iPad Pro M2 Review Part 2: Apps and daily experience

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 7 — It’s been a few months since the first part of this iPad Pro review but an election, illness and a lot of other stuff happened in between. Still, it was a good time to really think about what the iPad Pro M2 can do.

More apps

Since my last review, new apps have come out that could better utilise the extra horsepower of the iPad Pro M2.

There is the free app Freeform that is a digital whiteboard that allows you to create charts, paste in images and links, as well as share what you’ve created.

Typically apps with this functionality don’t have this much available for free or at the very least offer free usage with monthly subscriptions.

I found it easy enough to use the app—making a couple of moodboards for my 2023 was easy and I could look at my Freeform boards on the Mac as well as iPhone, switching between them being very easy.

Watch a quick runthrough of the app’s features here:

I also got to try the iPad port of the DaVinci Resolve video editor that I also have for the Mac.

Like the Mac/PC edition, it’s completely free to download but there is an optional in-app

purchase of RM449.90 of the DaVinci Resolve Studio that unlocks additional features such as HDR and Dolby colour.

While iMovie (free) and LumaFusion (paid, mobile only) are other popular alternatives, DaVinci Resolve is popular enough that it is used by professionals and even being used on an impressive list of Hollywood movies including Deadpool 2 and La La Land.

The interface is similar though not exactly the same with tiny differences you would notice if you have used the desktop version for some time.

Despite that, you can still do much of what you can on the Mac such as editing and colour grading on the iPad with the only real hindrance being storage on the iPad though you could get around that with external storage.

I would say this feels closer to a Pro/desktop experience than what you would get with the Adobe suite that still hasn’t truly come close experience and functionality-wise on the iPad compared to the desktop versions.

Is it truly a game changer?

A new Apple Pencil feature exclusive to the Apple Pencil 2 and the M2 iPad allows users to preview what they’re doing before actually touching the screen, allowing illustrators/graphic designers to preview changes, edits and the like before actually committing them to a file.

Hover is an Apple iPad Pro M2 exclusive feature. — Picture courtesy of Apple

Much loved illustration app Procreate announced the 5.3 update that supports the hover feature and is probably the most solid implementation of the feature in an app.

It’s a pity that you need an M2 iPad Pro to experience the feature that really should be standard on every iPad Pro M-series model.

Comparing the two devices, if you have skipped the last two generations of iPad Pros then the M2 model is a decent buy but if you just got an M1 model last year, it feels rather unfair considering the major difference hardware-wise is the processor and there isn’t a significant change in hardware parts otherwise.

You could, however, argue that the inclusion of the latest version of Bluetooth as well as Wi-Fi 6E are also worth mentioning but I still don’t think they’re worth upgrading from last year’s model.

The iPad Pro remains a beast of a tablet but it really needs to see a software revamp as I feel the multitasking experience still isn’t quite there yet and for the most part, except for specific use cases, the iPad Pro might still be more of a companion device than a primary device.

Let’s hope the next iteration of Apple’s best tablet yet brings more change to the table.