Pros
Rear flash and much improved camerasSuper-fast processorOption lớn use táo bị cắn Pencil and Smart KeyboardThin và beautifulPink colour optionCons
High price (even higher than at launch)Smaller Smart Keyboard isn’t easy lớn type on accuratelyCamera lens sticks out at rearOur Verdict
You can now use the táo apple Pencil và the Smart Keyboard with your mid-size iPad, instantly making the máy tính bảng ipad Pro 9.7 an appealing device for work on the go, and particularly for creative kiến thiết work and note-taking; and quad speakers make it a superior option for films & TV, and make for better và more immersive gaming and (obviously) music playback.The price is high và at first glance slightly annoyingly so: given that the ipad Pro 9.7 is externally almost identical to lớn the máy tính bảng ipad Air 2, táo khuyết may have a hard sell convincing the average user to part with £849 for the top-end Pro 9.7, when the most expensive Air 2 cost £659 at launch, albeit with half the storage. (Deep-pocketed business users – and Apple is pushing this tablet into the laptop-replacement sphere – will presumably find the pricing less of an issue.) Still, we think you get more than enough khổng lồ justify the roughly £60 premium over the equivalent launch-day máy tính bảng ipad Air 2.This is a considerably faster device than its predecessor – very nearly as quick in a lot of tests, indeed, as the ipad Pro 12.9, despite having half the RAM. As ever, we must point out that this won’t make a huge difference just yet in your day-to-day usage, even nine months after launch, but offers far more future-proofing and the ability to run the most demanding apps & games for years to lớn come. & the presence of the mega-powerful Pro devices at the đứng top of Apple’s range gives tiện ích developers licence và encouragement lớn push their wares in more ambitious directions.And other than the RAM & the oversized screen, the Pro 9.7 gets every single nâng cấp offered by the 12.9, & quite a few that it doesn’t. The Pro 9.7 gets a True Tone colour-adjusting screen, heavily improved front- and rear-facing cameras (including 4K đoạn phim recording, Live Photos và the Retina Flash) & the option for a pink colour finish. & unlike with the older Pro, buyers of the Pro 9.7 get the full range of storage options (including, for the first time on an hãng apple mobile device, 256GB) from launch.The added improvements in the last paragraph will be galling for those who previously bought the Pro 12.9, who have every right to feel stitched up; they imagined themselves khổng lồ be buying what would remain the top-end máy tính bảng ipad for a good 12 months & had to watch an even better (but cheaper) mã sản phẩm come out, along with new options for the 12.9 that they didn’t have access to, a scant six months later. Then again, instant obsolescence is par for the course as a tech buyer – and there will probably be another máy tính bảng ipad Pro update in March 2017. Và writing as I am for prospective buyers of the Pro 9.7, those upgrades are great news.The smaller Smart Keyboard isn’t a totally convincing replacement for a full-size layout, and for mobile business users this is still a compromise in terms of screen space and range of available apps (even if the latter issue will dwindle & die as time passes). But overall we find this a strong & appealing mid-size tablet that advances the argument that while laptops might still be the best tool for working on the go, they’re no longer essential.
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Welcome to lớn 4566.vn’s máy tính bảng ipad Pro 9.7in review for UK ipad buyers. Táo bị cắn dở has launched new ipad models since this came out; read our máy tính bảng ipad Pro 10.5in (2017) đánh giá for more details, or ipad Pro 10.5in (2017) vs ipad tablet Pro 9.7in (2016). If you’d prefer a larger-screen iPad, read our ipad Pro 12.9in (2017) review; for a cheaper alternative, consider the ipad 2017.
Apple announced a new mid-size ipad tablet at its ‘Let us loop you in’ March năm 2016 press event, as expected, but what we didn’t expect was for this to lớn be an ipad Pro. Rather than calling this the máy tính bảng ipad Air 3, táo is presenting it as a shrunk-down version of the 12.9in ipad Pro – and thereby attempting to position the new 9.7-inch máy tính bảng ipad Pro as a work device suitable for replacing a laptop, & targeted particularly at designers and illustrators on the go.
