The Apple iPad Pro Review
by Ryan Smith, Joshua Ho & Brandon Chester on January 22, 2016 8:10 AM ESTSystem Performance Cont'd
Continuing on with our more game-like benchmarks, tests like 3DMark and GFXBench are supposed to replicate gaming workloads to help determine relative performance in most common 3D games. In the case of the iPad Pro, the GPU is a 12 cluster variant of the PowerVR Series7XT GPU architecture. This is double the number of clusters relative to the A9’s GPU, which should prove to be quite impressive judging by the GPU performance that we saw in the iPhone 6s.
The iPad Pro manages to maintain superiority in 3DMark, but we're really starting to see the limitations of this test. The physics test generates non-sequential data structures with memory dependencies, which can penalize devices with lower core count and clock speed, but the workload is able to be spread across multiple cores to exploit TLP, which benefits devices with more real cores, or virtual ones (hyperthreading). We also see that the graphics test isn't really scaling well at this point as it's just too light to take advantage of the full potential of the A9X GPU. This likely also explains why the iPad Pro isn't closer to the Surface Pro 4 in performance on this benchmark, given what we know about A9X's GPU.
In GFXBench we can see the major benefits that really come with the larger GPU. It's pretty obvious here that clock speeds are basically identical when comparing the A9 GPU and A9X GPU as the scaling is almost perfectly double. In this benchmark the iPad Pro quite handily beats the Surface Pro 4, but it's important to keep in mind that the Surface Pro 4 is running a higher level of precision and that the iPad Pro is running OpenGL ES rather than OpenGL in this test, so it isn't strictly apples-to-apples (nor is such a thing truly possible at this time). Overall though the GPU of the iPad Pro is incredibly impressive, and I doubt that anyone will really have issues with gaming performance on this device.
NAND Performance
At this point it’s pretty well understood that storage performance can often be a gating factor in performance. Although caching is an amazingly effective method of hiding memory latency, for the first hit it’s mandatory to miss the cache unless you’ve managed to prefetch the data in question. The other issue where storage performance becomes obvious are cases where it’s necessary to commit data to storage first. Some cases where this is going to be obvious is app installation or iCloud restores, especially when network performance is at the point where installation can actually be gated by writing to disk rather than downloading from the network.
In the case of the iPad Pro, Apple claims that they’ve implemented a storage controller comparable to some desktop SSDs. It turns out that this controller is a familiar one, as the storage controller identifies itself as the APPLE SSD AP0128K in the case of this review unit. It turns out that everything about this SSD is identical to what we saw in the iPhone 6s as well, down the use of Hynix for at least one of the NAND vendors and the hybrid SLC/TLC architecture discussed in previous articles. In order to test how this storage solution performs we once again use Eric Patno’s StorageBench, which provides a rough analogue to AndroBench 3.6.
It turns out that in this test, performance is basically identical to the iPhone 6s. This isn’t quite the equal of something like the Surface Pro 4’s PM951 SSD, which has the advantage of more NAND dies working in parallel, but given that the iPad Pro PCB size isn’t going to be anywhere near that of the Surface Pro 4 it’s likely that this is a concession to gain better battery life. I definitely wonder what performance would be like relative to a Surface Pro 4 if the iPad Pro had a 512GB SKU, but given that the iPad Pro tops out at 128GB this isn’t really a question with a relevant answer.
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Alecgold - Sunday, March 13, 2016 - link
Funny you know so well what Apple should(n't) do.Did you look at the tear-down from iFixit on the Pencil? It has some nice, even wonderful, technology inside. It's not a "dumb" pencil that costs 50-65 bucks on a Wacom board and only holds a copper coil. (I know, yes, I'm exaggerating.)
I bought a power- adapter and it came with 4 different wall-plug-prong-thing-adapters. I just needed one, lots of companies do ship region/country specific these days. Did I pay extra for them? No. Did I pay for them? You bet. Even if it was just 15ct. But it's not just the 15ct, it's also the waste that was generated.
Could Apple include everything to the iPad Pro, complete with kitchen sink? Yes. Would I appreciate it? Most likely not, don’t you think? I think most people wouldn’t appreciate it, they already have a kitchen sink.
As I wrote before, it is expensive. But it's not like it is a Louis Vuiton bag, Bugatti Veyron or golden Mont Blanc pen. And even if it is in the same category for you, why don't you buy an Android or Windows tablet?
If you don't want the iPad Pro, don't buy it. If you can't buy it, I'm sorry for that, but it's not something that is going to be solved by grumbling on Anandtech.
One other thing. Am I a professional? Well, according to the Oxford dictionary:
1 Relating to or belonging to a profession: young professional people
1.1 Worthy of or appropriate to a professional person; competent, skilful, or assured:
- his professional expertise
- their music is both memorable and professional
2 Engaged in a specified activity as one’s main paid occupation rather than as an amateur
I pretty sure both 1.1 and 2 apply to me, so I guess I’m a professional.
Being a professional I do have another life and while my professional life might keep me busy burning the midnight oil every now and then, I prefer to do so in a well lit environment.
And at a desk or at the diner table or… It’s much better for your posture to sit upright and not slouch about. Try it!
If I need to read large amounts of text, I snap the keyboard off and sit relaxed with just the tablet.
ams0129 - Wednesday, February 17, 2016 - link
I do not think it is fair to compare and iPad pro with a Surface. The Surface has a full operating system while the iPad pro does not. To me a true iPad pro would pack a core processor and OSX. However, this would create a problem for Apple as it would take away sales from the MacBook Air line.darwiniandude - Monday, February 29, 2016 - link
iPad already far outsells Mac line. And iPhone even more so. There are a billion active iOS devices in use. OS X and iOS share the same kernel and much of the same API's and frameworks. Except one is designed for touch, and the other for classic computing duties. This "full operating system" phrase I hear thrown about makes me laugh because Windows is still a pain to maintain and has no proper audio support, and requires constant hand holding. A secure, reliable, sandboxed Unox application platform (iOS) is far more productive for me.Delton Esteves - Wednesday, March 9, 2016 - link
That's a joke, right?s.yu - Tuesday, March 1, 2016 - link
Very informative review as usual! The performance of the A9X was certainly lower than what the initial hype indicated. Other aspects can basically be summed up by reading a dozen other not-so-informative reviews;)One thing is that AdobeRGB was not tested for, but from the looks of it the screen certainly doesn't cover it either, another aspect that's not as "pro" as Apple made it seem. That said, SP4 as well as MSB are too "consumer" too, in terms of color coverage.
SL1990 - Wednesday, March 9, 2016 - link
Anyone notice while charging Ipad Pro back metal area can feel the vibration. It's that normal??Constructor - Friday, March 11, 2016 - link
Yes, pretty much, for any devices which have a metal case and no grounding lead on the mains power plug.It depends on the circumstances, but basically it has to do with some very small residual capacitive coupling of the supply AC through the charger. Depending on your electrical installation it may go away when you just plug the charger in the other way.
But it's not dangerous (there is no actual connection to the power grid), just a minor inconvenience. It's not Apple-specific, though.
ifrpilot - Friday, April 29, 2016 - link
Funny comments here. If you like iOS and iPad, buy one. If you like Android or a Windows device, buy one of those. As for people making comments about less professional software for iOS - that's just crap. Just the medical industry alone has hundreds of pro apps, let alone aviation, product management, delivery, management services and more. If someone is so anti Apple, why are you wasting your time reading this article, go read about someone else's hardware.