After months of waiting, today’s the day you can order a 12.9-inch iPad Pro online in 40 countries around the world.
The supersized tablet starts at $799 and goes all the way up to $1079, not including accessories like the $99 Apple Pencil, $169 Smart Keyboard, and various cases ($79 for silicone and $59 for smart covers) that are also on sale online. The first Pros will be delivered on Friday with $19 one-day shipping. If you select free shipping, your Pro will arrive on Monday. Some Apple Store locations are offering free in-store pick-up starting today, so check your nearby store’s inventory to see if that option is available.
Apple’s productivity-minded new device comes in silver, gold, and space gray. There are also three price points: $799 for a 32GB Wi-Fi model, $949 for a 128GB Wi-Fi version, and the behemoth 128GB Pro with Wi-Fi and cellular connectivity for $1079. That’s MacBook Air pricing—or 21.5-inch iMac pricing—but Apple is comparing the Pro to notebooks and desktops.
Apple The $99 Apple Pencil, sold separately from the iPad Pro, is the company’s first iPad stylus.
The mega tablet has Apple’s new A9X chip, M9 coprocessor, 2732×2048 screen resolution, better speakers than previous iPads, and a multi-touch display that supports a stylus for the first time. The Pro runs iOS 9, which has multitasking features like Split View, Slide Over, and Picture-in-Picture, all designed with the Pro’s giant display in mind. The machine sounds perfect for creative professionals, and may replace laptops for many of them, Apple CEO Tim Cook has claimed.
We went hands-on with the iPad Pro, Apple Pencil, and Smart Keyboard back in September and were pretty impressed, but now we’re putting the iPad Pro to work to see if it can really replace our MacBooks. Stay tuned for the definitive Macworld review.
Did you order an iPad Pro today? Tell us which one and why you picked it. If you’re holding off, we want to hear from you, too, so share your reasons in the comments.