 Actually, move it up. Looks better if you move it up. Hey everybody, I'm Dieter. I'm working from home just like everybody else. This is the iPad Pro review. In the background is my TV, and in the next shot you're gonna see this, which is a pretty cool wallpaper, which we'll have on theverge.com slash wallpapers. But it moves because Apple thinks that you want Ken Burns effect on its screensaver, and that's annoying. Other than that though, great video. Check out the shots from Brennan King. This is the all new, just announced iPad Pro that Apple put out last week. I've got the 12.9 inch version of it right here. And you know, the iPad Pros have been around for a few years now, and we kind of know what to think about them at this point. We've had every possible argument you could possibly have about whether or not they're real computers, or if they could be your main computer, or if they could be really used for productivity, or whatever. I think that they're computers, no matter what Apple says in their new marketing copy. And I think they're really good computers that sometimes work in weird ways, because Apple imposes some limitations on them that bug me sometimes. I'm just gonna say right at the top that you can take all the usual iPad Pro stuff for granted. The screen is amazing. Face ID is great. Battery life is a full day, although now that I'm using it full time to work from home, I can manage to kill the battery by like three, or four, or five o'clock, I really push it. There are lots of really good iPad apps. The USB-C port is still here, and it does most of the USB-C port stuff that you'd want. It's an iPad Pro. What you probably really wanna know is how this iPad Pro compares to 2018's model. And there are a few new things here, but remember, I just don't think that you're gonna take advantage of most of the new stuff that's built into this thing, which is the story with every iPad Pro. So let me just list the new things so that you've got them in your head. There's three of them. Well, three and a half. The first is this new camera module here. It's got an ultra-wide lens and LiDAR. There's a new processor inside that Apple calls the A12Z Bionic. It has studio quality microphones, and the third and half thing is the trackpad support. And I only count it as half because trackpad support is coming to basically every iPad, not just this iPad Pro. Which means at this point, you're probably wondering, hey, why do you have the dumb smart keyboard here and not the new fancy magic keyboard cover that the trackpad and the flippy hinge that Apple announced? Well, that's not shipping until May, and so we don't have one to review yet. Sorry. Okay, so let's actually get into the stuff. What should we do first? Well, let's talk about the chip. It's the A12Z Bionic, where in 2018 it was the A12X. Why is it called a Z? Well, I guess Z is higher than X. I don't know what's gonna happen. They've run out of letters. Anyway, the big change with the Z version of this processor has a more powerful graphics processor. And you know what? Kinda whatever. The thing is really fast. I never felt a slowdown, but I also never really felt a slowdown on my old iPad Pro. I guess now there's just more headroom in the GPU for graphics chops and maybe augmented reality. Look, I benchmark it anyway so that if you wanna argue about numbers, you can do that. This 12.9 inch 2020 version of the iPad Pro got a 9981 GPU on Geekbench, whereas 2018 got a 9138. But if you really wanna argue at GPU specs, you can have way more fun doing that with the Xbox Series X and the PS5 right now. What does 800 more on a GPU score actually mean to you? Probably not that much. Look, it's fast. Now potentially a bigger deal is this new camera system here. The standard wide angle lens is 12 megapixels with a 1.8 aperture. And the ultra wide, it's only 10 megapixels with F2.4 and 125 degree field of view, but I love ultra wide cameras. I think they're super fun. So I'm actually kind of glad that they added this one here. I'm on team that it's okay to take pictures with your tablet. I just am. It's okay for people to do it. It's also okay to use your tablet to make movies, but I just think these cameras might be a little bit overkill for the iPad. I'm very impressed that you can shoot 4K video at 24, 30 or 60 FPS, but I'm gonna be perfectly honest with you. If Apple sold a version of this iPad with kind of a dumpy camera on the back and just no big square camera module, it was just flush, I would probably buy that version, especially if it costs a bit less. Now on the iPad, I care way more about the selfie camera because I use it for video conferencing. This camera takes seven megapixel photos and it also can record video at 1080P. And I think this camera looks great, but I'm kind of annoyed that it's on the side here instead of on the top when you're in landscape mode. So when you're doing a video conference, it never looks like you're looking at the camera. You're always looking off to the side. And I'm also a little bit annoyed by the limitations on iPadOS by the