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I’ve been off the grid for about two weeks because of exams, but now I’m back and wanted to share how I’ve been studying during this time. Hopefully, this will also clear up some questions you might have about the 2018 iPad.
For the past two weeks, I’ve been using the 2018 iPad for studying, and surprisingly, I’ve come to like its size. I initially thought it would feel too small compared to my usual 12-inch iPad Pro, but the screen size actually works well for studying. That said, I’m still not entirely convinced it can be used as my only device.
After the unboxing, I downloaded my go-to note-taking app from the App Store. Since I was focused on exam prep, I didn’t need to load all the apps I normally have on my main iPad.
During the first week, I mostly used my laptop to study. Typically, I split the screen to read lecture materials on one side and take notes on the other, but the iPad 2018’s screen is a bit too small for effective split-viewing. Once I got used to using my laptop as a second screen, though, studying became much easier.
One big plus for the iPad 2018 is its portability. I could study on the bus without it feeling awkward, unlike with larger devices. On my laptop, I used WPS to read lecture notes, whether they were in .doc, .ppt, or PDF formats. WPS has a familiar Microsoft interface and is available on iOS, but it wasn’t great for PDFs because I couldn’t search within them.
I exported my notes as PDFs to Google Drive, then answered and graded questions directly from the PDFs. This study routine was pretty intense. My review questions, which I wrote on the iPad 2018, looked the same across both iPads since I synced everything via iCloud.
After about a week and a half, I started experiencing serious eye strain from staring at my computer screen, even with my computer glasses on. Oddly enough, I don’t get eye strain when using the iPad by itself. If you’re curious, there are ways to prevent eye strain.
Writing on the iPad 2018 feels great—there’s really no difference from the iPad Pro experience. However, the new Apple Pencil was a bit slippery at first and took some getting used to. It almost felt like I was using this tech for the first time, which was strange.
Due to the eye strain, I switched back to my iPad Pro but continued taking notes on the iPad 2018. I mainly used Notability and GoodNotes on the iPad Pro. GoodNotes is particularly handy because it lets you open multiple tabs. Notability was useful for syncing my notes in real time between the two devices, although it could be a bit annoying when pages took time to load in the middle of studying—nothing too major, though.
The screen quality on the iPad 2018 isn’t as good, and it makes a noticeable noise when writing, which I found distracting at first. However, after a day or so, I got used to it and stopped noticing. Initially, though, it was quite bothersome.
