How happy are you with your new 9.7" iPad Pro?

[Loveandterror]

Not at all at the moment, but that is due to a dead-on-arrival device (128GB Wifi silver)
Colored lines vertically accross the screen, right at the welcome-screen. I did not activate and use it whatsoever, just called AppleCare and already send the faulty one back.

I guess just bad luck.... So back into the waitingline

tut mir leid das zu hören, ich warte auch noch.

after reading everyones comments, i'm getting a bit worried about dust and dead pixels or the above mentioned vertical lines. i don't want to wait even longer once it actually gets here..

 

[rdavis41]

I'm coming from a 12.9 iPad Pro which I returned due to the fact that to me the 12.9 was too big and not a portable device. I kept saying to myself that if I needed that power and given the real estate it would take up why not just get a MacBook Pro Retina (which I'm now looking at)?

Suffice it to say the 9.7" hits the sweet spot for my needs. I teach at a local university and am beginning work towards a Ph.D. So having this portability and power is convenient. I do notice a lag from the 9.7". I shutter to think what the speed tests would have shown if this iPad Pro was given the 4 GB RAM as it's bigger version. I am VERY impressed with the TrueTone feature, it helps the strain on my eyes and someone makes for a better viewing experience on the screen.

It's really all a matter of personal needs I think. It will be interesting to see how Apple better distinguishes the 9.7 vs the 12.9 and their uses over time.

 

[macmee]

So I changed my mind!

Just been on the phone to Apple & let them know that only one iPad will be returned.

I'm keeping one iPad, Silicone Case & Smart Cover.

Being hasty and making decisions too swiftly has always been my biggest downfall.

However, I think I have good reasons: Was burnt with the whole iPad 3 drama. I also received 2 of the larger iPad Pros with dead pixels.

But I think I'm going to really like this iPad.

As a bonus, I received £80 off of the Silicone Case & Smart Cover because of the dead pixels on the larger iPad Pros. Therefore, they only cost me £14!

Anyway, just thought I'd let you all know ...

Yeah I still have apple trust issues over them screwing us on the ipad 3 too. Mostly around the 2gb ram.

If they release a 4gb ipad 9.7 at the end of summer I'm going to lose my mind.

 

[JohnnyGo]

So I changed my mind!

Just been on the phone to Apple & let them know that only one iPad will be returned.

I'm keeping one iPad, Silicone Case & Smart Cover.

Being hasty and making decisions too swiftly has always been my biggest downfall.

However, I think I have good reasons: Was burnt with the whole iPad 3 drama. I also received 2 of the larger iPad Pros with dead pixels.

...

Thanks for clarifying.

Your idea of the thread and the poll gave me a sense you were planning to listen to the feedback of others before deciding. But I can respect that you made your own mind earlier

 

[JohnnyGo]

Yeah I still have apple trust issues over them screwing us on the ipad 3 too. Mostly around the 2gb ram.

If they release a 4gb ipad 9.7 at the end of summer I'm going to lose my mind.

I got burnt by Apple on the iPad 3 as well. At the time I really wanted the Retina display.

My response: I skipped iPad 4 and after buying the iPad Air also skipped the Air 2.

Will keep iPad Pro for at least 3 years. My iPad Air will go to my better half that still loves her/mine iPad 3.

 

[JohnnyGo]

I've had this issue also (stock charger). It also happens with a 40W Anker charger. Going to give it another couple of days and charges to see if it settles in. If not, this iPad Pro is getting returned.

Sorta pointless to have a device that can't be used as advertised even while plugged in. That's not really my idea of an iPad.... I'd go with a Wacom Cintiq if it's gotta be tethered to a desk.

Sometimes the issue is a bad or subpar lightning cable. Different lightning cables I have (I like very short and very long cables depending on desktop/travel use) have very different actual charging (I use the app battery health for that). I also have various 2.4A chargers that have different charge rates but the main difference is cables after various iterations

 

[TheLondonFella]

Thanks for clarifying.

Your idea of the thread and the poll gave me a sense you were planning to listen to the feedback of others before deciding. But I can respect that you made your own mind earlier

I'm loving this thing, Johnny.

Been watching TV in the corner of the screen (ToView app) while surfing the web!

Ha ... lush .

 

[JohnnyGo]

I'm loving this thing, Johnny.

Been watching TV in the corner of the screen (ToView app) while surfing the web!