way. iPadOS doesn't let video conferencing apps have the camera on when that app is at the front most app, which means that if I'm not just staring at Zoom and I switch away to some other app, my camera turns off, which makes the iPad Pro basically the perfect machine for telling your coworkers that you're not paying attention to them. Anyway, the biggest new thing on this iPad is this LIDAR sensor right here on the back. Now, LIDAR is like radar, but with lasers. And anytime there's lasers involved, tech companies can't seem to help themselves in their marketing copy. So Apple says that LIDAR operates at the photon level and at nanosecond speeds. Yes, that's how lasers work. They use photons and they move at the speed of light. Now, the reason that Apple put LIDAR in this iPad is for augmented reality apps. And I need to disclose here that my wife works for Oculus, which makes virtual reality, which is kind of like augmented reality, but it's different. And anyway, none of that changes my opinion on this LIDAR, which is that it works really well, but that there aren't really any apps that take significant advantage of it right now. The main benefit of LIDAR, at least right now, is that it can detect objects in the room almost instantly instead of having to wave your iPad around like a goon so that it can detect all the right surfaces. It also means that it can have a much, much more granular sense of objects and their position and size in space. And all of that helps with something called occlusion, which is when there's a real physical thing between your iPad and the virtual thing that you've put out in the world. Now, older iPads and iPhones can do occlusion with people, but with a LIDAR on this iPad, you can hide parts of virtual objects behind any old object. So on this drummer boy here, you can hide half of it behind a table or behind this bowl or even my cat. Honestly, this LIDAR feels like this iPad Pro hardware is built for a software future that just isn't here yet. Sure, I like putting a virtual IKEA chair in the corner as much as the next person, but I don't know, AR just doesn't seem to be as much of a thing as Apple really wants it to be right now. Unless you're putting a funny filter on your face because everybody loves that, but you don't need LIDAR to do that. Okay, let's talk about the trackpad thing. I think Apple kinda nailed it. It actually feels totally natural and there are a couple of weird things like sliding your finger to the edge to bring up the dock or slide over apps or whatever, but for the most part, it really works, it really feels natural and I really kinda love it. If you have a trackpad and an iPad, you should totally give it a shot. If you want a trackpad case, well, there aren't any available today that I could really recommend. Apple's is coming in May and it's gonna cost $300 to $350. Bridge is also making one that's more like a traditional clamshell. It's gonna cost a little bit less. That should be out in April and I'm sure that more are coming soon because it is really that compelling. I have a lot to say about trackpad support in the iPad and honestly, I have enough to say that I should probably just make another video about it, so stay tuned for that. For this review, it doesn't really affect anything because every iPad that supports iOS 13.4 and up is gonna get trackpad support, so it just doesn't affect your purchasing decision because all the iPads will have it. As for software more generally, iPadOS is what it is and I think we've all talked it to death over the past year. I still think it's a little bit hard to learn how all the advanced stuff works and I still think that power users have to use too many hacky workarounds to get certain things done. My opinion is still that I enjoy using the iPad more than any other computer, but sometimes it just doesn't do what I need it to. Also, there's still some bugs. Sometimes my smart keyboard here just decides that it hates an app and it won't type text into it until I close the app and open it again. This OS is way less buggy than it was when it first launched last year, but it's still not perfect. So, that's the iPad Pro and what do I think? Well, I think the LiDAR AR stuff is really good, but it also feels like something Apple did because it could, not because anybody was actually asking for it. Overall, the thing is really fast and I think for some people, it could replace their laptop. For other people, it couldn't. And for yet other people, this is just the nicest iPad that you can buy and some people just really want a really nice iPad. But I think for most people, this iPad is probably overkill and they would be perfectly happy with a standard iPad or an iPad Air. And at this point, I think you know which one of those people you are. And as nice as this iPad is, I don't think it's gonna change your mind. Hey, thank you so much for watching and for bearing with us on any weirdness that happens because we're trying to figure out how to shoot review videos. We can't even be in the same room together. But most of all, please stay safe.