Apple’s ever-expanding range of tablets just grew a little wider.
Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, has just announced a brand new 9.7-inch iPad Pro at the company's launch event in Cupertino, California.
The device is a spin-off from the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, a high-end productivity tablet that first launched late last year.
"We believe that iPad is the perfect expression of the future of personal computing," said Cook. "Since then, many people are telling us that the iPad Pro has become their primary computing device."
Apple’s new iPad Pro borrows much of its predecessor’s hardware heft, including four speakers and support for the Apple Pencil.
However, the 9.7-inch version has a significantly better camera in contrast to Apple’s 12.9-inch iPad Pro. The new device has a 12-megapixel rear-facing camera, a 5-megapixel FaceTime camera, and support for 4K video recording. It also supports Apple’s GIF-like Live Photos feature, and borrows the front-screen flash already seen on the iPhone 6S.
Excitingly, the iPad Pro 9.7-inch edition makes use of Apple's top-end A9X chipset, which is the company's latest system-on-a-chip, the same featured in the full-sized iPad Pro. The chip also features an integrated M9 coprocessor, and supports the always-on 'Hey Siri' feature.
"To date we’ve sold over 200 million iPads with a 9.7-inch display,” said Phil Schiller, Senior VP of Worldwide Marketing, speaking at today's event.
"The majority of people coming to the iPad Pro are coming from a Windows PC," he continues. "This is an amazing statistic. There are over 600 million PCs in use today that are over five years old. This is really sad. These people could really benefit from an iPad Pro."
Schiller also revealed that the new iPad Pro has a display that offers a brightness of 500 nits, and 40% less glare than iPad Air 2.
Pricing will start at $599 for the 32GB model, while the 128GB version costs $749. There's also a brand new 256GB version – the first for iPad – that will mark up at $899. Orders begin on March 24, with an on-sale date of March 31.