Ha ... lush .

iOS 9 PIP for iPads is so cool that Google is jealous: so far no YouTube PIP functionality... Google is such a big baby

 

[TheLondonFella]

iOS 9 PIP for iPads is so cool that Google is jealous: so far no YouTube PIP functionality... Google is such a big baby

The official YouTube app is horrible.

Download Tubex ... it's the best YouTube client.

Not only does PIP work with it, but it also has on-screen volume controls!

I hate having to reach for the volume buttons when viewing video ...

 

[darwin022]

Sometimes the issue is a bad or subpar lightning cable. Different lightning cables I have (I like very short and very long cables depending on desktop/travel use) have very different actual charging (I use the app battery health for that). I also have various 2.4A chargers that have different charge rates but the main difference is cables after various iterations

Yes it is, I agree. Been using the Anker Powerline cables (10' and 1' ) for a few months and they do seem to work well enough (still trying to find the specs.). First aftermarket lightning cables I've tried~ got tired of the Apple OEM ones dying.

As a bit of an update (and hopefully around what I've been expecting)... After the second or third restore/set up as new... Was able to use the iPad Pro for about 4+ hours of Exploding Kittens while plugged in (anker charger and 10' cable). It went from a ~30% charge to 100% charge and stayed there (LOL that that's impressive).

Anyway, going to unplug it soon and start using it, see what happens. Hoping that things settle in quickly and favorably.

To be honest, 9 hours, 10 hours, 10 hours 15 minutes.. I'm not going to be a stickler for those numbers, they'll vary by individual user and day. The main annoyances werethe "discharges while plugged in and using as advertised" combined with Apple providing an inadequate charger with the device.

 

[StPatty33]

So after inspecting mine a bit more, I do have a bit of an issue that will probably result in an exchange. I made sure there were no dead pixels, and no discoloration on the screen anywhere... but I found what looks like a delamination on the black outer rim of the screen. It kind of looks like a greasy mark that won't go away. It might not bother me using it, but it would definitely hurt resale of the device, and GD it, if I'm paying $700-some dollars for something brand new, it may as well look and feel brand new the day I get it. Time to set an appointment.

 

[mporcheron]

I just got to unbox mine and turn it on for the first time. After setup, I went to Settings to update the iPad. Not a problem with it, proceed with updating to 9.3.1.

Long story short, the iPad stopped booting and requires a restore in recovery mode, which is currently ongoing. Essentially, it would freeze on the Apple logo. In summary, the most stable OS, with what is apparently the best tablet, has been an appalling experience thus far.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Yeah the box is out.

The pencil is fun… But not fun enough to justify the price over my Air 2 that's perfectly great.

I might go back to this model when the sales start happening at some point.

 

[tekchic]

Super happy with mine. It replaces my original Air, which I still carried everywhere with me. I also have the 12.9", but now that can become my home drawing/sketching/painting, Astropad/DuetDisplay device and I still have a fully-capable, more portable drawing device for travel and daily carry.

I'll still use the big Pro at home for studying textbooks, reading magazines, and playing some fun games (Oceanhorn looks AMAZING on it, and Crashlands is a blast w/the big screen), but I can also do all the same on the new 9.7" as well as a smaller form factor. The 9.7" is much more comfortable when reading a novel on the couch or on a treadmill during a long, boring run.

 

[spiderman0616]

Very first thing I did with mine was put on Mad Max: Fury Road. I can't believe a tablet can make a movie look and sound that good.

 

[kazmac]

So I changed my mind!

Just been on the phone to Apple & let them know that only one iPad will be returned.

I'm keeping one iPad, Silicone Case & Smart Cover.

Being hasty and making decisions too swiftly has always been my biggest downfall.

However, I think I have good reasons: Was burnt with the whole iPad 3 drama. I also received 2 of the larger iPad Pros with dead pixels.

But I think I'm going to really like this iPad.

As a bonus, I received £80 off of the Silicone Case & Smart Cover because of the dead pixels on the larger iPad Pros. Therefore, they only cost me £14!

Anyway, just thought I'd let you all know ...

Glad you found your perfect iPad. Enjoy it.
[doublepost=1459535820][/doublepost]

Very first thing I did with mine was put on Mad Max: Fury Road. I can't believe a tablet can make a movie look and sound that good.

Great to hear. Starts thinking how beautiful Vengeance! will look and promptly swats self.

 

[spiderman0616]

I got burnt by Apple on the iPad 3 as well. At the time I really wanted the Retina display.

My response: I skipped iPad 4 and after buying the iPad Air also skipped the Air 2.

Will keep iPad Pro for at least 3 years. My iPad Air will go to my better half that still loves her/mine iPad 3.

