I got the iPad Pro 10.5" this November, so I've had it for around a month now. Let's talk about how it's holding up for me, what I use it for, and who should consider buying this.
They are the same cameras as in the iPhone 7, so they are easily the best cameras in any tablet, and maybe even in any 2 in 1 laptop. Not that you'll be taking many photos in it, but it is useful for scanning documents (which is now natively supported in Apple's first-party Notes app).
It's simply the best build quality a tablet or laptop could get. It's light even with the keyboard and grippy (I put a Dbrand skin on it just in case, so the back metal won't scratch). The most important point is that its compact. The body is 9.8 inches by 6.8 inches, which means it fits juuuust right on the incredibly small desks in the UC Santa Cruz lecture halls, making it just as convenient as having a regular piece of paper with me and way more convenient than any laptop would be.
They get very loud and are pretty clear, and the bass is decent. Overall they don't replace external bluetooth speakers, but they do very well for when you want to listen to music or podcast or watch a video or movie by yourself.
This inclusion means there is no lag in viewing anything, and it honestly doesn't affect the battery life much at all. It looks so buttery smooth that I literally could not go back to 60 Hz refresh; when I turned off 120Hz on the iPad, it looked so choppy I just had to go back... it's that satisfying.
The iPad Pro has enough RAM so that even apps from a while ago are loaded (and even when they aren't, they load so quickly it doesn't matter). I've essentially never had the iPad lag when I'm using it, whether I'm drawing, taking notes, or watching videos, so its safe to say that so long as iOS supports whatever you're doing, the iPad will be able to run it with buttery speeds. 256 GB is perfect for me, as I only have a few movies that I bought on iTunes, I don't take pictures with it, so mostly I am putting in notes and pdfs and text files for school (which will take a while to fill up 256GB).
The iPad does get around 8-13 hours of battery life, depending on what I'm doing. Watching YouTube a lot drains the battery in around 8 hours, web surfing+social media+notes gives me around 10 hours of use, but just watching Netflix and my own movies has given me a solid 13 hours of use.
iOS 11 allows two apps to run split-screen and for one floating window (I usually had Messenger or Music as the floating app, so that it followed me everywhere).
This is an extremely useful addition to iOS. I put 10 productivity apps in the dock, so getting from app to app takes no time or thought (sidenote: this is what I love about iOS; it has functions that are so easy that allow me to focus on my content and not on the OS functions themselves). Literally because of the dock and ability to swipe up then click on blank space to get to the home screen, there's no need for a home button. It seems very similar to Apple's software implementation of a home button on the iPhone X, so maybe Apple is planning to rid the iPad Pro of a home button for the 2018 iteration, but that is yet to be seen.
Anyone who knows Apple knows that the ecosystem is streamlined, but more importantly extremely handy in everyday use. By having some of my files on iCloud Drive, using reminds, calendar, notes, iMessage, and other apps through iCloud, I can have all my data on all my Apple devices accessible whenever I need it. This is especially useful for reminders, since sometimes i remember whatIi need to do when I'm on my iPhone and sometimes when I'm on my iPad, etc.
From personal experience, these functions are just what I need. Siri and search (accessed by command+space) works well with voice and by typing for when I'm in a quiet environment. It's convenient for commands like adding numbers, searching up a person, finding an app, or directions, because smart Siri functions recommend which app I should use to find the information I need. As for the widget center, its very useful because I get to see quick glances from the apps I most often use for important updates (like Reminders, Calendar, Weather, and ESPN for those Lakers updates).
This should be a subsection of Software, but since this is so integral to my life and the primary reason why I bought the iPad Pro in the first place, I've made this its own section. I'm a student at UC Santa Cruz, and before having an iPad, I took my notes on paper. They were very disorganized, hard to fix, messy, and when I made mistakes that I found later, it was a pain to reorganize, erase, and rewrite all that information on paper. But now, I LOVE taking notes on the iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil. It's as smooth and efficient as a regular pencil, but that's not the point. The point is the versatility options that the note taking apps gave me.
For the majority of the time, I use the Notability app. In that app, it is so useful to change the colors of a pen, highlight and erase content, and move stuff down if I need to make more space, and even the ability to write text and insert a picture from some pdf that I need for a class and annotate it. It's just amazing how many more options to make note taking complex that a software note-taking experience provides. Not only that, but my notes are very organized by subject, type of assignment, or lecture. With a paper notebook, for a single lecture I might write a good 10 pages of notes. I'm not one to label each page and have a Table of Contents to keep track of where my notes begin and end, so my notebooks were a mess. But with iPad notes apps, for a single lecture is a single continuous sheet that I can scroll through endlessly, no matter how long.
I use my iPad for literally everything except coding (like email management, listening to music, texting, working on docs, reading the news, watching movies, writing, and taking notes). I obviously don't write the code for Danilo's Thoughts on my iPad, but I do write my blog posts and brainstorming my ideas on the iPad, then transfer that work through iCloud to my computer. It truly is a very versatile and capable machine, both in terms of hardware and software. So long as I'm not doing a task that requires specific software that iOS doesn't offer (like coding), I use my iPad Pro.
This is a perfect machine for anyone who can do all their work on this device Anyone who needs something to do casual stuff on, like watching a video I like the freedom of being able to detach from the Apple Smart Keyboard and use it in my bed for watching videos, then put the Keyboard on for texting and brainstorming and work If you know you don't like Apple's ecosystem, this device obviously isn't for you.
If your only goal is to take notes on a tablet, then this device is overpriced (even though it completes that one task exceptionally well). If you need a full desktop operating system, consider just a normal laptop. But if you want the best well-rounded, loudest, fastest, software-optimized, compact tablet that you will use for literally every digital task, the iPad Pro is a device you will not regret purchasing.