iPad Pro 10.5-inch review: incredible screen and powerful processor, but it's expensive, especially with accessories like the Smart Keyboard and Apple Pencil
Dieter Bohn / The Verge :
Context & Ripple Effects
Dieter Bohn's verdict lands one day after Ars Technica's take on the same tablet, which flagged lower Apple Pencil latency and strong battery life but noted iOS 11 was still three months out — so reviewers are judging hardware ahead of the software meant to justify it. That echoes the arc from the original 2015 iPad Pro review, where excellent performance ran into iOS 9's limits.
The consistent thread across coverage is that the tablet itself is rarely the complaint — the bill is. The 10.5-inch model repeats the pattern AnandTech saw in 2016: best-in-class display and silicon, with the Smart Keyboard called a letdown even as it adds to the price.
First-order effects
- Buyers considering the 10.5-inch iPad Pro face a total cost well above the base price once the Smart Keyboard and Apple Pencil are attached, making the 'Pro' pitch a laptop-comparison purchase rather than a tablet one.
- Apple ships the hardware now while its headline software features wait for iOS 11, leaving early adopters paying Pro prices for capabilities they cannot fully use at launch.
Second-order effects
- Accessory pricing becomes Apple's real tiering mechanism: the 2020 iPad Air later proves the strategy by adopting Pro-accessory compatibility, pulling mid-tier buyers into the same keyboard-and-pencil spend.
- Rival tablet makers are pushed to compete on bundled value rather than raw specs, since the A-series silicon has had no real ARM competition since the A9X era per AnandTech.
Third-order effects
- If the decade-long review pattern holds — hardware praised, price criticized, software lagging — the iPad line structurally converges on Mac-like positioning and Mac-like pricing, culminating in the 2025 M5 review still calling it too pricey as a secondary computer even as iPadOS grows more Mac-like.
- The recurring 'great hardware, limited OS' critique points toward Apple's tablet roadmap being gated by software cadence, not component supply — the constraint reviewers keep hitting from iOS 9 through iPadOS.
The trend: Across a decade of reviews, Apple iterates iPad Pro hardware faster than iPadOS matures, while keyboard-and-stylus accessories keep pushing the real price toward laptop territory.