But does it succeed? In our máy tính bảng ipad Pro 9.7in review, updated after ninemonths of regular use, we evaluate the latest iPad’s design and build quality, weigh up the pros and cons of its new features, put the device through the 4566.vn labs’ most rigorous tốc độ benchmark and battery tests, & compare the value for moneythe ipad tablet Pro 9.7inoffers compared to the other iPads, và the other tablets on the market.
OuriPad Pro 9.7in review is aimed at the average tablet buyer, including thiết bị di động gamers, entertainment consumers and business users. If you’re adigital artistor illustrator, however, take a look at the đánh giá by our colleagues at Digital Arts.
Read next: Best máy tính bảng ipad buying guide 2016/2017| Best cheap iPad đơn hàng UK |iOS 10 tips| Buy ipad tablet Pro
Accessories: Crucially for its credibility as a máy vi tính replacement, the Pro 9.7 has launched alongside a new keyboard case, a 9.7in version of the Smart Keyboard, and lượt thích the Pro 12.9 it features a port on its lefthand edge for connecting to và powering this accessory. It’s about as good as an ultraportable keyboard of its size could be, but nowhere near as accurate khổng lồ type on as a conventional keyboard (and some way behind the larger 12.9 version of the Smart Keyboard, too). It does a job, but you’ll need lớn rely on either a solid autocorrect (like the one in Pages), frequent manual corrections, or just lots of practice.
You can also now use the táo bị cắn dở Pencil stylus, which is pretty wonderful, but expensive.Read more about the ipad Pro 9.7in’s accessories
UK pricing: The Pro 9.7in starts at £549 in the UK, with prices rising to lớn £849 for the 256GB cellular model. (Those prices have actually gone up since launch, due seemingly to lớn currency fluctuations and Brexit stuff – see táo price rises UK for more info. The Pro’s base price has gone up by £50: itstarted at £499 onlaunch day.) You’re paying a premium, then, và many táo bị cắn dở fans will baulk at the asking price. But we think there are enough enhancements here lớn justify it, and business users – if they can live with the smaller and harder-to-use keyboard attachment – will get a lot out of this device. It’s still a cool £180 cheaper than the Pro 12.9, remember, và that device doesn’t get the True Tone display or most of the camera upgrades. Read more about the ipad Pro 9.7in’s UK pricing
That’s the summary of our máy tính bảng ipad Pro 9.7 review, but let’s look again at each of those areas in more detail – before finally giving our definitive verdict.
Spot the difference: máy tính bảng ipad Pro 9.7in (left) & iPad Air 2 (right)
Yet some minor and a couple of significant differences can be discerned by the eagle-eyed.
Minor: the cellular antenna section at the top of the back of the (cellular-capable) ipad tablet is now mostly the same metallic finish as the rest of the back, with just its edge picked out in white or đen plastic, và therefore looks nicer than the entirely plastic section on the máy tính bảng ipad Air 2 (and on the cellular 12.9in Pro, for that matter); the word ‘iPad’ on the back is now picked out in the thinner and to our eye better-looking San Francisco font; the SIM card slot has migrated fractionally higher up on the side of the device; and there’s a pink (sorry, Rose Gold) colour option.
The protuberant camera lens is quite annoying: if you lay the ipad tablet flat on its back, particularly on a hard surface, then one corner is raised up awkwardly, & it scratches against the desk if you push it around. If you equip your máy tính bảng ipad with a case or cover, however, this will be far less of a problem: we habitually use the Smart Cover, which means the máy tính bảng ipad almost always has the cover tucked underneath when it lies on a table.
For those who don’t know the ipad tablet range in general, it’s worth stating for the record that the ipad tablet Pro 9.7in, lượt thích all of its stablemates, is beautifully designed and engineered.
There are many lovely touches, from the charming contrast between the brushed-metal sides and the narrow gloss chamfer (which we think looks particularly nice in the new pink finish) lớn the subtle rounding on the back edges, toned down from the original ipad tablet but still present all these years later, which makes the máy tính bảng ipad easier & more inviting lớn pick up. But táo bị cắn has been turning out such delights for many years, so we had better move on and look at the new features.
