New iPad Pro 11 price and release date
OK, so the good news first: the iPad Pros can be pre-ordered now and in your lap on Wednesday 7th, which is when they become available.
The bad news: you don’t have long to save up for the painfully high asking price if you want to be among the early adopters.
The smaller iPad Pro we're looking at here starts at £769 but comes in a variety of configurations depending on storage size and whether you want a Wi-Fi-only version or one with a cellular connection to enable 4G data access on the go.
That starting price is for the Wi-Fi-only version with 64GB of storage on board. The 256GB, 512GB and 1TB versions cost £919, £1,119 and £1,519, respectively. Want to add cellular connectivity? You'll need to shell out an additional £150. Blimey.
New design: goodbye home button, hello Face ID
The first thing you’d ring in a spot-the-difference is the absence of a home button. Oh, yes, that's right: the home button is now gone from the tablet, as it has from the latest, greatest iPhones, and we're not mourning its loss.
Apple’s Face ID performs screen unlocking duties (look directly at the tablet, it unlocks) instead, and while testing in a crowded demo isn’t ideal, we find it works slickly in both landscape and portrait orientations. As with iPhone X, controls and sliders can be opened directly by swiping from different corners and edges of the screen.
The sub-headline news: there's a USB-C charging port in place of the Lightning connection, leaving only the iPad 9.7, iPad Mini 4 and iPhones using Apple's proprietary Lightning connection. It’s not a complete shock – USB-C is the chosen port on the Mac-book range, after all – but it does mean that you can no longer plug your iPhone cable directly into your iPad to charge it, which may annoy some. On the flip-side, the iPad Pro can now charge your iPhone, and means easier connectivity to a vast number of accessories.
And while this 11in Pro offers more screen over last year’s 10.5in model, its 5.9mm-thick chassis is no larger for it. That’s been made possible by Apple shrinking the bezels so that they more closely resemble those on the new iPhone XR. That doesn't leave you with too little bezel to hold though - it's still a comfortable experience, even with the less-rounded corners.
Apple iPad Pro 11 is coming
