy.

The iPad Pro keyboard has so far succeeded in putting me in a bad mood while I write this review (on the iPad). — Dana Wollman (@DanaWollman) November 14, 2015

Fortunately, after a day of use, I started to get the hang of it. It's not a replacement for a proper laptop keyboard, or even the best keyboard you can get for the iPad Pro, but it's at least not as bad as I initially concluded. Before I get ahead of myself, though, let me clarify how Apple's keyboard is, and isn't, like other tablet docks we've seen. At first glance, it looks like the Surface's keyboard: a thin (4mm-thick) cover that attaches to the bottom of the tablet via a magnetic connection. Unlike the Surface, though, it's covered in an unbroken sheet of water- and stain-resistant laser-cut fabric. There are no holes in it, not even where the buttons are. Instead, the fabric wraps around each keycap so that it's acting not just as a covering, but it's actually part of the key mechanism itself.

It's actually quite different from, say, the new MacBook's keyboard, except that the stainless steel key domes happen to be the same. Lastly, aside from being spill-resistant, the benefit to this design is that it's designed to be durable: Apple put a conductive material under the fabric that's meant to be folded thousands of times over.

It's an ingenious idea in theory, but in practice, it doesn't make for a great typing experience. For starters, Apple's Smart Keyboard only allows you to place the tablet in one position, meaning you can't adjust the angle of the screen. Additionally, though the buttons' short travel makes them relatively quiet, there's a tradeoff: The keys don't bounce back the way you'd expect. The result is that sometimes when you think you're striking a button, your key press doesn't actually register. In particular, I often had to hit the spacebar twice, after seeing I had strung two words together when they were supposed to be separate.

What's more, since iOS doesn't support mouse input, neither Apple's keyboard nor any of the other available options has a touchpad. Now it's true, iOS wasn't designed to be used with a pointer and indeed, I don't think I'd enjoy dragging a cursor across the screen to click on homescreen shortcuts when I can just use my finger. But for apps like Pages, which I used to draft this review, I would have loved a trackpad for highlighting text; it would have been more precise than using my finger, and more efficient than using the arrow keys. As Apple tells it, the shortcuts bar at the bottom of the screen in iOS 9 will help save people time, but in my experience, it wasn't a substitute for a touchpad.

On the plus side, though I still make typos, I've started to build up a rhythm so that I can type faster with not quite as many mistakes. And though I wish I had a choice of different screen angles, the Smart Keyboard is at least comfortable to balance in my lap; the underside of the cover feels soft against my bare legs, and the case is sturdy enough that the setup isn't too top-heavy.

All told, it seems that Apple's priority was to create a keyboard case that was thin and easy to set up -- no Bluetooth pairing required. That's important, to be sure, but perhaps next time the company will make strides in the actual typing experience. And I believe it will. It took Microsoft several tries to build a Surface keyboard that could replace a notebook's; perhaps in a few years Apple will have accomplished the same.

Logitech Create keyboard

Ah, this is better. The Logitech Create ($150) is the first third-party keyboard for the iPad Pro, and while it suffers from some of the same faults as Apple's keyboard -- no trackpad, a non-adjustable screen -- it's far and away more comfortable to type on. The buttons are as cushy and springy as what you'd find on a proper notebook, with a sturdy underlying panel and backlighting, to boot. There was no learning curve here: As soon as I snapped the iPad into the hard case, I was immediately able to begin typing at a fast clip, with few typos. What's more, the keyboard rests comfortably in the lap, and feels even more stable than Apple's version.