Hi all,
For everybody who is curious what devices to get surface vs ipadpro for using the touch interfaces for creative tasks such as sketching I was able to do a more long term in depth comparison.
I recently got from Microsoft the surfacePro 4 and surfaceBook with the new performance base and own an iPadPro 12".
A common understanding is that iPadPros are not very usable because they run iOS and thus cannot run native PC apps and that with a surface you have touch PC that runs natively win10.
However the developer is in the detail.
Surface:
Pro:
win10 and native apps
Copy paste data and store files like a PC
Con:
In tablet mode win10’s virtual keyboard does not work as well as on iOS or Android.
Very often the keyboard overlays the area were you write.
the surfacepro suffers often from screen brightness flicker issues.
styles and gestures dont often work often flawless drawing while doing a gesture.
Bad battery time on surfacePro 4
Bad build quality of the display surfacePro 4 (bends a lot)
Entry level surfacePro has very limited RAM.
SurfaceBook comes with dual core CPU only and performance base fans are noisy
Cost for the more powerful CPU devices are pretty high
Stylus is not as usable and good as Wacom or Apple stylus
Tilt is not as well working. Pressure points when painting work good. However the steps between ghosting and drawing works very bad creating of broken lines when not pressing hard enough.
Win10 apps have to support HiDPI icons
The surfacePro is the ideal tablet device. All connectors are on the device.
But the CPU and GPU is pretty week - so is battery - and under heavy load it gets hot.
The surfaceBook is rather a laptop where you can detach the display. Then it runs similar to the surfacePro but you have no additional connectors (USB Display Power) or a build in stand. So you cannot just leave the performance base at home and take the display only with you.
iPadPro:
Pro:
Apps that are fully made for gesture navigation.
Apple Pencil works very well for sketching
Pressure points, tilt amount, steps between when not to draw and when to draw works very well.
Con:
cannot run Mac or PC apps
Usable but not as powerful file manager and clipboard tool
Example: you can copy and past images between iOS apps but not all. So with some image you have to make a copy in Photo gallery/icloud/dropbox if the app does not support clipboard sharing. But that is an
issue with the app not iOS.
So my curiosity was how and where could I use each device to its best.
I found that after initial curiosity that the surface products has a lot of flaws.
This starts with the need for HiDPI icons otherwise the software you run is killing your eyes.
Gestures in win10 are well supported but the creative apps has to do so too. in tablet mode
like when using the surfacePro for sketching the virtual keyboard very often does overlay areas where you write. So you start moving they keyboard around on the screen - which kinda harms the tablet UI experience significantly.
The stylus works good but it is still not as perfect as the Wacom or Apple Pencil. It still feels rather like a note taking device. After also calibrating the stylus is works pretty precise. Yet from all three the Apple Pencil still delivers the most natural experience when drawing.
For a portable device the surfaceBook with performance base comes only with an old dual core CPU and old GPU. For the cost of 3000$ thats is pretty hefty to ask for. But the build quality of the Book vs the Pro is great. The Pro tho feels very cheap when you work on the display and it bends inwards alot at the corners. For a 1.600 $ product I would expect something different.
Besides all that the Book is great laptop that gives you some touch abilities. The Pro is a nice sketching device that however is too weak for serious 3D work. On that small screen you might not want to do a lot of 3D modeling anyway.
The iPadPro offers fantastic iOS apps for sketching such as ProCreate Painter Concepts and more. Because they have to follow the touch concept of iOS in terms of drawing and interacting with those apps and tools with gestures is best solved on iOS or Android vs Win10.
The problem tho is what do you do when you want to work with a PC app. Natively does and will never work.
That is where it got recently a lot more interesting.
With AstroPad you can stream part of your Mac display onto the iMacPro and use the iPad hardware to gesture navigate and draw on your Mac. The speed with Studio is realtime. No lag - no artifacts. It is an amazing performance. Even over silly USB 2 which I have or Wifi. The new Studio app also offers gesture
undo redo and onscreen keyboard in case you need to name a layer or enter some number values for a tool.
Downside is that it costs 70$ per year. But if you earn your money with creative work it is not that much.
Consider how expensive the Wacom companion is.
With the new DuetDisplay you can mirror a screen on the iPadPro or turn the iPadPro into a 2nd display for Mac and PC. It has no on screen keyboard and no WiFi. But it works Mac and PC offers very fast performance and much improved gestures. There is still a tiny lag noticeable but it is not as bad as it
was a year ago.
Those two apps can give you basically gesture Wacom like experience for a fraction of the cost with an iPadPro.
I do not use the surface or iPad as the main work device. In my studio I work for hours on a workstation.
But I found when needed a tablet to draw onto (sketching - annotations) the iPadPro delivers a result that
works now today perfect for a faction of the cost of what the surface devices cost.
At the end of the day when work is done the iPadPro is unplugged and uses for browsing the web or watching Netflix.
When on the go being mobile and I need to sketch I use the iOS apps to do so. On that smaller screen iOS (same for android) apps work better because of the size of icons and limited screen space the UI uses. All apps can load and save into Photoshop.
I use iCloud and Dropbox and GoogleDrive to store and share the work which works pretty good.
We are in the time of Wifi now. When you have a newer mac you can also via wifi send image data etc between Mac and iPadPro but when I am in the studio I turn the iPad into a Wacom and I do the work right on the Mac/PC.
So iPadPro vs surface?
A good surface costs a lot more what the iPadPro costs. If you get the entry level 900$ surfacePro you are stuck with an m3 CPU so you want to opt at least for the i5 CPU with 8 GB RAM which will add $300.
So if money is tight the iPadPro might actually a better deal. With a longer lasting battery and better stylus also for sketching it is a better experience. The ability to stream Mac or PC apps onto the iPadPro
turning it into a Wacom like device is a killer feature.
If you have the money and want to go surface the Pro i5 is a good sketching tablet.
Because the surfaceBook is more a laptop I would not consider it as a sketching tool when detaching the display. The surfacePro will serve here better.
After working few weeks just with the surface devices I went back to the iPadPro since I have anyway. My 3D work I do on a serious workstation anyway. And for Netflix both the surfacePro and Book have a terrible sound quality.
So I would say as a sketching device iPadPro is still better.
If you want on the go also work with Blender the surface should be it.
They all have their strength but also serious flaws.
I did not mention the Wacom companion because I feel it is highly overpriced, heavy, and has a bad battery.