Apple launches a 12.9-inch tablet iPad Pro with stylus

The iPad Pro features a large 12.9-inch touchscreen display. TREVOR TAN

SAN FRANCISCO - The much-rumoured iPad Pro was finally unveiled during the special media event held at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium on Wednesday.

Featuring a large 12.9-inch touchscreen display with a resolution of 2,732 × 2,048 pixels or 5.6 million pixels, it comes with the new third-generation 64-bit A9X processor that has twice the memory bandwidth of A8X chip. The new tablet is Apple's largest ever.

Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller said the iPad Pro's performance is faster than 80 per cent of portable computers in the market.

The iPad Pro is 6.9mm thin - 0.8mm thicker than the iPad Air 2 - but weighs up to 723g, which is 286g heavier than the iPad Air 2.

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Users can pair the new tablet with an Apple Smart Keyboard (US$169) which has been designed specifically for the iPad Pro. The Bluetooth keyboard also doubles as a case.

The iPad Pro also has another accessory: a stylus called Apple Pencil (US$99) - the first for an iPad. The touch-sensitive Apple Pencil allows users to draw strokes depending on the pressure the user exerts on the stylus.

The iPad Pro comes in 32GB and 128GB, with the 128GB model being the only 4G LTE model. Pricing starts from US$799 (32GB, Wi-Fi). The new tablet will be available by November this year. Local pricing of iPad Pro and its accessories is not available yet.

Apple also announced the launch of the iPad mini 4, which is essentially a smaller, 7.9-inch version of the iPad Air 2 with an ultra-thin 6.1mm design. It runs on A8 processor with an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera. Pricing starts from $548 and it is available from the Apple Online Store.

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