iPad Pro New 12.9: shadows, weight, use case? — mixed impressions…

[robertfrancis70]

Now into hour 2 with the new 12.9… Several conflicting impressions already…

First 3 minutes:

- Oh my goodness, what are those shadows around the entire edge of the screen? I must have got a lemon… Will have to return it tomorrow…

- Oh, wow, it’s actually not noticeably heavier than the 4th gen 12.9 I had (but sold a few months ago in anticipation of this one), despite all the reviews… Nor can I feel much of a difference in thickness…

Hour later (after reading here about shadow effect apparently being standard on all the XDR 12.9’s)

- if you’re not looking for it; it’s not there. It’s certainly noticeable if you look to the edges of the screen — you see it immediately. But when just using the iPad without thinking about it, it disappears.

-I may be imagining it, but the screen does seem nicer — in normal, non-XDR use of the iPad. There’s a softness and an evenness to the white backgrounds on webpages and in apps like iA Writer that is similar to that on the OLED iPhone screens. (Dark mode is amazingly good.)

-sound is terrific.

-works perfectly with the Magic Keyboard (which I kept from the 4th gen)…

Ambivalence: 3 random thoughts

-do I still really need a 12.9?

-should I be settling with the shadow issue, or is it a deal breaker? Will it bother me later on? Should I just return this?

-The iPad is great; I’ll forget about the shadow issue. It’s everything I was expecting: a nice big screen, faster processor, great typing experience. It’s worth keeping.

Leaning towards keeping it. Will sleep on it.

 

[el-John-o]

I’m happy with mine. It’s what I thought it would be; a really great iPad with a really great screen.

I’m not too bothered about the software limitations right now. The iPad has been a screamer for years now; and it’s only now that we have a 1:1 comparison that it seems more apparent but; the iPad has been on the heels of Macs, or even beating them, for a while now. So that’s not new.

However, if software STILL, even now, doesn’t catch up with the performance; I probably will grow more frustrated. Mostly because I have a now 5 year old MacBook Pro that, in a few years, will need to be replaced. I’ll be frustrated if I have to; if even then, we STILL don’t have software that genuinely allows an iPad to be a desktop replacement.

The shadows are ‘meh’ to me, but yeah, it’s weird.

The screen is the killer feature for me. It’s just gorgeous. I was also surprised by how ridiculously snappy it is. My old iPad wasn’t slow; which is why I never really considered that this one would ‘feel’ faster. But it does! Like, a LOT!

 

[LFC2020]

- Oh, wow, it’s actually not noticeably heavier than the 4th gen 12.9 I had (but sold a few months ago in anticipation of this one), despite all the reviews… Nor can I feel much of a difference in thickness…

Agree

I may be imagining it, but the screen does seem nicer — in normal, non-XDR use of the iPad. There’s a softness and an evenness to the white backgrounds on webpages and in apps like iA Writer that is similar to that on the OLED iPhone screens. (Dark mode is amazingly good.)

Agree

-sound is terrific.

Agree

The screen is the killer feature for me. It’s just gorgeous. I was also surprised by how ridiculously snappy it is. My old iPad wasn’t slow; which is why I never really considered that this one would ‘feel’ faster. But it does! Like, a LOT!

Agree

 

[LFC2020]

Honestly after hearing about the shadows on the edges, looked at them once and they haven’t crossed my vision again, they‘re that thin they’re barely noticeable, not like anyone is going to sit there the whole time staring at the edges of their screen lol, total non issue.

 

[AutomaticApple]

- Oh my goodness, what are those shadows around the entire edge of the screen? I must have got a lemon… Will have to return it tomorrow…

It's an issue that everybody is having.

 

[MrGimper]

It's an issue that everybody is having.

Once I discovered it’s a design constraint rather than a fault, I forgot about it. It’s so uniform around the screen it doesn’t bother me now.