I'm thinking they upgrade the 12.9 this fall to match the screen tech of the 9.7, and then leave both alone until fall 2017.

 

[yegon]

Very happy.

Was going to restore from backup but for some reason it kept freezing right at the end. Setup as new in the end. This, combined with bunging about 200gb of stuff on there, meant I barely actually used it on Thursday!

Used it lots today, love the new speakers for podcast listening and now using it on a long break at work with the Smart Keyboard. Wouldn't want to write huge essays on it, but for the size and weight the Smart Keyboard is great. Really needs tonnes more shortcuts though, can't believe even the stock video player hasn't got any shortcuts whatsoever, not even play/pause.

Hope volume and brightness shortcut keys come along eventually too. Given the absence of function keys, seems a no brainier surely? Then again, I'm sure the 12.9" users were saying the same 6 months ago :-(

 

[bigdog5142]

I'm coming from the iPad Air 2. The Pro is snappier, for sure. Love that. Love the screen tech (True Tone). Love being able to FINALLY take hand-written notes on the iPad! Nice to have 128GB of storage. Overall I'm happy with the upgrade. Sold my Air 2 64GB for $400...so the upgrade wasn't as tough to swallow. I'd say on a 1-10 scale, I'm a 7.5-8. I'm not jumping for joy, but it's a nice upgrade.

 

[The Chosen One]

Seeing everyone here being happy after upgrading from air 1 and 2 and I'll be upgrading from my ipad 4 from 2012. ;p(ofc there are even older ones but still)

I'm looking forward to the 4 speakers the most even. Left ear is gonna be happy now aswell.
And the camera is most usefull aswell since I won't see the need to upgrade my Samsung ATIV just yet. Going to ESL Frankfurt and maybe even to TI6 in Seatle so having a good camera/4k will be nice.

 

[iregret]

I'm still testing mine out. I bought it for one reason alone, note taking in college. Prior to this one I had bought an iPad 2, then upgraded to an iPad 3 a.k.a."the new iPad", after that I went with a MacBook air. Between my iPhone and my MacBook air I didn't really miss the iPad 3, so it's been several years since I've really used one daily. Since then I went with a 15 inch MacBook Pro for school. Turns out, I don't really like carrying it to school every day. I'm a computer science major, so I really need it and Windows for learning Java, Linux and what not.

I looked at the 12.9 inch iPad Pro and it's just way too big for me. I think the thing looks ridiculous. When I read that they made a normal size iPad that you could use the pencil on I decided to go ahead and take the plunge.

I got notability when it was a free app of the week but never really used it. Today was the first day I've actually used iPad, notability, and the Apple Pencil. It's amazing.

Seriously. Let me repeat that, it's amazing. I would happily pay $10 for the app.

I know it's a lot of money just to take notes but I figured by the time I'm done with my degree it'll actually end up saving money by using digital versions of textbooks instead of actual textbooks. I know the 12.9 inch iPad Pro users will defend the screen real estate for side-by-side stuff and what not but so far side-by-side seems to work OK for me on my smaller screen.

Taking notes on it's an absolute pleasure. After several years of school it'll end up being very convenient to have digital copies of my notes all backed up to dropbox and all that.

The 9.7 inch iPad Pro is the perfect size, for me. To each their own. I've used it in 2 separate classes for taking notes today, that's around three total hours of notetaking and then watched some videos on YouTube, researched some cases on Amazon, and general web browsing on top of what I'm doing right now. It's currently 2:30 or so the afternoon so that means I'm at around six hour mark and down to 84% on battery.

I know everyone is throwing fits over the 2 GB of RAM instead of the 4 GB of RAM, but I genuinely wonder how important it is. I'm curious if the extra 2 GB that the 12.9 inch iPad Pro has is there to help with rendering the extra pixels it has? I'm looking forward to seeing some actual data to see how much the ram impacts things.

The thing does get warmer than I thought it would, but nothing alarming. I love how light and portable it is, and with the exception of my computer science classes, I imagine that I won't have to bring my laptop to school. I'm in my third or fourth term in college now and my computer science classes are at a point where it's mostly lecture anyway. Most of my coding gets done when I get home, so often times I probably won't even bring my laptop to school.

That, and this entire post I dictated on my iPad Pro. The dictation has gotten much better throughout the years. This is nothing new, I use dictation on my iPhone all the time. One thing though, the dictation always writes iPad Bro instead of iPad Pro. LOL

I'm still little bit torn if I'm going to get a keyboard for it or not. I'm not looking to replace my laptop in any way, so I think just using the virtual keyboard is probably good enough.

