Do not buy the 10.5 iPad Pro. And if you ever have an issue with an Apple product, deal with it ASAP. If you can’t get to a store, call or chat. Get on the record. It didn’t help me, but it might help you. Don’t procrastinate like I did.
tldr
I paid full price for 256GB Wi-Fi version on July 15, 2017, and had the spot show up almost exactly 1 year
later. Fortunately I was able to get mine swapped for free, once, on July 11, 2018 due to this issue.
But then it happened again to the replacement, 9 months later, So I made a Genius Bar appointment for March 24, 2019. For a million reasons I won’t mention, I couldn’t get to an Apple Store, so I kept rescheduling that appointment. Kept rescheduling it weekly, for months. I figured if I could at least show I had problems so soon after getting it replaced, they’d swap it when I eventually could get in to a store. My thinking was that this was obviously a defective product suffering from repeat issues, and in the exact same location on the display right? They stand behind products for years if there are clear defects. I was wrong.
Long story short, I couldnt get to a store, and then time happened, and then the pandemic happened. And now it’s June 30, 2020. i just came from an Apple store where I was having my iPhone battery replaced. When I made that appt, I took a shot and made an appointment for my iPad also. While my iPhone battery was being swapped, I showed them the iPad & explained myself. I showed them the original work authorization & the kid talked to a manager. He basically said I had waited too long. That there was no was to classify it in their system that would justify swapping it. Only option was to pay display repair price. No. Way.
My fault for not taking it back immediately. But this sucks. I have iPad 2s, & iPad 4s laying around with no display issues. Even an original iPad. They’re slow and were handled more harshly than this 10.5, but the displays on all my old devices are fine. The most expensive iPad I‘ve ever bought is defective and I have no recourse now. It’s a gorgeous display and I’m so bummed because it’s impossible to unsee.
For the record… The genius said something about trying to adjust the display settings and I told him that I tried everything, but if he had something I hadn’t thought of it please try it. His advice was to “just use dark mode“. That kind of made me angry. He was very professional and very nice and I was happy with my battery appointment, and it’s years later, but when he told me his manager suggested I just use dark mode, it flustered me so I picked up my iPhone and came home to write this.
The iPad Pro (10.5 inch), sold in 2017 and numbered model A1701, will very likely fail you.
