The Apple iPad Pro Review
by Ryan Smith, Joshua Ho & Brandon Chester on January 22, 2016 8:10 AM ESTSystem Performance
While the iPad Pro is important for some of its tertiary features, without the performance to back it up the user experience will inevitably suffer. In order to try and get an idea for how the iPad Pro performs as a whole we turn to our suite of performance benchmarks that stress a number of different areas including the CPU, GPU, memory, and internal storage.
In the browser benchmarks, it's quite evident that the iPad Pro is far and away superior for browser performance compared to almost anything else on the market today, save the latest Surface Pros. This can be attributed to a few factors. One factor is that Safari has a number of optimizations that most Android browsers don't. The other factor is that the Twister CPU in A9X is just better suited for dealing with intense JavaScript, which is heavily reliant on single-thread performance. As the A9X only has two CPU cores that mostly rely on ILP to get acceptable levels of performance, the iPad Pro ends up doing impressively well in these benchmarks. I've found that this is also reflected in real world browsing performance, as the iPad Pro is less likely to choke on some popular JS-heavy tech websites than other devices with Chrome or an OEM-optimized browser. Quickly checking EmberJS performance tells pretty much the same story here as well.
In Basemark OS II 2.0, the iPad Pro pretty handily sets the record for performance by virtue of its GPU and CPU performance. For whatever reason there's some sort of hang-up in web browsing performance, which could be due to some sort of code path that doesn't respond very well to additional ILP. Whatever the case, performance isn't too far behind the iPad Air 2 here by virtue of higher IPC and clock speeds. Overall, the iPad Pro seems to be quite performant for everyday tasks.
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zodiacfml - Saturday, January 23, 2016 - link
Anandtech needs more people. Where is that video which records the latency of the Apple pencil or SP4? Aren't musicians and sound engineers be interested in the tablet for simple creation of music which I meant, audio should be tested? If testing methodology of Wi-Fi has problems, wouldn't it be nice to test if one could play or edit a high bit rate video saved from a high performance NAS? The device is a small niche but Anandtech could put some more analysis just for the entertainment/education value of it.JoshHo - Saturday, January 23, 2016 - link
Regarding stylus latency, the videos would be quite boring as it's nothing more than a straight line with the stylus. I've simply taken those videos and done multiple trials and averaged times to determine the approximate latency of the stylus system.We would like to properly test speaker and 3.5mm output. We're working on these things but it looks like 3.5mm output testing is quite difficult.
We are also working on WiFi testing. This one will prove to be quite interesting as well.
zodiacfml - Saturday, January 23, 2016 - link
Thanks. I just thought the device deserves more analysis and work based on the amount of interest and comments here. I have one more critique on camera testing. Why is it not possible to have a static object or studio for camera testing since Anandtech constantly review mobile devices which will make the tests faster to produce and output to be easily comparable between devices?name99 - Sunday, January 24, 2016 - link
One more issue. When you test storage throughput, do you use traditional file IO or memory mapped files? Apple has ALREADY indicated a strong preference that developers use memory mapped files, and as we move to a world on NVM living more or less directly on the memory bus, memory mapped IO will become SUBSTANTIALLY more performant than traditional file IO.It seems to me incumbent that your testing become prepared for this new world today (maybe by running tests both ways and reporting both speeds, or the higher speed); otherwise at some point soon (and it may be as soon as two or three years) Apple or Samsung or MS are going to ship the first consumer device using NVM, and your storage performance tests are just going to look dumb because you're not simply not accessing the storage properly.
