Why you should trust us
I’m a senior staff writer at Wirecutter covering computer monitors, laptops, tablets, and 3D printers. I’m a certified display calibrator through the Imaging Science Foundation, and I’m responsible for all of Wirecutter’s computer monitor coverage.
For this guide:
- I’ve covered Apple for Wirecutter for the past three years, and in that time I’ve used nearly every model of iPad, iPhone, MacBook, Mac mini, Mac Studio, and iMac.
- Like all Wirecutter journalists, I review and test products with complete editorial independence. Most of the laptops we test are sent by the manufacturer for review consideration, but I return every laptop that Wirecutter hasn’t purchased. I’m also never made aw…
Why you should trust us
I’m a senior staff writer at Wirecutter covering computer monitors, laptops, tablets, and 3D printers. I’m a certified display calibrator through the Imaging Science Foundation, and I’m responsible for all of Wirecutter’s computer monitor coverage.
For this guide:
- I’ve covered Apple for Wirecutter for the past three years, and in that time I’ve used nearly every model of iPad, iPhone, MacBook, Mac mini, Mac Studio, and iMac.
- Like all Wirecutter journalists, I review and test products with complete editorial independence. Most of the laptops we test are sent by the manufacturer for review consideration, but I return every laptop that Wirecutter hasn’t purchased. I’m also never made aware of any business implications of my editorial recommendations. Read more about our editorial standards.
Who this is for
Professional tablets take the processing power of a laptop, shrink it into the size of a tablet, and add a stylus for you to write on the screen. They’re great for someone who reviews and annotates PDFs and other digital documents, wants to store their handwritten notes in the cloud, or creates digital art.
These lighter, slimmer devices are also more portable than laptops and can work in a variety of physical configurations, such as when you turn them vertically to read through a long research paper. Pro tablets are also perfect for taking laptop or desktop software into the field, whether you need to operate equipment with niche Windows software or edit photos on the fly.
Deciding which pro tablet is best for you depends on whether you intend to use it as a primary device to replace your laptop or as a secondary device for tasks like quickly checking emails, taking notes, or drawing. In our experience, Windows tablets have performed better for taking office tasks on the go, since they run the same operating system you can find in a laptop or desktop computer. However, you’re likely to pay much more for a good Windows tablet (namely a Surface), compared with buying a standard Windows laptop. Generally, unless you specifically need a Windows tablet, we recommend buying an ultrabook. iPads and Android tablets have proven to be better as a second device, as they offer a much larger ecosystem of drawing and note-taking tools, but can be clunky when you’re multitasking. Both Apple and Samsung tablets can also serve as a second screen for a Mac or Windows computer, respectively, reinforcing their second-device status.
An iPad can certainly replace a laptop for some people with streamlined workflows or who only rely on a few apps that work well on iPadOS. But for many others, the limitations in multitasking and file sharing, as well as the restricted functionality imposed on mobile versions of apps, would make a typical workday more difficult. Android tablets we tested faced similar restrictions.
Professional tablets aren’t the best option for everyone. If you don’t need the stylus or the ultrathin construction of a tablet, you’d spend less money on a laptop for the same performance. This also applies to gaming: Although Apple Arcade titles and other iOS games run well on iPads, don’t expect to play the latest PC or console titles on any of these pro tablets. Consider a gaming laptop or a pro laptop instead.
How we picked and tested
We considered a wide range of basic criteria when deciding which of these tablets to recommend:
Performance: Pro tablets should be powerful enough to run media-editing software, play high-resolution games, and multitask between a few different apps. A tablet’s processing power should allow you to run any available modern software without any lag, stutter, or other hiccup in performance, just as we expect from a professional-grade laptop.
Software: Windows, Android, and iPadOS are wildly different operating systems. Windows was born of the PC era, while iPadOS and Android are expansions of software originally designed for phones. We tested devices on each platform for the same wide variety of tasks, from basics such as typing and adding attachments to emails to more niche applications like editing photos and doing some light coding. We also made sure each tablet had apps on its app store that were high-quality, varied, and could take advantage of the tablet’s features.
