The Apple iPad Pro Review
by Ryan Smith, Joshua Ho & Brandon Chester on January 22, 2016 8:10 AM ESTDisplay
With the iPad Pro, one of the main points of interest is its display. Although there are other elements to the iPad Pro like the stylus and the keyboard, the display is really the centerpiece of this tablet, especially when neither the Apple Pencil nor the Smart Keyboard come included with the iPad Pro itself. I think it goes without saying that everyone wants to have a great display on a tablet, but what determines a great display is often in question.
While it’s obvious that less reflectance is better, as is higher contrast and maximum brightness, things like gamma and color reproduction are often subjective as the same color will often look different to different people. In order to try and deal with this issue, we focus on testing all mobile displays to the same color accuracy standards. For now, the industry standard gamut is the sRGB gamut, along with power 2.2 gamma. Although the sRGB gamut is relatively limited compared to something like DCI-P3 or Rec. 2020, it remains an industry standard when compared to what exists on the market today. In order to test how well a display meets these standards in addition to other criteria, we use an i1Pro2 spectrophotometer for accurate color measurements along with an i1Display Pro for accurate contrast measurements. In order to organize this data into a readable format we use SpectraCal’s CalMAN 5 with a custom workflow.
In the case of the iPad Pro, it’s obvious that the architecture of the display is different from what we’ve seen in mobile devices before. Due to the sheer resolution, it seems that Apple is electing to use embedded Display Port (eDP) instead of the more traditional MIPI DSI interface used in smartphones. We’ve seen a number of smartphones and tablets this year ship with an 8 lane MIPI DSI configuration which allows for a theoretical maximum of 2715x1697 for about 4.6MP, but the 2732x2048 resolution of the iPad Pro means about 20% more pixels than what a 2 port MIPI DSI configuration can handle.
Source: design-reuse.com
By comparison, eDP has been able to support 4K at 60 Hz or higher for quite some time. This is self-evident by looking at the number of laptops launched with a 4K display. With the iPad Pro, Apple claims that they’ve implemented their own custom timing controller or TCON. Some digging through the system files seems to corroborate these claims as there are numerous references to an Apple Agile DP Display SAC Controller. That’s a mouthful, but Agile seems to be the internal name for this controller, and DP seems to be a reference to DisplayPort, while SAC is likely a reference to Slow Adaptive Clocking.
Slow Adaptive Clocking is something that there's very limited public information on at this time. My best guess here is that this is actually related to the variable refresh rate technology that Apple is implementing in their custom TCON. On the surface this technology seems to bear a lot of resemblance to G-Sync or FreeSync, but rather than varying refresh rate to fit the GPU’s rendering rate the refresh rate only has two distinct settings at 60 Hz and 30 Hz depending upon whether the content on the display would benefit from the higher refresh rate. It’s likely that at least part of the reason why this is possible is the use of indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO) TFTs which don’t leak current in the off state. This means that when there is a longer period of time between display refreshes, the liquid crystal retains its state rather than fading towards its original state of either completely open or closed to the backlight.
Source: semiconportal.com
In addition to this adaptive refresh rate, the TCON supports panel self-refresh which is hardly news, but given that we’ve seen phones and tablets in this year ship without panel self-refresh it’s worth mentioning.
The panel itself also appears to have dual domain pixels and a conventional RGB stripe. Viewing angles as a result are quite good. The cover glass also contains the AR coating first introduced with the iPad Air 2, which cuts reflectance roughly in half relative to a display that doesn’t have such a coating. This effectively doubles outdoor contrast, so it’s great for outdoor use.
In our standard test of brightness and contrast, it’s evident that Apple has moved to a new generation of display for the iPad Pro as the maximum brightness is mildly improved relative to the iPad Air 2. The real change here though is that contrast is dramatically improved over the iPad Air 2.
This is likely due to the use of photoalignment for the liquid crystals, which helps the liquid crystal to have a more consistent orientation. For those that aren’t really familiar with the particulars of how light polarization and polarizers work, part of the problem is that when a voltage is applied to change the structure of the liquid crystals parts of the liquid crystals won’t necessarily change in structure appropriately. In order to assist with this process a film is applied which gains a particular orientation when exposed to UV light in a specific way. This helps to get the liquid crystals to all align in the same direction, which improves contrast as a result. Of course, contrast isn’t the dark, inky blacks that you'll get with AMOLED but it'll still be quite impressive for normal use.