Read next:iPad Pro vs Samsung Galaxy Book
iPad Pro 9.7in review: Screen
The Pro 9.7in comes, as the name makes clear, with a 9.7-inch touchscreen Retina-class display: one that matches in size, resolution and (mostly) functionality the screen on its predecessor.
The most intriguingdifference between the screens on this iPad và the Air 2 is a new feature called True Tone. (A feature so new that it is denied to lớn those who buy the 12.9in Pro.) This is designed to lớn subtly adjust the screen’s colour đầu ra to tài khoản for environmental light conditions.
Having only recently got used khổng lồ the shocking colour adjustment imposed by Night Shift on mặc định settings (we’d strongly recommend toning it down), we struggled lớn notice True Tone’s far more subtle changes at first. But sitting at a desk under electric light in late afternoon with the ipad Pro 9.7 and the máy tính bảng ipad Air 2, it’s fairly clear that True Tone is gently warming things up – a kind of watered-down version of Night Shift. This should carry on doing its thing in the background throughout your day, and the nice thing is that you don’t need khổng lồ worry about it, just getting a slightly better & more context-appropriate screen performance.
Again, we turn to the expertise ofDr Soneira for a technical examination of this feature. He points out first of all that whileTrue Tone automatically changes boththe white Point & colour balance of the display,Night Shift changes colour balance only. But he also sounds an alarm about True Tone’s affect on colour fidelity in some circumstances:
“When we turned on True Tone under incandescent lighting with a Colour Temperature of about 3,000K, the Colour Temperature of the máy tính bảng ipad Pro 9.7 trắng Point shifted from 6,945K to lớn 5,500K, which is quite noticeable and visually significant, but it doesn’t come close to matching the colour of reflected light from trắng paper. The colour change with ambient light may be better for reading text on the screen’s trắng background.
“And most users might not want such a drastic colour change with ambient light anyway, which would affect & significantly reduce the Absolute Colour Accuracy of all image nội dung (including photos and videos), one of the máy tính bảng ipad Pro’s strongest features. My recommendation is that True Tone needs a Slider adjustment so that each person can vary the magnitude of the effect, from very little to lớn a lot.”
There isn’t yet a slider – as there is for Night Shift – but if you don’t lượt thích the effect, you can turn off True Tonecompletely: which is also good for evaluating the effect you’re getting if you haven’t got a non-True Tone ipad tablet to compare it to.
iPad Pro 9.7in review: Processor power, speed benchmarks & graphics testing
The máy tính bảng ipad Pro 9.7 is equipped with Apple’s proprietary A9X processor & M9 motion co-processor – the same components used in the Pro 12.9 và the most powerful điện thoại chipset that táo currently uses. (For comparison, táo bị cắn dở claims that the A9X chip, as used in the Pro 9.7, is 2.5x faster at general processing than the ipad tablet mini 2’s A7, and 5x faster at graphics processing.)
It’s searingly fast, và comfortably powerful enough khổng lồ handle anything on the app Store now & for the next couple of years. Indeed, unless you’re keen to lớn run the most graphically intensive games or demanding creative or work apps, it’s hard not khổng lồ regard this as spec overkill.
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And the front-facing camera is much improved, too, although in fewer ways: the megapixel rating has gone up from 1.2Mp (across the board) to 5Mp, and the Pro 9.7 gains the Retina flash feature – which lights up the screen as an improvised front-facing flash – that we know và love from the iPhone 6s và 6s Plus. It also gains tự động HDR on the front-facing camera, which the Air 2 & mini models don’t get, but unlike the rest of the improvements I’ve listed here the Pro 12.9 does get this one.
iPad Pro 9.7in review: Camera tests
We took the two sizes of máy tính bảng ipad Pro, together with the ipad Air 2, out into the north London sunshine for a series of photo tests. In sunny weather most of our shots were of a broadly similar standard – despite the Pro 9.7 in theory having a substantially more capable sensor.
We couldn’t detect any difference in detail when shooting flowers & plants; if anything the Air 2’s shot seemed khổng lồ handle a heavy zoom into the individual petals better than the Pro 9.7’s, but it could go either way. The 9.7’s colours seemed truer khổng lồ life, but only slightly.
