Apple's redesigned iPad is mostly worth the higher price

In 2017, Apple released a $329 iPad, and ever since the company has said that this basic tablet is its most popular. It’s easy to see why: When I reviewed last year’s model last fall, I found that this relatively modest device could do almost everything I normally do with my pricier 11-inch iPad Pro. That said, in a world where Apple has gotten rid of the home button and trimmed the bezels on all of its tablets, the basic iPad was starting to feel stale.

So this year, for its tenth generation, Apple rebuilt the iPad, taking obvious inspiration from the iPad Air. It has the same size screen, cameras, USB-C port, optional 5G networking and Touch ID-enabled power button, all of which are improvements over last year’s model. It also has an A14 chip, which doesn’t stack up to the M1 in the iPad Air and M2 in the new iPad Pro, but it’s still a capable piece of silicon. Apple even designed a new keyboard and trackpad folio, the first iPad keyboard that the company made with a function key row.

Of course, Apple had to cut some corners to differentiate this iPad from the Air. The usual compromises are here — namely, the screen isn’t quite as good as the one on the Air, with no full lamination on the front glass, anti-reflective coating or support for the wider P3 color gamut. It also still only supports the first-generation Apple Pencil, which is a pretty major bummer for anyone looking for an improved stylus experience.

iPad (2022) - back view
Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

And all the changes Apple made means the iPad is no longer the tremendous value it was — it now costs $449, while last year’s 9th-generation iPad stays in the lineup at its original $329 price. I’ll be giving the new iPad a full review soon, but in the meantime, here are my first impressions after spending a few days with it.

While the new iPad is ever so slightly larger and thicker than the Air, my first feeling picking it up was one of complete familiarity. It feels almost exactly like the Air, but it’s obviously a completely different experience than using last year’s model with the old Home button. While the 10.9-inch display isn’t significantly bigger than the old 10.2-inch screen, it’s just big enough to make multitasking more comfortable. I miss things like the iPad Pro’s fully laminated display and 120Hz ProMotion refresh rate, but I notice the “air gap” between the screen and front glass less on this iPad than any of the older basic models. While the iPad Air technically has a better screen than this tablet, the difference between the two models has been significantly reduced.

Between the bigger screen and the new trackpad-equipped Magic Keyboard Folio, I feel a lot more productive on the new iPad than I did on last year’s model. The trackpad may be small, but when you’re using the iPad with a keyboard, it’s a lot more convenient to use than reaching up to tap the screen every time you want to move a cursor or switch apps. And the row of function keys that Apple included on the Smart Keyboard Folio is something that should have been included on every other iPad keyboard the company has made, so I can’t give them too much credit for finally getting things right here.

iPad (2022) and folio with kickstand
Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

That said, it’s still handy to have an escape key and a handful of other useful shortcuts right there when you need them. Between that and the trackpad, you can get away without not having to touch the screen for longer stretches than ever before (that might lead you to ask why you’re using an iPad in the first place, but I’ll save those philosophical questions for my full review). Meanwhile, the typing experience is significantly better than the one the old Smart Keyboard cover offered, and the keys feel quite similar to the Magic Keyboard for the iPad Pro and Air. I’m much more likely to use this iPad for long typing sessions than I was with last year’s model. As with most things Apple, though, this comes at a price — this new keyboard costs a whopping $249.

I’ve been using an M1-powered, 12.9-inch iPad Pro for much of the last four months as a testing device for iPadOS 16, so I had some concerns about the A14 chip on the new iPad. I shouldn’t have worried; while occasional things like swiping up to see all my open apps felt a little less smooth than I’d like, overall the new iPad is holding up extremely well so far. I can swipe through my library of RAW photos in Lightroom with no slowdowns, the games I’ve tried so far (including Skate City, Spire Blast and Mini Motorways) have all run perfectly and apps load quickly when I swap between them or pull up a few different ones at a time in Split View and Slide Over modes.

The only real catch I’ve noticed with the A14 compared to more powerful chips like the M1 is that apps often have to reload their content, probably because there’s less RAM here. For example, if I navigated away from the file I’m writing this in, I’d usually have to re-open it when I went back to Google Docs; it didn’t keep the file loaded in memory.

Before I can fully evaluate this new iPad, I need to push the A14 further with more intensive tasks; try out the new cameras (including the landscape-oriented front-facing camera!); dig more into the new features in iPadOS 16; and relive my frustration with the first-generation Apple Pencil. But at first glance, I’m slightly bummed about the price hike, but I recognize that these updates are a major improvement to the iPad experience. My thoughts so far are that spending the extra $120 to get this iPad instead of last year’s model is worth it, and that most people will even prefer it to the $600 iPad Air.

The new iPad Pro is ludicrously fast (just like last year's model)

Evaluating the new iPad Pro is a simpler task than the basic iPad that Apple announced alongside it last week. That iPad has been completely redesigned. But the 2022 iPad Pro is a minor iteration of the model released in early 2021, which was powered by the M1 chip. Now, with M2 Macs out in the wild, Apple decided its best tablet needed one, too.

That new chip is by far the most notable change here. Otherwise, the design, screen, cameras, storage options, accessories and price are all the same. That’s not a big problem, though, because the iPad Pro was already an outstanding device — and the Liquid Retina XDR display Apple introduced on last year’s 12.9-inch model is still a simply outstanding screen. There are a couple new tricks here, like the Apple Pencil “hover” feature and the ability to shoot video in Apple’s ProRes codec, but by and large this iPad Pro isn’t angled at people who bought that M1 model. Instead, it’s just a case of Apple flexing its muscles by making the most powerful, spare-no-expense tablet that it can.

