Apple Inc.’s iPad Pro tablet ($799 and up) is almost comically large. Seeing it for the first time, I was reminded of those first-generation cellphones that more resembled a shoebox than a svelte piece of technology. In its length and width, the iPad Pro is comparable to many 13-inch laptops, including Apple’s own Macbook Air. While it is surprisingly thin (at 0.27 inches, it’s just a bit thicker than the iPad Air 2) and light (weighing roughly the same pound and a half as the original iPad), there’s no getting around it: The thing is huge. You almost expect this tablet to have a superhero backstory: It fell into a vat of chemicals one night and came out supersized.
But the iPad Pro is no joke. In fact, it’s probably the most serious tablet on the market today. Notwithstanding some not-so-trivial caveats (size being No. 1), it is a tablet that “works for work.” After using this jumbo iPad for a couple of weeks, I’m still not sure where to put it—it doesn’t fit in most of the bags I’ve long used for tablets. But I know what I’m going to do with it: Write documents, edit drafts, type emails.
