Apple iPad Pro 2020 Review

LiDAR – what is the iPad Pro's 3rd camera used for?

One big new feature that the iPad Pro (2020) line has is the new LiDAR scanner — a sophisticated ToF camera that can determine object shapes, sizes, and edges much more accurately than we’ve previously seen on a mobile device. Or so it was said.

The LiDAR scanner is meant to make AR apps — such as the Measure app, various AR games, or even home decoration apps — better by allowing the virtual objects to interact naturally with and fit more accurately in your real-world environment. So, of course, we tested it.

Upon initial launch of the simple Measure app, the benefits of LiDAR are instantly visible. You no longer need to wave the tablet around until it gets a bearing of what type of surface it’s “looking at”. It’s instantly ready to get to work, it’s much better at detecting different plains and surfaces, and it even suggests measuring lines and snaps your markers to the edges of detected objects.


We did a quick Measure test with the iPad Pro vs the iPhone 11 Pro. First up — the tape measure. Both devices were following it accurately and showing the same numbers in cm as the strip itself. However, the iPad Pro was faster to “snap” on to the line and it even divided the line in single cm steps when we moved in closer.


Then, we measured this guitar here. Out of 3 attempts with each device, the iPad Pro was consistently getting the scale length right — it is supposed to be 26.5”. Out of 3 attempts, the iPhone was slightly off, showing 26” on every try.


Unfortunately, we couldn’t find any AR apps on the App Store that have been updated to use the new sensor. There’s a lot of promise there — real-time object mapping, the ability to detect real-world objects coming in and out of the frame and either deleting them or allowing them to naturally pass in front of the virtual objects, room mapping, and other neat stuff that both Apple and various devs have talked up. It remains to be seen how all of that pans out.

One thing is certain — it’s a bit weird that the upgraded AR sensor arrived on an iPad instead of an iPhone. Let’s be honest here — waving a huge tablet around while trying to use its cameras is nobody’s go-to choice.

Camera and audio

The iPad Pro 2020 comes with a 12 MP main camera, a 10 MP ultra-wide-angle camera and a 7 MP selfie camera. It looks like the main snapper is basically the same camera from the iPhone 11, but the ultra-wide-angle and selfie cams are a bit downgraded. Another weird decision on Apple’s part — people generally use tablets for video calls and don’t care that much about their back-mounted cameras. Having the same 12 MP front camera as on the iPhone would’ve been nice.

All that being said, let’s move on to image quality. The main camera on the iPad Pro 2020 is pretty great — details and colors are true to life and its dynamic range is fantastic, just like on the iPhone 11.


We were able to “trick” it from time to time, usually in indoors shots — you can see that the red guitar below has a slightly brown-ish tint, which isn't there in real life. The LED lights on the shelf are pure blue, while the iPad Pro camera gave them a slightly purple-ish tint. But, to be fair, these are shots that pretty much every smartphone camera we have on hand struggles with.


The ultra-wide-angle camera has the same color calibration, so you don’t get a jarringly different image when you switch to it, but the lower-res sensor shows. There is a bit more digital noise with the ultra-wide-angle camera. The last two pictures in the gallery below were taken with the iPhone 11 Pro for comparison's sake. You will notice both the iPhone's cameras have wider viewing angles.


The same stands with the selfie camera: great colors, great dynamic range, but once you go indoors, it gets soft on the details and introduces some digital noise.

You do get Portrait Mode on the iPad Pro (2020), but it only works with the selfie camera, utilizing the Face ID sensors. We thought the LiDAR sensor would be used for better Portrat Mode shots with the main camera, but nope — not right now.


As far as audio goes — the iPad Pro traditionally rocks quad speakers, placed in a stereo setup. It gets fairly loud without crackling up and the sound quality is impressive for a thin tablet. It won’t replace a nice Bluetooth speaker for indulgement in good music, but you can definitely use the iPad Pro (2020) speakers for casual media consumption.

Files, workflow, USB Type-C

What sets the iPad Pro line apart from any other iPads or iPhones is the presence of a USB Type-C port where the other ones have Lightning instead. This makes it much easier to hook up to external, third-party devices. And it really opens up a lot of possibilities — from transferring photos quickly from your pro-grade camera to hooking up an external hard drive.

We hooked up a portable LaCie SSD, which is usually used with a MacBook, and the iPad Pro instantly recognized it and was able to use the files — from playing videos to copying and moving files around.


Now, this doesn’t mean that the file system is as “free” as on a PC — if you want to import a video file from the external hard drive to use in an iMovies project, the iPad will still create a copy of that video and store it in its internal memory. So, what type of storage you buy with your iPad still matters. The file system is there to help with transfers, but it won’t really allow you to actively expand your iPad storage without a ton of micro-management on your part.


When it comes to workflow, iPadOS 13.4 offers a few solutions to make task-switching fast and easy. The dock can hold up to 13 of your favorite apps, and it will always show the 3 most-recently used apps on its right side. Whenever you want to swap to a different app, you don’t need to go to the home screen — just flick up from the bottom edge to see the dock and tap on your desired app. Alternatively, you can drag the desired app over your main screen to go into Split View or Slide Over (floating window) modes.

How does a wireless mouse work on the iPad Pro? Well... same as on the computer, really. Apple went all fancy and made the cursor very animated, changing its shape in accordance with what you are pointing at. But... that doesn't make anything different — it's still a mouse pointer, it just acts like a shape-shifting cartoon character while you swipe around with it.

UPDATE: The iPad Pro 2020 will be receiving Apple's newly announced iPadOS 17. The software will start rolling out to iPad Pro devices sometime in autumn 2023, and it will add home screen customization, interactive widgets, offline maps, and the revamped and adapted for iPads Health app.

So, does the iPad Pro replace a computer?

From the description above, you can see that the iPad Pro does offer some multi-tasking. It feels a bit cumbersome and clunky and is nowhere near as fast or capable of dealing with tons of windows as what you can get on a PC or Mac.

In other words, yes, it kind of can replace a PC, but it really can’t either. It really depends on what you will be using it for.

For example, I can very easily write this review straight on the iPad Pro. All I need is one open document and the ability to answer chats or emails by simply swiping the apps I need into Slide Over mode.

But if I was doing a different task — researching an article, taking notes, and editing image sizes to the precise pixel, I would prefer to do that on a laptop or desktop computer.

If your workflow requires you to focus on one task while occasionally needing to pop up a separate window for a quick email-check, YouTube clip, or website reference — sure, it works great. Especially if you want to make great use of that Apple Pencil for some artistic work.