Is The iPad Air Good Enough For Artists? Or Do You Need The iPad Pro?
Outside of more traditional tools for painting and drawing — such as brushes, paints, pencils, and so on — tablets like the iPad can also be very useful. Particularly for digital work, or even for touching up scans of physical media. There are loads of apps that can help you with this, too.
However, the big question you want to ask yourself before investing in one of Apple's tablets (assuming you haven't already) is: Would the iPad Air get the job done, or is the larger and more expensive iPad Pro what you really need? It may be a tough call, depending on what you want to use the iPad for, and what your price range is.
The 6th Gen. iPad Pro starts at $799 for an 11-inch display, but can go up to $1,099 if you prefer the 12.9-inch XDR screen (for a larger surface and higher resolutions). Alternatively, the 5th Gen. iPad Air only offers a 10.9-inch display but starts at $599 ($200 to $500 less than the Pro), and can go up to $749 ($50 to $350 less than a Pro) — depending on whether you opt for 64GB or 256GB of internal storage.
There are other differences between the iPad Air and Pro to consider as well, though how important those discrepancies are is ultimately a matter of what kind of art you intend to make with it.
Which iPad to choose?
If money is no object, then the iPad Pro is the obvious choice, as it offers more storage options (from 128GB to 2TB) in addition to a larger screen. However, if you're on a budget — or simply don't want to pay for more than you need — the choices are a little more nuanced.
Ignoring display sizes and storage space, both models of iPad are relatively similar. They each claim the same amount of battery life (roughly 9-10 hours), support the 2nd generation Apple Pencil, and can record up to 4K video.
That said, the camera system on the Pro is a bit more advanced, and offers a 2x optical zoom (not just the 5x digital zoom of the Air), supports Smart HDR 4 for sharper photos, can also record 4K video using ProRes at 30fps, and can utilize audio zoom and stereo recording for videos. Overall performance is also better with the Pro thanks to its M2 chip, which includes a 10-core GPU (the Air has an 8-core), up to 100GB per second of memory bandwidth, and has the option for up to 16GB of RAM (versus the Air's 8GB cap).
It mostly comes down to the kind of art you plan to make, as that boost in performance may not matter. The Air should be able to handle digital illustration and painting with no problems, but projects like animation or video editing are much better served by the beefier processing power of the Pro.