Apple announced new iPads to finish out the year for 2022 in a press release. They launched, well a step up from an incremental upgrade, for the base lineup of iPads. The iPad 10th generation brought a lot of color, and I’ll link my unboxing of all of the colors in the description, so check that out if you’re interested. In this video, I am unboxing the incremental upgrade that came to the Pro lineup, which is the M2 iPad Pro.

The M2 iPad Pro

I have the 12.9” in silver with 1 TB of storage to unbox. Check out my full unboxing and first impressions here on YouTube.

All of my Apple products up until this point, I normally purchased in Space Grey, but decided to switch it up and pick up Silver this time. And it looks incredibly clean, crisp, and stunning!

Because I work from my iPad full-time as a content creator and designer, I opted for 1 TB of storage. I do also pay for additional storage for iCloud, but it is nice to have some files and data stored locally on my iPad too. My previous iPad (the M1) had 2 TB of storage. I definitely did not get anywhere close to filling up that iPad since I no longer edit videos on my iPad, so I think the 1 TB will be more than enough storage for me with the M2 iPad Pro.

It’s always nice to have extra storage, but I survived three years of college note-taking, assignments, and papers with 64 GB on an iPad 6th generation. I think everyone’s storage mileage will vary, so purchase as much storage as you’re willing to spend money on, and then make use of Google Drive, iCloud (which I personally use and recommend), or external hard drives if you feel that you need even more storage.

Apple Pencil Hover

I love all the iPads I’ve tried over the years, but the iPad Pro, specifically the 12.9” size, has always been the one I turn to for my full-time design and content creation work. While this was a more incremental upgrade between the previous version of the iPad Pro, the M1, the main new “feature” that drew me in was Apple Pencil hover.

Without even touching the display, the Apple Pencil can essentially interact with it. Apps and the interface are animated, and in places like notes or Procreate, I can essentially get a live preview of what my brush will look like before I even make contact with the screen. This means I am cutting out a lot of guesswork and some trial and error with Apple Pencil hover.

99% of my time on iPad is using the Apple Pencil, as someone who has a very design-focused workflow so I think the Apple Pencil hover is a very welcomed feature for designers and artists, especially if you already have an even older model of the iPad Pro.

Other upgrades

Of course, M2 is obviously faster than its predecessor but I’m not sure how much of a difference this makes over the M1 version since the iPad Pro is already extremely powerful for what you can do on it. DaVinci Resolve is coming to iPad, and maybe that will be the push Apple needs to get some version of Final Cut Pro on a future version of iPad, for those of us who prefer Final Cut as our editing software.

For the first time, iPad users can capture ProRes video and transcode ProRes footage up to 3x faster, so if you’re a content creator, you can capture, edit, and publish video from a single device, the M2 iPad Pro. Personally, since I love the 12.9” size, I find that to be a bit cumbersome but when I’m in a pinch, at least I have that option, which is pretty cool.

Final Thoughts

And that was the M2 iPad Pro. Pretty incremental upgrades for iPads this season if you’re the type that likes to update your tech pretty often, but I think these incremental upgrades in both the M2 iPad Pro and with the 10th generation iPad might be what some people want or need to upgrade from models that are several years old or much older. Those are just some of my initial thoughts.

Let me know what you think down in the comments, and if you’re getting one of the newly announced iPads. And don’t forget to check out the full unboxing and my first impressions over on YouTube!