Source: eetimes.com
Moving on to our grayscale test, the iPad Pro does impressively well overall with well-controlled gamma but tending slightly towards a colder color balance. I’m not sure whether this is because of backlight efficiency concerns due to the use of blue LED with yellow phosphor in the backlight or because people seem to prefer colder white balances in general, but it’s there nonetheless. The cold color balance might affect some particularly color critical work but even for medical use I suspect it shouldn’t be a serious problem.
In saturations, the iPad Pro is basically perfect. There is some mild undersaturation of red, but I basically see no reason to try and find some method of personally calibrating the display.
In the Gretag MacBeth ColorChecker test, color error is once again basically nonexistent. Anything with red appears to be mildly undersaturated but the error is going to be almost impossible to notice.
Overall, the iPad Pro display is probably one of the best available on the market today. The Galaxy Tab S2 display is comparable in overall accuracy and has superior contrast, but the iPad Pro has noticeably higher brightness for all content above 50% APL and in any scenario with a lot of ambient background light the AR coating will help a lot with improving effective contrast and general readability. Although pixel density is equivalent to the iPad Air 2, the sheer size of the display means that the viewing distance is increased and therefore the perceived resolution. The display looks great in person, and unless your single point of consideration for display performance is contrast I think it’ll be hard to be disappointed with the iPad Pro display.
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xerandin - Saturday, January 23, 2016 - link
In what way did Microsoft saw Surface Pro parts off of other products? You know what's better than that "most stable, secure, and highest quality mobile OS?" For most people, that would be Microsoft Windows--even if they love to complain about it, you can't deny Microsoft's ubiquity in the Professional space (and home userspace, too, but we're trying to keep this in the professional sector, right?)I've heard a few people at work say that the sysadmins love Macs (it was a Director obsessed with his Macbook telling me this), but I can't seem to find any of these supposed Mac-lovers. It could have something to do that they're a nightmare to administer for most sysadmins running a domain (which covers the vast majority of sysadmins), or the fact that Mac users tend to be just as inept and incapable as Windows users, so you get to have another pain-in-the-ass group of users to deal with on a system that just isn't very nice to administer.
If you take off your hipster glasses for a moment and actually use computers in the world we live in, there's no way around the reality that Microsoft wins in the Professional space--including their beautifully made, super-powerful Surface Pro.
And no, I'm not a Microsoft shill, I just can't stand Apple fanboys with more money than sense.
gistya - Sunday, January 24, 2016 - link
Xerandin, you have no idea what you are talking about. 90% of the professional software development studios I work with are almost solely Mac based, for the simple reason that they barely need an IT department at all, in that case.Windows is technical debt, plain and simple. It's legacy cruft stuck to the face of the world. The only IT guys that hate Macs are the idiot ones who don't know bash from tsch and couldn't sudo themselves out of a wet paper box. Then there are the smart ones who know that a shift to such a low maintenance platform would mean their department would get downsized.
But so many companies are stuck on crap like SAP, NovellNetware, etc., that Microsoft could literally do nothing right for 10 years and still be a powerhouse. Oh wait.
Apple hardware is worth every extra cent it costs, and then some; if you make such little money that $500 more on a tool that you'll professionally use 8-12 hours a day for three years is a deal-breaker, then I feel very sorry for you.
But personally I think it's more than worth it to have the (by far) best screen, trackpad, keyboard, case, input drivers, and selection of operating systems. I have five different OS's installed right now including three different versions of windows (the good one, and then the most recent one, and the one that my last job still uses, which does not receive security patches and gets infected with viruses after being on a website for 10 seconds).
As for the iPad Pro, all of you fools just don't understand what it is, or why the pencil is always sold out everywhere, or what the difference is. As a software developer I can tell you that there is the most extreme difference; and that more development for iOS is being done now than ever before, and is being done at an accelerating pace. This is just version 1.0 of the large-size, pro type model for Apple, and those of us who did not buy it yet and who are still waiting for that killer app, are basically saying that well, once that app comes out, then heck yes we'll buy it. Do you seriously believe that no company will rise up to capitalize on that obviously large market? Someone will, and frankly lets hope it's not Adobe.