Accessories: A pro tablet is only as good as its accessories—who wants a $1,000 machine marred by a cheap, mismatched keyboard? The best tablet keyboards are comfortably spaced and don’t aggressively bend or flex when you’re typing. They also stay connected to the tablet when you pick it up from a table or desk. Kickstands should be strong enough to support the tablet at any angle. Meanwhile, styluses should write accurately on the screen and feel comfortable to grip, and the best models have programmable buttons to assist in note-taking or drawing. Accessories are usually sold separately, so you’ll have to factor those costs into the overall price of the tablet.
Display: A tablet is mostly screen, so that screen should look beautiful. In the size range of most tablets, screens look best at resolutions of 2560×1440 or higher, referred to as 1440p, 2K, or QHD. Our top picks also have a high refresh rate, which indicates how often the display’s pixels can change per second: Typical monitors have a refresh rate of 60 Hz, while our top picks here offer 120 Hz, making motion and animations look smoother.
Ports: No matter the device, you’ll have to plug something in eventually. Every tablet we considered has at least one USB-C port. The best devices have multiple USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 3 or Thunderbolt 4, which allow you to send video to one or two external 4K displays, respectively. A headphone jack and some kind of SD card slot are also appreciated (though increasingly hard to find).
Webcam: Since these are tablets intended for the workplace or some professional context, looking good in video calls is important. We considered not only webcam quality but also webcam placement. In general, we’ve found that cameras on the longer edge of a tablet end up being more natural to use since they’re centered on the upper part of the screen when the tablet is in landscape mode.
Design and build quality: The best tablets we tested are made of aluminum, or a similarly sturdy, lightweight metal chassis. Kickstands integrated into the tablet to prop it up should hold at any angle, and if there’s no kickstand at all, that functionality should be added to an accessory. There’s also a subjective measure here of how good the tablet feels to hold or use in a lap.
Battery life: A great tablet should last for a full day of work on battery power if you use it in place of a laptop, and for multiple days if you use it only as a second device or a note-taking tool. For Windows devices, we ran our standardized notebook battery life test, which simulates a typical day browsing the internet, including visiting websites, scrolling, and watching videos on YouTube. For iPads and Android tablets, we used them both for daily work tasks and as secondary note-taking devices.
Price: Professional tablets are typically more expensive than a laptop with the same processor, RAM, and storage. You’re paying a premium for a pro tablet’s thin size and functionality. We’ve found that you typically pay between $1,000 and $1,500 for a great pro tablet, including about $300 for accessories.
Our testing process is meant to simulate how normal people and certain professionals use tablets. We browse the web and open a few dozen browser tabs, check social media, stream music from Spotify, and watch movies or TV shows. But we also edit photos and 4K video; load in an Excel file with 50,000 rows of information about historical potato yields and do some data manipulation; and type out documents. We also measure battery life and test the quality of hardware components, like cameras and microphones.
Our pick: Apple iPad Pro (11-inch, M4)
Dave Gershgorn/NYT Wirecutter
Top pick
Great tablet, okay laptop
Apple iPad Pro (11-inch, M4)
The M4 iPad Pro has a faster processor than the current MacBook Air lineup, and a better OLED screen to boot. But coders, web developers, media editors, and anyone who needs to use a lot of external accessories are likely to find iPadOS limiting.
The Apple iPad Pro (11-inch, M4) runs on Apple’s cutting-edge M4 processor and pairs it with a vibrant OLED display, making for a meaningful upgrade over previous generations. Apple has also redesigned the iPad Pro’s accessories, adding a new Pencil Pro and Magic Keyboard that both feel better to use than their previous-generation predecessors. The iPad Pro shouldn’t be your primary device for crunching numbers in Excel or typing out a report while referencing a ton of documents, since its screen gets cramped when multitasking and its keyboard accessories don’t beat out the keys on a traditional laptop. But for creative pursuits, or even as a second device for note-taking and casual work on the go, the iPad Pro is a flexible and powerful touchscreen tool.
