The mythical iPad Pro has finally been officially announced by Apple today, and it might be the best tablet e-reading device ever. It can run two iPad Air apps side by side and comes with many optional accessories such as a keyboard that can dock with it and a new stylus for taking notes and making annotations.
The iPad PRO features a 12.9 inch display with a resolution of 2,732 x 2,048 and 264 PPI. It also features an A9X chip, Apple’s 3rd generation 64-bit chip with 2 GB of memory and faster flash storage. Apple claims that it is faster than 80% of the portable PCs that shipped in the last twelve months. All of this crazy resolution and high specs will not effect the battery life, which clocks in at 10 hours. It is 6.9mm thick, a bit thicker than the 6.1mm iPad Air and weighs 1.57lb.
This device will be perfect for reading news articles, e-books, digital magazines and newspapers. The extra large screen is totally indicative for long sessions of consuming written content. It also is great for editing PDF files thanks to a new stylus, dubbed Apple Pencil. Unlike the capacitive third-party styli for previous iPads, the Apple Pencil is truly pressure sensitive, behaving more like a Galaxy Note or a Wacom unit. It’s also got some sensors inside for detecting position, force and tilt.
Additionally, the iPad PRO might be a good tool for indie authors. Not only will this device be perfect for e-reading, but also writing short or long fiction, including novels. This is all thanks to the Smart Keyboard, an accessory keyboard that has three circle connectors on the side called Smart Connectors which carry power and data and connects magnetically to keyboard. You can think of it as Apples answer to the Microsoft Surface dockable keyboard.
There are many people who swear by their dedicated e-ink readers, such as the Amazon Kindle Voyage or Kobo Aura H2O. Equally, there is a large segment that employs a multipurpose tablet because of a wider array of e-reading apps that are customized for a specific purpose, such as reading manga or something that supports a ton of plugins such as Perfect Reader for Android. There is something strangely compelling about an Apple product that offers a tremendously large screen and has the ability to have two apps open side by side.
The iPad Pro is going to be available in November — 32GB for $799, 64GB for $949 and 128GB for $1,079. The $1,079 comes with Wi-Fi and cellular. The keyboard is going to cost $169 and the stylus is going to cost $99
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.