We gave the Retina flash a quick try-out too. A direct comparison wasn’t really possible here, since none of the other iPads have any kind of flash on their front-facing camera, but we took an unflashed shot with the máy tính bảng ipad Air 2 just so you can see what you’d be stuck with if taking a selfie in the dark.
It’s a huge step forward sonically. The ipad Air 2 has always had mediocre audio output, but this is particularly cruelly exposed when playing songs and films at đứng top volume alongside the ipad Pro 9.7, which has a much fuller, richer sound: it fills our small demo centre with clear, warm audio. The Air 2, by contrast, provides essentially no stereo effect whatsoever, since its speakers are so close together, & sounds desperately thin (and lopsided) after listening to the Pro.
Screen space is still a compromise, but in terms of sound the Pro 9.7 now feels lượt thích a legitimate choice for spare-room film nights – no longer vì you need to plug in headphones for the proper experience. It’s also a far more appealing option as a portable music device for the kitchen or picnic table.
The Pro 12.9 is still ahead in this department, however. It’s possible that the speakers themselves are beefier, although táo apple doesn’t release specs for these và may have just used the same audio cài đặt in both models; more likely the slightly better audio simply reflects the larger separation between speaker units.
iPad Pro 9.7in review: Accessories
The ipad tablet Pro 9.7 is equipped lớn run the same types of accessories as its larger cousin. Its screen works with the hãng apple Pencil, & there’s a Smart Connector port on the lefthand edge for attaching a (smaller version of the) Smart Keyboard cover.
We’ve looked at the táo Pencil in more depth elsewhere, but suffice it lớn say that it’s an attractive and well-balanced stylus that makes for extremely smooth, accurate và lag-free drawing, digital ‘painting’ & note-taking. Having this option takes the Pro 9.7 lớn the next màn chơi as an artistic tool – although lượt thích most táo bị cắn kit the Pencil is among the costliest options in its field. It isn’t bundled with the tablet and will cost you a further £99. (Before those Brexit price rises the táo apple Pencil cost £79, by the way. If you’d like to read about Apple’s next version of its stylus, read our táo Pencil 2 rumour roundup.)
The 9.7in Smart Keyboard is a different matter. Its keys still feel a bit cheap, as a result of the shallow, weightless action, but because of their form size (fractionally smaller than the pad at the end of my fingers, whereas the 12.9’s keys are slightly larger, which feels like a significant difference) they’re pretty hard khổng lồ use accurately too: switching from the 12.9’s keyboard, or certainly from a conventional keyboard, is painful. It looks and to an extent feels like a toy.
As with the 12.9, however, practice will be rewarded, và this certainly isn’t a disaster: indeed, for a keyboard of its form size it’s pretty usable. But of the many aspects of the Pro 9.7’s quest to be taken seriously as a work tool, its keyboard is the most glaring weakness.
(An extremely small side complaint: the lower weight of the 9.7in keyboard accessory means it doesn’t sit completely flat on the table – the front often lifts up slightly as the tablet pulls down on the back of the setup. We’ve tried two separate review samples here and both suffered from this – very minor – issue. Yet táo apple assures usthis is not a widespread problem.)
iPad Pro 9.7in review: UK pricing
We rather expected this based on the high price tags attached to lớn the 12.9in Pro, but the 9.7in Pro is a really expensive tablet. (The addition of a new 256GB storage option at the top end exaggerates this effect slightly, however.)
In fact, the price of the ipad tablet Pro 9.7in has gone up since it was launched, as have the prices of a number of táo apple products in the past few months – it seems to be related to lớn the fall in the pound’s value, Brexit and that sort of thing. (For more on this, see: táo khuyết price increases UK.)
Here’s what the 9.7in Pro will mix you back in the UK, as of November2016:
32GB (Wi-Fi): £549128GB (Wi-Fi): £639256GB (Wi-Fi): £72932GB (cellular): £669128GB (cellular): £759256GB (cellular): £849For comparison, here’s what the ipad tablet cost when it launched sevenmonths back:
32GB (Wi-Fi): £499128GB (Wi-Fi): £619256GB (Wi-Fi): £73932GB (cellular): £599128GB (cellular): £719256GB (cellular): £839In other words, the various models of ipad have gone up by anywhere from £10 to lớn £50 – và it wasn’t exactly cheap lớn start with. (If you think that’s steep, wait until you find outthat the three-year-old Mac Pro has gone up by £500.)
