According to CNET’s iPad Pro review, Apple’s just-released tablet is capable of supporting USB 3.0 transfer speeds via its Lightning connector. The report, which corroborates a finding by iFixit, and was later brought to our attention by MacRumors’ Juli Clover, is notable for a few reasons.
First, it would make the iPad Pro the first and only device that Apple makes (that’s not a Mac) to support USB 3.0 transfer speeds. Secondly, it means that copying large 4K video files to the device will be much more feasible.
The report goes on to say that support for the higher transfer speeds will, unsurprisingly, require a new adapter that supports the added throughput. That means that those of you who already own Apple’s Lightning to USB or Lightning to SD Card adapters will need to upgrade to take advantage of the faster speeds.
USB 3.0 is much faster than the USB 2.0, which is used in all existing Lightning cables and adapters made thus far. USB 2.0’s maximum theoretical speed is only 60MB per second, while USB 3.0 maxes out at 640MB per second.
This is absolutely wonderful news for those who are looking to use the iPad Pro for editing large video files. 4K video is notoriously large, and one lengthy 4K filming session could theoretically fill a 128 GB iPad Pro with relative ease.
The iPad Pro can easily handle 4K video editing thanks to its beefy specs, but the bottleneck has always been transferring large files to these US. 2.0 equipped devices. Now that it seems that this obstacle will shortly be a thing of the past, it makes the prospect of editing video on the iPad Pro something that I’m looking forward to doing even more.
There’s no word on when these new adapters might surface or how much they will cost, but we’ll definitely be keeping our eyes peeled. What do you think?