Its M4 processor makes it speedier than a Mac laptop. All of Apple’s tablets perform well, but this version of the iPad Pro has Apple’s latest processor, the M4 chip, which you can’t even find in the company’s most powerful MacBooks yet. This means Apple’s pro tablets are faster than its laptops—for now. Loading and switching between apps and multiple browser tabs, playing 3D games, editing and exporting photos and videos, and using drawing and drafting apps all felt quick and fluid in our tests. The M4 chip also performed well in video-editing apps and exported a two-minute 4K video in just about one minute via the LumaFusion app. The processor also easily handled digital modeling in Nomad Sculpt, even when manipulating complex models with hundreds of thousands to millions of vertices. Note, though, that all of this was true of the previous-generation, M2-based iPad Pro as well. If you already have an M2 iPad Pro that you’re happy with, you have no need to upgrade.
Photographers and designers will appreciate the iPad Pro’s excellent OLED display. Dave Gershgorn/NYT Wirecutter
Its new OLED display is bright and offers fantastic contrast. The M4 iPad Pro has an OLED display instead of an LCD panel. Instead of shining a backlight through a picture, the OLED screen can change the brightness of individual pixels. The resulting difference in image quality is easiest to see while you’re watching a dark or moody movie, since OLED displays can individually dim or turn off pixels, giving the display a wider spectrum of darkness and shadow to show. The display is also impressively bright, though only when the automatic brightness setting is turned on: The iPadOS screen-brightness slider sets the display’s brightness to only about 500 nits, but when bright light hits the iPad’s front-facing sensors, the automatic brightness setting increases the display’s output all the way up to about 1,000 nits. That’s about twice as bright as the iPad Air can get, and it reaches the brightness of some OLED TVs.
The webcam is best used in landscape orientation, as you would on a laptop. Apple has moved the iPad Pro’s webcam to the center of the tablet’s right edge, where you’d probably expect it to be when using the iPad like a laptop. This design change makes your video calls look a lot more natural, especially when you use the Magic Keyboard or another case that stands the tablet in a landscape orientation.
It operates silently, and its battery lasts a long time. Unlike some laptops and Windows tablets we’ve tested, none of the iPads need a fan. Some parts of the tablet can get warm when you’re using it for long periods, but it will always be quiet no matter what you’re doing. Most people will have no problem getting the battery to last a full workday, and with light to medium use your iPad Pro can go multiple days between charges.
The M4 iPad Pro is designed to work well in a laptop-like setup with the Magic Keyboard and Pencil Pro. Dave Gershgorn/NYT Wirecutter
The Pencil Pro adds a “squeeze” feature and new sensors. The M4 iPad Pro can pair with Apple’s Pencil Pro, which you can lightly squeeze to bring up a menu of drawing tools. The Pencil Pro also has sensors to detect how you’re turning or angling it, so you can more accurately use tools with less-typical strokes, such as digital calligraphy pens or chisel-tip digital markers. As with the non-Pro version of the stylus, you can still hover over the iPad with the tip to highlight an object on the screen or preview an illustration mark, you can still double-tap the stylus to swap between drawing tools, and it still magnetically attaches to the side of the iPad to charge.
