The latest iPad Pro may actually live up to Apple's claims that the high-end tablet could replace your laptop, essentially making it the only device you'd ever need.
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Apple's new $900 iPad Pro is almost as powerful as the new $1,800 MacBook Pro (AAPL)
It's technically more powerful than last year's MacBook Pros, too.
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Tech benchmarking website Bare Feats found that the new 10.5- and 12.9-inch iPad Pro models aren't that far behind the new 13-inch MacBook Pro in terms of performance.
And Bare Feats wasn't comparing the iPads to the base 13-inch MacBook Pro with Intel's Core i5 processor. It compared the iPads with the most powerful option for the 13-inch MacBook Pro, complete with the fastest Core i7 processor option. Check out the benchmark results below, where the higher the number indicates better performance:
In theory, and according to the benchmark, Apple's latest iPad Pros could actually be faster than last year's 2016 13-inch MacBook Pro with a Core i7 processor.
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On top of the iPad Pros' incredible performance, Apple's newest mobile operating system iOS 11 adds some key features to the iPad that makes it work more like a MacBook Pro laptop than ever before.
For one, iPads will have a Dock, just like you see on the desktop operating system macOS.
And there's also a new app called Files that lets you browse and organize files store in iPads, like documents, photos, and PDFs.
At first glance, it may seem like the $900 12.9-inch iPad Pro with 256GB of storage could offer much better value than the $1,800 13-inch MacBook Pro with the fast Core i7 processor. They both have similar-size screens, and the iPad is half the price for almost as much power. Yet, it's unlikely that the iPad could be the only "computer" you'd ever need, as it's missing some key features.
Why cant iPad Pros
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Touchscreens like the iPad's are great when it's time to kick your feet up on the couch and browse through casual websites and social media. But when it's crunch time at work, you've got to have another input method: a mouse, or a trackpad.
Imagine sitting at your desk and constantly raising your arm throughout the day to tap or swipe the iPad's screen for web browser tabs, links, option menus, and scrolling. It would get tiring pretty quickly, not to mention it's less efficient. It's just not practical compared to a trackpad or a mouse, which requires less effort to control than a touch screen. With that in mind, your laptop can't be replaced by an iPad and its touch screen. Many would still need a laptop for work.
And even if Apple added mouse support on its iPads, the iPad Pro's 4GB of RAM wouldn't cut it these days. My laptop has 8GB of RAM and I wish it had more. In fact, anyone who uses several tabs on Google Chrome would wish they had more than 8GB of RAM.
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