 

[cesko]

Old: 16 GB iPad 2 + cell New: 32 GB iPad Pro 9.7 + cell, space grey

First thing, the weight. iPad 2 was a tank compared to the new iPad. Wickedly fast, even a smidge faster compared to my mom's Air 2.
-4 speaker sound is rich and oddlly, my ears still getting used to the new right hand side sound

-SIM: I chose to forego the offered Rogers' SIM (Canada) and stick with the embedded Apple SIM. This has me super happy as since I won't be using cellular often, the Apple SIM affords me pay-as-I go service from either GigSky or AlwaysOn. The "big 3" in Canada, Rogers, Bell, and Telus no longer offer the 30-day pass as with the iPad 2 only their 5$/month Flex plan; use it or not I'd have paid 70$ yearly. With the Apple SIM servicee I pay for what I need.

-Screen: am still on the fence about True Tone but the display is super crisp and sharp.

 

[kazmac]

@iregret - you obviously didn't regret this purchase. Seriously, thank you for posting your real world university usage of the 9.7 iPad Pro. Glad it is working out for you. As a new student, I am very curious if an iPad would finally work in my course flow.

 

[bevsb2]

I'm still testing mine out. I bought it for one reason alone, note taking in college. Prior to this one I had bought an iPad 2, then upgraded to an iPad 3 a.k.a."the new iPad", after that I went with a MacBook air. Between my iPhone and my MacBook air I didn't really miss the iPad 3, so it's been several years since I've really used one daily. Since then I went with a 15 inch MacBook Pro for school. Turns out, I don't really like carrying it to school every day. I'm a computer science major, so I really need it and Windows for learning Java, Linux and what not.

I looked at the 12.9 inch iPad Pro and it's just way too big for me. I think the thing looks ridiculous. When I read that they made a normal size iPad that you could use the pencil on I decided to go ahead and take the plunge.

I got notability when it was a free app of the week but never really used it. Today was the first day I've actually used iPad, notability, and the Apple Pencil. It's amazing.

Seriously. Let me repeat that, it's amazing. I would happily pay $10 for the app.

I know it's a lot of money just to take notes but I figured by the time I'm done with my degree it'll actually end up saving money by using digital versions of textbooks instead of actual textbooks. I know the 12.9 inch iPad Pro users will defend the screen real estate for side-by-side stuff and what not but so far side-by-side seems to work OK for me on my smaller screen.

Taking notes on it's an absolute pleasure. After several years of school it'll end up being very convenient to have digital copies of my notes all backed up to dropbox and all that.

The 9.7 inch iPad Pro is the perfect size, for me. To each their own. I've used it in 2 separate classes for taking notes today, that's around three total hours of notetaking and then watched some videos on YouTube, researched some cases on Amazon, and general web browsing on top of what I'm doing right now. It's currently 2:30 or so the afternoon so that means I'm at around six hour mark and down to 84% on battery.

I know everyone is throwing fits over the 2 GB of RAM instead of the 4 GB of RAM, but I genuinely wonder how important it is. I'm curious if the extra 2 GB that the 12.9 inch iPad Pro has is there to help with rendering the extra pixels it has? I'm looking forward to seeing some actual data to see how much the ram impacts things.

The thing does get warmer than I thought it would, but nothing alarming. I love how light and portable it is, and with the exception of my computer science classes, I imagine that I won't have to bring my laptop to school. I'm in my third or fourth term in college now and my computer science classes are at a point where it's mostly lecture anyway. Most of my coding gets done when I get home, so often times I probably won't even bring my laptop to school.

That, and this entire post I dictated on my iPad Pro. The dictation has gotten much better throughout the years. This is nothing new, I use dictation on my iPhone all the time. One thing though, the dictation always writes iPad Bro instead of iPad Pro. LOL

I'm still little bit torn if I'm going to get a keyboard for it or not. I'm not looking to replace my laptop in any way, so I think just using the virtual keyboard is probably good enough.

Thank you for this information. I just purchased Notability and it is exactly what I was looking for since getting my iPad pro 9.7 yesterday.

 

[dannyyankou]

I gave it a 9. It's definitely more comfortable to use than the 12.9 inch, despite only playing with it for 5 minutes at an Apple Store.

Also, the smaller Smart Keyboard is a lot better than I was expecting it to be. The keys are well spaced out and it only took me a few minutes to get used to it without making any errors. In fact, I typed this entire post on my Smart Keyboard faster than I would on a touchscreen display.