Squeezing the barrel of the Apple Pencil Pro brings up a menu with helpful shortcuts. Double-tapping the Pencil Pro item still changes between tools, same as on the second-generation Pencil. Dave Gershgorn/NYT Wirecutter
The Magic Keyboard case is easier to open and more comfortable to use. We have been skeptical of the Magic Keyboard case in the past because it’s very expensive and tough to open, and it makes the tablet harder to use in portrait orientation because you have to remove your iPad from the case to use it that way. However, Apple has made a few improvements that make the M4 version a much more enjoyable keyboard to use. It’s now much easier to open with one hand, to start, which immediately makes a good first impression. The keyboard and trackpad also feel sturdier than the previous generation, and its aluminum body makes the keyboard feel a bit more like typing on a MacBook. Apple also added a row of function keys, similar to those found on a MacBook keyboard. The M4 Magic Keyboard is the best keyboard case we’ve tested for the iPad Pro for now, but you can easily connect a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse to your iPad and just get a normal cover to save yourself some money.
The Magic Keyboard for the M4 iPad Pro adds a sturdy aluminum frame, an easier-to-open design, and a row of function keys. Dave Gershgorn/NYT Wirecutter
The 13-inch size is better for multitasking and comparing documents. The 11-inch iPad Pro is best for using your tablet like a tablet, as a second device that you can use to write notes, quickly enter information, or read and annotate documents. However, if you’re planning to use your iPad like a laptop—that is, in landscape orientation in the Magic Keyboard case and with multiple applications open at the same time—the 13-inch version has enough space for documents and windows to be open at a normal size. We found that multitasking similarly with the 11-inch iPad Pro felt a little cramped when working for extended periods of time.
The iPad Pro’s camera contains a lidar scanner that can serve to measure distance or access augmented-reality apps. Dave Gershgorn/NYT Wirecutter
Face ID makes unlocking the tablet impressively convenient. The iPad Pro has a face-scanning Face ID camera to log you in, similar to those on iPhones; the process might take some getting accustomed to if you’ve used an older or less-expensive iPad with a Touch ID fingerprint reader integrated into its home button or power button, but Face ID was quick and accurate in our testing.
The Pencil Pro is nearly identical to the second-generation Apple Pencil, but adds more sensors. A squeeze feature opens an on-screen menu. Dave Gershgorn/NYT Wirecutter
Flaws but not dealbreakers
An iPad still isn’t a great laptop replacement. A Mac or a Windows PC, such as Microsoft’s Surface, can do many common computer-y things that an iPad still can’t. Apple has attempted to solve part of this issue with a feature called Stage Manager, an optional mode where up to four windows can be open on the iPad at the same time. However, having more than two windows open makes the screen feel cramped, particularly on the 11-inch version, and it doesn’t seem as if Apple has entirely figured out multitasking on the iPad just yet.
It isn’t great for coding. Apple doesn’t allow coding apps such as Xcode or Visual Studio in the App Store, and even third-party web browsers on the iPad need to use the same rendering engine Apple uses for Safari, so the iPad is a bad choice for coding apps or testing web pages. (There is Swift Playgrounds, but it’s more of an educational tool than a serious code editor.)
It isn’t user-repairable. There are no repairs you can perform yourself on the iPad Pro. If you don’t have AppleCare+, Apple’s extra warranty coverage, getting it repaired can cost up to 85% of the tablet’s price.
It has no headphone jack. We don’t like that the iPad Pro omits a standard 3.5 mm headphone jack, something that’s still included on many Windows tablets and Apple’s own MacBook lineup. Either you need to get a dongle to use existing headphones or you need to switch to Bluetooth headphones.
Budget pick: Apple iPad Air (11-inch, M3)
Dave Gershgorn/NYT Wirecutter
Budget pick
The Apple iPad Air (11-inch, M3) offers most of the performance of the iPad Pro for a lower price, but you trade an OLED screen and some quality-of-life features to save about $400. The iPad Air offers laptop-grade performance thanks to Apple’s M3 chip, which is very close in performance to the M4 chip of the iPad Pro. The latest iPad Air also has a USB-C port and supports the Apple Pencil Pro, which provides intuitive touch controls and a squeeze feature and magnetically attaches to the side of the tablet to charge.