You can buy the ipad Pro 9.7in direct from Apple, but if you siêu thị around you ought lớn be able to find the Pro for a little less than this: check our Best cheap máy tính bảng ipad Pro deals page for the latest offers.
If you accept, as hãng apple has encouraged us to accept, that the Pro is an adequate máy vi tính replacement then a đứng đầu end of £849 – & that for a storage allocation that bears comparison with many laptops – doesn’t seem unreasonable. (The 11-inch laptop apple macbook Air with 256GB costs £899.) & of course the 9.7in Pro is a neat £180 cheaper than its 12.9in cousin at each tier.
But we were still a little surprised at first to lớn find that this tablet is more expensive than the máy tính bảng ipad Air 2 was when it launched back in 2014. The 128GB models of the Air 2 cost £559 and £659 at launch; the equivalents for the 9.7in Pro cost £619 và £719 at launch, và have gone up khổng lồ £639 và £759. Táo bị cắn dở has historically priced its new tablets at the same launch price as their predecessor with the same khung factor, which makes it feel like a significantpremium has been slapped on to what is really the máy tính bảng ipad Air 3 by another name.
This scarcely feels lượt thích a bargain khổng lồ the average user, then, although its superior suitability for work tasks means the likely audience may be willing lớn stretch the budget. & as we will discuss in the verdict, there’s more than enough to like here to justify that higher price.
For full comparison, here are the current prices for the ipad Pro 12.9in:
32GB (Wi-Fi): £729128GB (Wi-Fi): £819256GB (Wi-Fi): £909128GB (cellular): £939256GB (cellular): £1,029and for the ipad tablet Air 2:
32GB (Wi-Fi): £379128GB (Wi-Fi): £46932GB (cellular): £499128GB (cellular): £589Finally, here are the prices for the ipad Air 2 when it launched in 2014:
16GB (Wi-Fi): £39964GB (Wi-Fi): £479128GB (Wi-Fi): £55916GB (cellular): £49964GB (cellular): £579128GB (cellular): £659iPad Pro 9.7in review: Colour options
The 9.7in máy tính bảng ipad Pro is available in all the colours offered with the 12.9in Pro, plus the restful, pleasing & genuinely not bling pink of Rose Gold. So that’s silver, gold, Rose Gold and Space Grey.
iPad Pro 9.7in review: Future updates
There’s one final question khổng lồ consider when deciding whether or not to lớn buy the ipad Pro 9.7. Will táo release a new máy tính bảng ipad next week, or next month, thus instantly devaluing your brand-new iPad và making you wish you’d waited?
The truth is that, while táo bị cắn is a fairly predictable company in terms of its product updates, there will always be some risk of this happening when you buy a tech product, unless you buy it the day it comes out (when it’s most difficult to lớn get hold of one, và when some of the initial teething problems may not yet be apparent).It’s best not lớn worry about it too much. Otherwise you’d never buy anything.
Nevertheless, having launched the máy tính bảng ipad Pro 12.9 in October 2015 and the Pro 9.7 in March 2016, và with no updates announced as of November 2016, it doesn’t take a genius khổng lồ predict that the next mix of iPads are likely khổng lồ appear in March 2017. If you’d like to read the latest information, clues, hints & rumours about those launches, take a look at our ipad tablet Pro 2 release date rumours và iPad Air 3 release date rumours. (And ipad tablet mini 5 release date rumours too, if you like.)
4566.vn poll: Will you buy an ipad Pro 9.7in?
We’re almost ready for our verdict on the ipad Pro 9.7, but we’d love to lớn hear your thoughts. Have we convinced you one way or the other? Will you buy an ipad tablet Pro 9.7in? Have you already bought one? If not, what are your reasons?
Have your say in our poll – & remember khổng lồ tell us your thoughts in the comments below.
