I currently have an out of date iPad that I use to play chess and play music from the Naim app when I’m in the listening position, or at the kitchen table.
I use it to watch the odd YouTube video as well.
I’ve never bought a keyboard for it, I’ve always just used it via the screen.
I’m just wondering, whether an iPad with a bigger screen would be better?
Also there are things called iPad Pro, but I’ve never found out what that means and why that’s supposed to be better.
I bought one recently and went for 256 gb memory as my previous one ran out of memory and could not update. The ipad pro has a faster chip, but for most casual users the standard ipad will be fine.
iPad Pro’s are(were?) quite heavy…… as I discovered 
.
ATB, J
I have the first generation larger iPad Pro and it will need replacing at some stage. I’m thinking of going back to a smaller regular iPad or the Air, as I find the larger iPad Pro a little too big at times - I originally needed the larger screen for work, but I don’t use it for that so much now.
The newer iPad Pro is very powerful and is likely over specified for most users unless you do video editing or work with very large files. They do have the best screens, cameras and the 4 speakers.
The iPad Air comes in the smaller and larger size, so that is a good middle option. But the 10th generation is very good as well and probably the best buy for general use - media, web, mail etc.
Thanks for these facts and suggestions.
The decisive reason for buying it is that I’m hoping it will make it harder for me to fumble my moves when playing chess on chess.com.
Because sometimes my fat fingers hit the wrong square and I do a duff move on the normal sized iPad, and although that’s occasional it is extremely frustrating and needs to be eliminated if possible.
As regards listening to music, I quite often have the iPad on a stack of cushions on my lap in the listening chair, and I make playlists on the hoof so I keep the iPad in front of me while I’m listening - but if I do this with a larger iPad, it will block out more of the sound from reaching my ears directly.
Anyway, it seems from what you say that the pro is completely pointless for me.
So perhaps I should just get myself a larger iPad Air if that’s what they’re called and see how that goes?
I just checked and my current one is an iPad seventh generation.
I will need one though with a 3.5 mm jack plug for my wired headphones so I suppose I’d better check which ones have that as well.
The reason this is has sprung to mind today is that my son and I are playing in our first ever English Chess Federation rated chess tournament tomorrow, so it’s made me realise I need to train with better equipment in future.
For fat finger issues, see if the Apple Pencil works as a pointer for your game on the new ipad.
If you don’t want to fork out for the Apple Pencil, then there are pen devices which work just as well for most purposes - only cost £10 or so on Amazon. I got one for my youngest granddaughter and she uses it with Procreate on an iPad. I’ve even got one in my “manbag” as I have pudgy fingers too, which I use when sending texts from my iPhone.
Don’t know if it’s allowed, but enter “pen for touch screen”, and it will come up with something like the link below.
If possible I would visit an Apple Store and view the range of iPads.
The pro models have a far better screen which is fairly obvious when you see them side by side . My first pad was a basic model which I changed after a couple of days as the screen resolution was not as good as my Samsung that it replaced.
Snce then I have only bought the pro model regarding a headphone jack no iPad has these but you can you a small adapter lead they are about a tenner.
Oh, that’s a good idea thanks, Deeg.
Thanks, I think I’ve heard of these but never looked at them properly.
That’s a good idea, although the only one I can remember going in before was down in Kensington when I was in London with my kids late last year.
There’s no iPad store where I live and I rarely go to cities these days.
Would be interesting though to see a really good quality iPad screen versus my iPad screen and see if that made any actual difference to playing chess or watching YouTube videos.
They don’t come with 3.5 mm jack sockets, you’d need to get a USB C dongle DAC.
Or a much cheaper USB C to 3.5mm adaptor lead. Even the Apple one only costs £9.
Didn’t realise they still did those.
I have an older normal sized iPad Pro and a two year old large iPad Pro. To be honest it’s too heavy to use conveniently and the next time I buy one it will be back to the standard size.
The iPad Pro does have a better display and performs better in almost every way, but the modern iPad and iPad Air are plenty good enough for normal use.
One other thing to know is that you can buy them as WiFi only or WiFi and 4G/5G. The WiFi only ones don’t have GPS built in (at least none of the ones I have used do) so personally I would always buy a WiFi and 4G/5G one.
Apple stopped putting useful things like 3.5mm sockets on its devices some time back. The newer iPads have a USB C socket. I’ve just had a look on Amazon and I see that you could buy an appropriate adaptor for significantly less than £10.
Depending on what specification you require you could look at an Apple refurbished product. I went unto the Bath Store a couple of weeks ago with a friend who wanted to upgrade and he purchased a 2022 iPad Pro 11inch M2 for £649.00
Mire powerful, and iirc bugger screen, but much more expensive and the power nit needed for the sort of usage you have cited. You don’t say size of your screen, but more recent are available larger - tge question is whether the larger size is worth cost and (slightly) increased bulk, which only you can decide - a lot will depend on your eyes! If there is an Apple Store anywhere you can get to, then I suggest going and looking.
I use mine for the things you describe, plus emails, online browsing, portable music playing, calculator, some simple spreadsheets, document viewing, note scribbling, etc., and non-pro, non air is perfectly adequate, though when I got a new one last year after old obe’s battery died and no longer replaceable I got a standard but with the largest memory, cost of higher models simply not justified, especially pro.