The iPad Air performs nearly as well as the iPad Pro for hundreds of dollars less. Dave Gershgorn/NYT Wirecutter
Its M3 chip brings it even closer in performance to the iPad Pro. We found that the iPad Air exported 4K and 1080p videos within seconds of the M4 iPad Pro. We exported a five-minute 1080p video in 40 seconds on the M4 iPad Pro and in 45 seconds on the M3 iPad Air. The M3 chip is powerful and efficient, and more than what most people need from a tablet. This iPad Air also offers the cheapest way to get a laptop-grade M-series processor—even the M1 MacBook Air, which is still being sold at Walmart, costs $650. (A MacBook has a built-in keyboard, though; you’d have to spend more to buy a keyboard case to pair with the iPad Air.)
It has a fingerprint sensor instead of facial recognition to unlock. Instead of Face ID, as on the iPad Pro, the iPad Air has a Touch ID fingerprint sensor on its power button. We found that unlocking this way takes a day or two to get used to, especially if you’re coming from an iPhone, but then it becomes an easy habit.
Dave Gershgorn/NYT Wirecutter
It’s compatible with a new Magic Keyboard. Apple released an updated Magic Keyboard alongside the M3 iPad Air, so now it offers the same great keyboard and touchpad experience as the iPad Pro. At $250, the Magic Keyboard is an expensive accessory, but it really goes a long way toward turning your tablet into a laptop. With the iPadOS Stage Manager feature, you can also layer and arrange app windows as you would on a regular Mac laptop. And when the Magic Keyboard is attached, you can plug the iPad Air into an external display; Stage Manager turns the display into your desktop, and you can still use your iPad normally as well.
It has a great 12-megapixel webcam. Similar to the iPad and iPad Pro, the iPad Air has a 12-megapixel webcam for taking video calls. It’s located on the right long edge of the tablet, so it mimics where a laptop’s webcam would be when you use the iPad Air in landscape orientation.
It runs the same apps, with similar battery life, as its Pro sibling. The iPad Air runs the same operating system and has access to all the same apps as the iPad Pro, and it has a Smart Connector for attaching external keyboards as well. It’s difficult for reviewers to run battery tests comparable to those for laptops on iPads, but we can say that in our testing we had no issue using the tablet as a second device throughout multiple days of work.
Other pro tablets worth considering
If you’re looking for an Android tablet: The Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra is bigger than a lot of laptops, with a 14.6-inch 120 Hz AMOLED display that has a long, skinny 16:10 aspect ratio. It’s also more expensive than many laptops, starting at $1,200. The tablet’s huge home screen lets you go wild with app widgets; you can fit widgets for email, your to-do list, a weather app, and a notes app, and still probably have some room to spare. Samsung’s custom version of Android unlocks useful features for the included S Pen stylus, such as automatic conversion of handwriting to text and the ability to select and mark up screenshots. The S10 Ultra is a good choice if you don’t mind a large tablet and primarily want to use it for office work, rather than more intensive tasks such as editing photos or videos. In our tests, the S10 Ultra took 4 minutes 5 seconds to export a five-minute 1080p video, completing the task significantly slower than the iPad Air, which took only 50 seconds. And editing photos in Lightroom wasn’t as easy; the iPad version of the app’s user interface is more refined and better suited for the tablet’s aspect ratio. But the S10 Ultra’s 16:10 aspect ratio does allow you to fit two documents side by side more comfortably compared with any other tablet we tested. If you want to type on the tablet, you’ll likely also want the Book Cover Keyboard, though it is expensive at $350. We tested the Book Cover Keyboard Slim, which is $200 and doesn’t have a trackpad like the pricier version, but its keys offered little travel and felt a bit mushy.
What to look forward to
Apple announced updated 11-inch and 13-inch iPad Pros, both powered by Apple’s new M5 chip, which adds more processing power for AI and graphics-related tasks.
