I just got hands-on with the new iPad Pro, Apple Pencil Pro and iPad Air
After languishing over a year without an update, the iPad line up has finally been given some serious love today, with Apple unveiling a new iPad Pro, iPad Air and Apple Pencil. We’re here at Apple’s stunning new London HQ in Battersea Arts Centre, which is hosting a global Apple event for the very first time. For all of the announcements, check out our Apple Event live blog.
After the keynote, Creative Bloq had chance to go hands-on with the new products. Let’s face it, you’re mainly here to see photos of them, so we we’ll get straight onto it. Suffice to say, our best iPad for drawing list is about to receive a new entry or two.
iPad Pro
Featuring a new thin and light design, breakthrough Ultra Retina XDR display, and outrageously fast M4 performance with powerful AI capabilities, the new iPad Pro is, surprise, surprise, the fastest iPad ever.
It’s rare to hear Apple reference a decades-old product, but during today’s event the company declared the new iPad Pro its thinnest product ever – even thinner than the iPod Nano. And it certainly feels it – in the hand, the new iPad Pro is incredibly thin and light. And as you might expect, the new OLED display really pops. Apple called this the iPad its always wanted to make, and it’s hard to fault that vision.
Apple Pencil Pro
Apple Pencil Pro features a new sensor in the barrel can sense a user’s squeeze, bringing up a tool palette to quickly switch tools, line weights, and colours. On the outside, this looks and feels a lot like the Apple Pencil 2. But in practice, Barrel Roll is super impressive – as is the case with Apple’s best innovations, ‘it just works’ – and it’s easy to see how this is going to open up new possibilities for digital artists.
iPad Air
The new iPad Air features the M2 chip, a landscape front camera and, somewhat unexpectedly, support for the Apple Pencil Pro. Externally, the main change here is the addition of a new 13-inch model, which sits alongside the more standard 11-inch version.
Magic Keyboard 2
Here’s one I’d secretly been holding out for. A new, thin iPad Pro means a new, thin Magic Keyboard. As a writer, I’ve always found the first generation model a little heavy and bulky. But this new edition, in the same aluminium as the MacBook, is much lighter.