dontlistentome - Saturday, January 23, 2016 - link
5 hours to charge? If you started a working day on this with a flat battery and worked on it for 8 hours, would the battery even have charged by the end of the day?digiguy - Saturday, January 23, 2016 - link
As an ipad pro owner (128GB wifi), I'll give my opinion after owning it for around 2 months and reading this review (plus many others before this one, none as detailed, the best so far had been that of notebookcheck) and 166 comments. I also own a Surface pro 3, a Surface 2, a galaxy note 8, an ipad air and ipad mini 2, plus a few convertibles and a few laptops (no Macs however, Windows only). As expected, in the comments there was the traditional battle full OS vs mobile OS. Microsoft has proven how hard is to make a full OS easy to use on a tablet (some people here don't seem to understand what a titanic effort would be making OSX and its app good for tablets). Of course MS itself cannot control most apps and impose a touch friendly version. They tried the route of a mobile OS with RT but unfortunately it failed. It has to be said that Metro itself had some serious shortcomings, like the lack of a decent touch optimized file manager, onscreen keyboard issues etc. It's not easy to transform a desktop OS into a touch optimized OS and I understand why Apple has not and certainly will never try to make OSX for tablets. Same for Google, they tried to make chrome for touch with pixel c, but gave up and used android. Having said that, let's come to why I bought the ipad pro (especially while owning an SP3). First of all, screen size, I wanted something bigger to display documents in true A4 size, and the additional inch plus the better 4:3 ratio achieve that. The alternative would have been the surface book, but it's too expensive for just this (and has too compromises to replace my asus ultrabook, let alone my desktop replacement). Second reason was IOS music apps. IOS is the only mobile platform that can be used to a decent extent professionally by musicians. And this is great for sound libraries that can be used for example directly on the music rest of a piano/keyboard while connected to it via midi. Or to replace a mixer etc, where touch is essential. You can do this on Windows tablets, but software is not well optimized for touch and you often need anti-piracy dongles etc. so that a single USB port is not enough. None of that is necessary on IOS. Ipad pro sound, the best for any tablet, makes it useful without having to plug an external speaker in some circumstances (ex hotel room for working on music creation). Also an Ipad pro can act as a secondary monitor with duet display. And at it's size it can become useful, contrary to other ipads. So to sum up, screen size (and quality), high quality touch apps (for use cases in which touch is very important) without need for antipiracy dongles (widespread for music software) and sound. And this without mentioning the pencil (I am not an artist and only need to annotate PDFs, and for that I use my SP3, so haven't bought the pencil yet or the keyboard for that matter). Now, the shotcomings of ipad pro: Lack of a kickstand (with variable angles), lack of a pencil holder. Both can be solved by spending another 80$ for a urban armor gear case, with which the ipad pro is still lighter than SP3 with type cover. Lack of a file manager. This can be solved (to a decent extend) by buying a software called imazing. That's another 40$ but gives you a proper file manager and the possibility to copy file and folders from a pc to ipad. Other than that, some apps allow to sync you dropbox folders to ipad. Lack of storage expansion. Again spend the money for the 128GB version. As for SP3, screen is reflective, but, as for SP3, a matt screen protector works great and make the screen even more beautiful (no fingerprints, colors look even better without reflections). IOS not optimized enough for 12.9 inches, yet. No solution yet, we can only wait for IOS 10. So, with money you can fix many of the shortcomings, but is the over 1000$ necessary for that, justified? I would say probably not yet. But by buying the ipad pro I made a sort of bet on Apple to optimize IOS for better multitasking etc. and on IOS developers to continue making pro apps (especially for music, in my case), while already taking advantage of what it already offers. And the sheer power of this machine, so far not completely used, should make it a future-proof device, much more than other ipads (ready for IOS 10, 11, etc and for new powerful apps). What about Surface pro 3? Well to be honest, other than for annotating, I use it mainly as a very portable laptop on the go (only bring the 14 inches ultrabook when out for several days) with a nice, but not absolutely necessary, touch screen and nice pen input for taking handwritten notes. So mainly as a very convenient laptop rather than a tablet (as probably most Surface pro owners do too). As a tablet for the bed or for checking emails etc. on the go, my android phone or one of my 8 inch tablets are the most convenient devices....Klug4Pres - Saturday, January 23, 2016 - link
One of the better walls of text I have read, thank you.digiguy - Saturday, January 23, 2016 - link
thanks! well, I myself was impressed by how long it was... I only realized after I posted it.... ;-)id4andrei - Saturday, January 23, 2016 - link
Damn man, insert some spaces between ideas. Segmentation.digiguy - Saturday, January 23, 2016 - link
Yeah, right, sorry, the writing box is so small that I didn't think about layout. Next time I'll write in Word first and then copy...