The new processor may be a welcome addition for anyone who edits photos or videos on the iPad Pro, since Apple claims it has faster memory, faster storage speeds, a faster GPU, and up to 3.5 times the AI performance. This means the new Pro should be faster at editing tasks like automatic masking in DaVinci Resolve or splitting audio stems in Logic Pro.
Apple has also increased the iPad Pro’s base memory from 8GB to 12 GB. If you buy a version with 1 or 2 TB of storage, you’ll get 16 GB of memory. While these improvements are just OK on a laptop like the new M5 MacBook Pro, they’re huge for a tablet as light and thin as the iPad Pro.
The M5 iPad Pro also has a few other upgrades, including faster charging and Apple’s newest wireless chips. The M5 iPad Pro can fast charge at up to 60 watts, and Apple claims this means it will charge up to 50% battery in just 30 minutes. The tablet has Apple’s N1 networking chip, which includes Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and Thread, and the C1X cellular chip, which is faster and consumes 30% less power than the previous iPad Pro’s cellular chip. The M5 iPad Pro can also now output 120 Hz to an external monitor, including an adaptive sync feature for variable refresh rates when gaming.
The M5 iPad Pro is otherwise physically identical to the previous generation. That means that the previous M4 iPad Pro’s accessories should work with the M5 version; Apple lists the existing Magic Keyboard as compatible with both models.
The M5 iPad Pro is available for pre-order now, and ships on October 22. The base 11-inch model starts at $999, or $1,600 for 1 TB of storage with 16 GB of memory. The 13-inch version is $1,300, or $1,900 with upgraded storage and memory.
We’re also testing the Lenovo Yoga Tab Plus, the new 12- and 13-inch Microsoft Surface Pros, the OnePlus Pad 3, and the Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra for the next update to this guide.
The competition
The Asus ProArt PZ13 is Asus’s version of the Microsoft Surface but built with creators and media editors in mind. It has a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus processor, a 13-inch 60 Hz OLED display, two USB-C ports, and a full-size SD card reader. The extra USB-C port and SD card reader have a connected plastic insert to keep dust and debris out of the ports. Unfortunately, the unit that Asus sent us to test had issues with its audio and cameras that prevented us from recommending it at this time; however, we’ll try another review unit and update this guide with our findings. In the tests we were able to conduct, the Snapdragon X Plus processor was notably speedy when we launched and used apps, and the tablet offers 16 GB of RAM to play with. We edited photos easily and without hiccups, but when we started to export video, we found that the PZ13 took far longer than the competition—up to 20 minutes to export a five-minute 4K video.
The Microsoft Surface Pro 11th Generation is a major update to the Surface Pro line, replacing the usual Intel processors with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X chips. These chips deliver on the promise of better battery life and performance than previous generations, but we don’t recommend this version of the Surface Pro because of our experience with its screen. We first tested an OLED version of this display, and we found a significant grain-like texture that was especially visible on white backgrounds. Microsoft told us this was an interaction between the OLED panel and the touchscreen layer. In our opinion, this visible grain made the screen distracting and unusable. Microsoft declined to send another non-OLED version of the tablet to test. When we later tested two versions of the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 with touch LCD displays, we observed a lesser, but similar digital grain. There are also compatibility issues with the Snapdragon X processors, and companies like Google are still porting over key apps like Google Drive, which is expected to come later this year. You can find a list of compatible apps here.
Apple’s older M1 and M2 iPad Pros are now discontinued, but you can still find them refurbished. We recommend the new iPad Air with the M3 chip for most people, but if you’re a stickler for a 120 Hz refresh rate, which is available only in the iPad Pro line, we recommend going with the M2 iPad Pro.
Apple has also discontinued its M1 and M2 iPad Air models, but some M2 iPads can still be found at third-party retailers. However, we’ve seen them priced only $100 less than the newest models, so we think the M3 Air is worth buying instead, especially if it’s on sale.
This article was edited by Caitlin McGarry.