Apple Pencil Pro hands-on: Squeeze, Roll, Hover — oh my!

I wanted the Apple Pencil Pro, leaked a few days before Apple’s “Let Loose” livestream on May 7, to have two things: FindMy support and a Space Black colorway.

Apple only answered one of those prayers. Hallelujah! The Apple Pencil Pro has FindMy support. As clumsily forgetful as I am, this is a necessity.

Sadly, there’s no Space Black Apple Pencil Pro, but the Apple Pencil Pro still has a ton of new features that I got to play around with at a recent New York City showcase.

“Squeeze me!”

Like the rumor mill predicted, there is, indeed, a new squeeze gesture on the Apple Pencil Pro. When I squeezed the Apple Pencil Pro for myself, allowing my forefinger to sit on the flat edge while pinching it, I felt some barely there, satisfying haptic feedback that brought up the tool palette in the Freeform app.

Giving the Apple Pencil Pro a lil’ squeeze.

And just like that, I was able to select the pen type, color, line weight, opacity, and more.

Of course, this won’t be the only feature that the squeeze gesture can access. This perk has opened up to developers, so you’ll enjoy using the fun new gesture with other apps, opening a whole new world of Apple Pencil Pro fun.

The barrel roll

The barrel roll was my favorite feature to experiment with at the showcase. This feature lets you employ a twisting motion with the Apple Pencil, expanding the cool things you can do with your digital artistic creations.

For example, in Procreate (a drawing app), I pulled up a colorful illustration of a woman with dangly blue earrings.

To add a cool spiral design to the earring, all I needed to do was use the “Liquify” feature before rotating the tip of the Apple Pencil Pro on the sapphire gem. And just like that, I transformed her earring, solid and a bit dull, into a twirly, swirly fun adornment.

I also tried the barrel roll feature in Procreate Dreams, an animation app.

I dragged an object into an animation scene. While twisting the Apple Pencil, not only could I have the object traverse the scene from side to another, but I could also ensure that it rotates to show different dimensions as the scene progressed. I’m no animator, but with this feature, I felt like I was ready to animate the next Pixar film. (Hire me, Disney!)

Hover comes to M2 iPad Air

Thus far, I tried all of these features on the new M4 iPad Pro.

So I decided to try these features on the newly announced M2 iPad Air with the same success. It’s also worth noting that Apple expanded the hover feature to the M2 iPad Air, allowing you to preview your stroke before committing to it.

I know this is obvious, but it’s still worth noting that the iPad Pro’s display is significantly better than the screen on the iPad Air. It was so easy for me to scribble and play around on the iPad Pro, which has a brilliant, vivid OLED display. However, the iPad Air was showcased in a bright room, so its less premium panel wasn’t has visible as its upper-tier sibling.

You can really see the difference between the iPad Pro’s 1,600-nit display (peak) and the iPad Air’s 500-600 nit screen.

Haptic feedback is subtle, but welcomed

I played around with the Apple Pencil Pro’s haptic feedback after pulling up the tool palette (with the new squeeze gesture, of course) and tapping on the undo button.

Apple Pencil Pro on the iPad Pro

A semi-circle of undo icons popped up. The more icons I passed with the Apple Pencil Pro tip, the more that disappears (and gets undone) from your screen. Along with this feature, I felt a subtle “tick” of haptic feedback with each icon that I touched.

You can also feel haptic feedback when you use the double tap feature to switch between the eraser and pen, for example, giving you more confidence during your workflow.

Apple Pencil Pro compatibility

No, the Apple Pencil Pro isn’t compatible with any previous models of the iPad Pro, not even the 2022 variants.

Why? There appears to be some sort of new charging mechanism for the Apple Pencil Pro that makes it incongruent with older models. As such, the Apple Pencil Pro is only for the new M2 iPad Air and M4 iPad Pro models. (You can also use the USB-C Apple Pencil for these new iPads, too.)

Another bummer is that the Apple Pencil 2 is not compatible with the new iPads.

The Apple Pencil Pro is $129 via Apple’s official website, the same price as the Apple Pencil 2.

Apple Pencil Pro