The 13 inch iPad is basically the perfect for reading comic books
Edit: I see I omitted a word in the title lol can’t edit it
So for anyone making the jump to all digital as I had I just have to say that the 13 inch iPad Pro has blown me away.
Before I always felt like I was making trade off between physical and digital. While I liked a backlit display and mentally just couldn’t handle the waste of accumulating so many floppies that I couldn’t store and were a chore to donate, digital screens always had some kind of drawback.
Also I don’t mean to just glaze a 1300 dollar single use case tablet. I can also recommend the Lenovo P12, which is a 12 inch tablet with a great DPI and costs under 300 dollars.
But the 13 inch IPad Pro has literally solved all of my complaints.
The screen will use the ambient light in the room to white balance the display. So white paper or a white surface, depending on the kind of light around you doesn’t appear as literally white due to the tint of the light source illuminating it. Your brain naturally accommodate this and uses the hued white as a reference point to normalize how you see color. But digital screens can only show “true” white, which is why they are so grating. But the IPad will actually adjust the tone of every color to reflect the white balance of the room, which harmonizes with how your brain perceives color with non digital things.
The screen has an OLED display which means the blacks are unilluminated pixels on a very color absorbent black screen. Not only does this allow for perfect contrast, but darker tones are illuminated less intensely than brighter ones, which actually reduces eye strain of staring at a backlit display, without sacrificing any vividness. It doesn’t just look beautiful but it’s a lot more comfortable for your eyes to look at than an ordinary digital display.
The screen has a very high DPI (digital pixels per inch) resolution. In keeping with the “retina” display spec that Apple markets. That’s marketing jargon, but the effect is that your eye cannot make out individual pixels, which means text and images appear extremely crisp, as crisp as they would on a printed page. This is an uncommon feature of tablets this size and it also reduces eye strain.
The screen size can accommodate the full height and width of a standard comic page. This means that you can read each page without zooming or squinting or otherwise viewing the art in a smaller size than you would when reading a standard trade paper back. The exception is two page spreads which can be read horizontally, but cannot be fully accommodated. However due to the more squared aspect ratio, it can come close. Otherwise you’re getting the full experience seamlessly.
The auto brightness is seamless. I know a lot of devices have auto brightness, but I’ve never seen one as effective as the pro. It’s always about as low as it cons possibly be without causing glare or visibility issues.
120hz refresh rate means pinching to zoom or flipping through pages is seamless. The fast processor means loading large books, scrolling, basically anything comics related works instantaneously.
All of these effects added up and created a digital display that I literally find perfect in every way. I’ve always hated reading on any digital device because after a while it just felt like an assault on my eyes. But now I can’t see myself ever going back.
Especially because the art looks so gorgeous on the panel compared to glossy paler and can be read in low light. And of course the storage/waste.
Obviously I still support physical copies and comic book shops, and I’m still looking for ways to support my fav titles. And it’s a huge privilege to spend this amount of money for a device for the sole purpose of reading comics. But I just feel like I have to shout from the rooftops because it’s made me so happy
and I’m mainlining titles now because it’s so comfortable to read.