My Favorite iPad Pro Tools and Accessories
Check out the video version of this blog post on my YouTube!
The iPad Pro is a powerful and versatile device by itself, but adding in a few accessories can enhance it even more. I will be sharing my favorite accessories that I use with my 2017 iPad Pro 10.5 inch. And yes I did say 2017. Even though it’s a few years old it still performs very well. Also along the way, I will also share some apps I use regularly.
Alright on to my first accessory and that is this sturdy adjustable metal stand by Kabcon. This has a couple of use cases for me. My main reason for getting this stand was to prevent myself from slouching. When using my iPad, I didn't like holding it up to eye level as my arms would get tired. And if I laid it flat on my desk, I would find myself slouching forward to use it which really made my upper back and neck sore. Having the iPad upright on the stand is really nice as I can see the screen at the proper height and there is no need to pick it up leaving both my hands-free. It has two joints so you can adjust it as needed. For when I'm not using the iPad directly, I will always have it off to the side for listening to music on Spotify or playing a video on YouTube in the background. It's nice to have it on the stand-off to the side, and I think it looks very sleek on the stand.
Moving on to my next accessory and that is the Apple Pencil 1. I use this mainly for designing thumbnails for my YouTube videos. My graphic design app of choice is Affinity Photo and it works very well with the apple pencil. I don't use it for note-taking as much nowadays but back when I was in college I would literally write all my notes using it. It prevented me from carrying multiple notebooks in my backpack, and I actually took better notes that were also more organized.
The note-taking app I used in college is called Good Notes 5. You can find it in the App Store for around $10. Here are some of my favorite things about this app:
It works really nicely with the apple pencil and its touch pressure feature.
With a click of a button, I could adjust the color and width of my pencil.
I could easily draw shapes and straight lines with the geometric tool
Probably the coolest feature of this app is that you could search through your notes using keywords. However, this only worked well if you had legible handwriting which I did. And that actually leads us to my next accessory.
Writing using the Apple Pencil on the iPad and writing on a piece of paper is very different. On a piece of paper you have some resistance and friction while writing, however, on a plain iPad screen, the apple pencil will feel very slippery and all over the place, which made my handwriting very sloppy. To fix this problem I picked an anti-glare matte screen protector for my iPad. There's a bunch of these on Amazon, but this one is from iCarez. What this does is provide some texture on the iPad screen so that there is some resistance to mimic writing on a piece of paper. It doesn't feel 100% like I’m writing on paper but it’s better than nothing and has improved my writing experience.
Alright moving on to my last accessory and that is this keyboard case from Fintie. It closes a magnet latch and the Bluetooth keyboard is actually also magnetic and comes off the case. I can place it at these different grooves here for different tilt positions to fit my needs. Or I can completely remove it which is what I do currently. I don't use the keyboard as much nowadays, but back in college I left my bulky laptop in my dorm and this iPad keyboard case setup was my go-to daily driver. It was very useful and quick to pull out when I went to the library or cafe to do some writing for class or answer some emails. This does also have a slot to store my apple pencil, but mine currently doesn't fit because I have some extra accessories on it.
Alright, those are my favorite iPad Pro accessories. I hope you’ve found this blog post helpful!