How To Choose The Best iPad For Your Drawing Needs Without Spending A Cent More Than Necessary
To make this happen, you have to analyze the key 4 iPad characteristics that make a difference for architects and interior designers and see which option for each of them fits your needs best.
Let me quickly walk you through the process and help you make the decision by the end of this page:
Key iPad Characteristic 1: SIZE
You need to decide what’s most suitable for your daily needs:
An 11 or 13-inch iPad. I wouldn’t recommend the “mini” version to anyone because there’s just not enough real estate to do anything productive.
But if you’re used to sketching in a notebook, the 11-inch closely resembles that feeling. It’s a nice size for casually sketching and fleshing out ideas.
On the other hand, the 13-inch will fit your needs much better if you plan to spend extended time tracing, drawing, and illustrating on your iPad.
IMO, 13 inches is just the right size for comfortably drawing over a long period of time.
Key iPad Characteristic 2: SPEED
Here, only one thing matters regardless of your needs:
Get an Apple silicon chip. Anything from M1 to M4 will have more than enough power to cover your everyday needs as an architect or interior designer.
Plus, an Apple silicon chip is likely to last you for many years, which is great for future-proofing.
Credit: Apple
Key iPad Characteristic 3: STORAGE
In my experience, everything over 128 GB is sufficient. Just don’t go with less.
For example, the 128 GB iPad I’ve been using since 2020 is only about ¾ full. But I do supplement that storage with 2 terabytes on the iCloud.
This is something I highly recommend you to do too, for 2 reasons:
Extra storage and the ability to back up your iPad and ensure you can continue working as usual even if it gets lost or stolen.
My own iPad is 67% full with 128GB since 2017
Key iPad Characteristic 4: LIDAR
Lidar is actually that little extra camera on the back of your iPad Pro iPhone Pro that allows you to scan the room and build a 3D model around it.
You can see why that can be really useful and apps like Morpholio Trace already have a feature for it. And it will get better and better.
IMO, this is the only feature that separates the iPad Pro and iPad Air as far as architects are concerned, especially if you don’t want to be spending lots of time scanning rooms.
Yet, there’s a way to use Lidar even without an iPad Pro:
If you have the iPhone 12 Pro (or newer versions), you can do the same thing with its camera. And then easily export the scan to your iPad.
Credit: Morpholio Trace