I regularly see iPad pros now in the hands of the professional musicians and producers I work with, and they are most certainly using them for professional applications. That's a niche to be sure, but everyone who thinks that the surface pro 4 (a mildly crappy laptop with a touchscreen that makes a bad, thick tablet and an underpowered, overheated laptop) is even remotely in the same category of device, is utterly smoking crack.
doggface - Sunday, January 24, 2016 - link
I think it might be you smoking the crack there mate. Cor, what a rant. Microsoft are pretty safe in enterprise and it has everything to do with managing large networks(1000s not 10s of computers.. Please, direct me to Apple's answer to sccm, please show me Apple's answer to exchange. Please show me an Apple only environment running 1000 different apps outside ofGoogle and Apple HQ. Just aint haopening.Constructor - Sunday, January 24, 2016 - link
IBM (yes, the IBM!) has just announced that they will switch over to Macs a while ago. And they're neither the first nor the last. Springer (a major german media company) had done that a while ago already for similar reasons (removing unproductive friction and cutting the actual cost of ownership due to less needed user support).I know that many people had imagined that Windows would be the only platform anyone would ever need to know, but that has always just been an illusion.
damianrobertjones - Monday, January 25, 2016 - link
Link to the article please! They're THINKING of using Apple for mobile use... .Constructor - Monday, January 25, 2016 - link
Nope. They're massively ramping up Mac purchases as well, with a target of 50-75% Macs at IBM. They are already full steam ahead with it:http://www.i4u.com/2015/08/93776/ibm-purchase-2000...
(Okay: The official announcements don't have that aspect, but an internal video interview with IBM's CIO leaked to YouTube makes it rather explicit even so.)
One of the motivators is apparently that despite higher sticker prices the total cost of ownership is lower for Macs (which is not news any more, but having IBM arriving at that conclusion still says something).
Oxford Guy - Wednesday, January 27, 2016 - link
Gartner said in 1999 that Macs were substantially cheaper in TCO.mcrispin - Tuesday, January 26, 2016 - link
doggface, you speak with confidence where that confidence isn't deserved. I've managed deployments of OS X way over 10k, there are plenty of places with deployments this high. JAMF Casper Suite is the "SCCM of Apple", I don't need an "Apple" replacement for Exchange, 0365 and Google are just fine for email. There are plenty of non-Apple/Google Apps for OS X and iOS. You are seriously misinformed about the reality of the OS X marketplace. Shame that.Ratman6161 - Wednesday, January 27, 2016 - link
mcrispin...sure you can find individual shops that have done big MAC deployments. but its anecdotal evidence. Its like looking at one neigborhood in my city and from that conclude that trailer parks are the norm in my city of 15,000.Take a look at this Oct 2015 article on Mac market share (I'm assuming you dont consider Apple Insider to be a bunch of Microsoft shills?) http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/10/08/mac-gain...
While touting how Mac is gaining market share they show a chart where in Q32015 they were at 7.6%. The chart is by company and even smaller Windows PC vendors Asus and Acer are at 7.1 and 7.4 respectively. Throw in Lenovo, HP and Dell at 20.3%, 18.5%, 13.8% and the 25.3% "others" (and others are not MAC's because Apple is the only company with those).
So IBM is doing 50 - 75% Mac's? OK Ill take your word for that but so what? In the larger scheme of things Apple still has only 7.6% and selling some computers to IBM isn't going to siginificantly change that number. Also, don't forgot that some companies (that compete with Microsoft in various areas) will not use a Microsoft product no mater how good it was.
No matter how you look at it, Windows is the main stream OS for busineses world wide. Touting the exceptions to that doesn't cange the truth of it.
Constructor - Wednesday, January 27, 2016 - link
Of course most workplace computers now are PCs. The thing is just that Macs are making major inroads there as well.$25 billion in Apple's corporate sales are already very far removed from your theory (and that's even without all the smaller shops who are buing retail!).