About one month ago I got an iPad Pro. It is my third iPad, after owning the original iPad in 2010 and the iPad Air 2 in 2014. After much deliberation, I decided the 10.5” model was right for me, as the 12.9” was just a bit big for my uses¹. After a month with this thing, and finding I spend almost no time with my MacBook Pro anymore, I can safely say “holy ****, the iPad Pro is a beast!

First up is speed. There is nothing I can throw at this thing that it does not do basically instantly. I was a little apprehensive about getting an iPad with an A10X processor when my iPhone has a newer A11, but those fears are (at least for now) unfounded. The A10X is blazingly fast, and all the apps I throw at it run perfectly. Whether it’s editing a podcast in Ferite, editing RAW image files in Lightroom, or multitasking with up to 3 apps on screen at a time, the iPad Pro keeps up. As many have mentioned before, the bottleneck on the iPad Pro is software right now, not hardware.

Another part of the iPad Pro I love is the Pro Motion display. For many years, we described 60fps animations as the buttery dream all software should strive for. Now with the 2017 iPad Pros, 120fps now feels like the benchmark, and my god is it nice. I mentioned above that the iPad Pro has a one generation older system on a chip than the iPhone 8/X, but the iPad Pro often feels even faster than the iPhone because of the fluidity of the animations. Seriously, it is an absolute joy to use a computer with everything moving with this level of fluidity.

Finally, despite all it’s flaws, iOS 11 is a game changer for the iPad. The dock is a great addition, and the multitasking view is miles better than what we had last year. The split screen options are better than ever, not only because the zippy iPad Pro loads multiple apps with ease, but because you can now more easily manage your multiple apps, and you can even have a third app on screen at a time with a swipe in from the right gesture. I use this all the time and it makes me treat the iPad more like a computer built for getting things done than ever before. I’d love to see Apple continue to move the needle this year with iOS 12, but the advance we got last year is fantastic, and Apple should be credited with making the iPad leaps and bounds better than any other tablet computer.

The iPad Pro is not for everyone, but it feels like it was made specifically for me. It’s a marvelous machine, and one that I can’t see giving up any time soon.