In the short time that I’ve been testing the latest 12.9-inch iPad Pro, I can say that it’s far more responsive than my personal 11-inch iPad Pro from 2020 as well as the new iPad I’ve also been testing. Those other devices aren’t slow by any stretch of the imagination, but the M2-powered iPad Pro responds to everything almost instantaneously. Of course, the same can be said about the M1 iPad Pro, especially given my modest workflow.

Apple iPad Pro (2022) with Magic Keyboard
Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

In a demo last week, Apple showed how the new iPad Pro can chew through apps like the forthcoming DaVinci Resolve and Octane X. The former is an intense video application that combines things like professional-level color correction, color grading, visual effects and much more, while Octane X is meant for 3D rendering. Both apps are pretty far outside things I’d use, but in the demo it was pretty easy to see how responsive the new iPad Pro was scrubbing through and editing frames from an 8K video or applying different effects.

One thing I can tell is that the new Stage Manager multitasking feature in iPadOS 16 is working much better on this new iPad Pro than it did in my testing on last year’s model using various beta releases over the last four months or so. Again, my needs are modest, but I never had any app crashes or moments where the interface just shut down and threw me back to the Home Screen. In a sign of Apple’s confidence, Stage Manager was even enabled out of the box, whereas it was turned off by default when iPadOS 16 was in beta.

Conceptually, I’m still struggling a bit with how Stage Manager decides what apps (or groups of apps) show up on the left-side switcher, and I feel like the experience of using it on any iPad smaller than the 12.9-inch Pro is not going to be much better than just using two apps in Split View, but it does seem a lot more stable now. I don’t know if that’s thanks to software optimizations, the more powerful hardware or some mix of both, but it’s a welcome change.

If you’re an Apple Pencil aficionado, the M2 enables a pretty cool new feature called Hover. As the name suggests, the iPad Pro can detect when the Pencil is within 12mm of the screen, and elements will start to react. For example, if you hold the Pencil over the apps in your dock or on the homescreen, the one that the Pencil is over will zoom in slightly to show you what you’re targeting. It’s similar to what happens when you use the trackpad to move the pointer over apps. It’s not the most essential trick, but it’s a good example of what Hover can do. But this is just a trick that doesn’t really change the iPad experience; developers will need to build Hover functions into their apps for it to be really useful.

Apple iPad Pro (2022)
Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

That said, I was able to see a few potential use cases for it. In the Notes app, there’s a new watercolor brush, and when you hover the Pencil over the screen you’ll get a little preview of the color you’ve selected. And when you select a new color, you can hover the Pencil over your existing sketch to see how the watercolor interacts with it before actually drawing. In a demo of the illustration and animation app Procreate, hovering the Pencil over a project brings the animation to life or shows a 3D view of your creation. It’s one of those features that is clever but doesn’t have an essential use case yet, but I’m definitely curious to see how developers implement it.

Otherwise, most of what we said about the iPad Pro in 2021 still applies here. Performance is outstanding, the screen is one of the nicest that we’ve seen on any device, the Pencil and Magic Keyboard are great but expensive add-ons, but iPadOS 16 still feels like it occasionally holds back the hardware here. Over the next few days, I’m going to do more detailed performance testing to see how the M2 compares to the M1, though we already have a good idea of how that’ll play out thanks to how M2-powered Macs stack up to older models. Even after a few days, I’m pretty sure that people who own the M1 iPad Pro don’t need to worry about upgrading. If you really push your iPad Pro to the limit, and it’s a few years old, these new models should offer a pretty significant upgrade.

YouTube adds pinch-to-zoom on mobile as part of its latest redesign

YouTube is getting a fresh look and some extra features. For one thing, you’ll be able to pinch to zoom into a video on the iOS and Android apps. When you remove your fingers, the video will stay zoomed in. That seems like a handy option for everyone who’s about to pore over Taylor Swift’s new videos to look for Easter eggs. YouTube started testing the pinch-to-zoom feature with Premium users in August, and now it will be available to everyone.

Another feature should help you get to the right part of a video more easily. On desktop and mobile, you’ll be able to drag your cursor up or swipe up while scrubbing through a video to view a row of thumbnails (a bit like you might see on Netflix). As YouTube suggests, this should help you avoid rewinding too far back while you’re watching a tutorial and want to rewatch a step.

YouTube ambient mode
YouTube

On the visual front, there’s a new ambient mode that tweaks the background color of the app to match the video. YouTube UX director Nate Koechley describes this in a blog post as a subtle effect that takes advantage of dynamic color sampling, with the aim of drawing users’ eyes into videos and placing more focus on the content. 

Ambient mode will also be available on video playlists. You’ll see ambient mode on web and mobile watch pages when you have the dark theme enabled. On that note, dark mode will soon look even darker on the web, mobile and smart TVs.

YouTube ambient mode for playlists
YouTube

Elsewhere, YouTube links in video descriptions will now be displayed as buttons. The service has reworked common actions such as like, share and download to “minimize distractions” too. Moreover, the subscribe button will have a new look — it will be a pill-shaped button instead of a rectangular one. Although the button will no longer be red, YouTube suggests the high-contrast redesign will help it stand out more on watch pages and channel pages.

YouTube is starting to roll out these changes today. They should be live for everyone within the next few weeks.

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