Fancy tablets for the rich and famous: Apple's iPad Pro and Google's Pixel C

If you’ve just pocketed that holiday bonus and you’re looking to treat that special someone to a new tablet, both Apple and Google have new hardware on shelves now.

Here’s a look at how the iPad Pro and Pixel C stack up.

Heavyweight iPad Pro packs a punch

Let's get this out of the way: the iPad Pro is massive. It's only just over three inches bigger (on the diagonal) than the iPad Air 2, but you detect the difference even without having them side by side. With just a glance you'll catch your breath it's so noticeably larger. 

It's also more than a half-pound heavier than the iPad Air 2.

In fact, if you're going to use the iPad Pro, you have to relearn how to carry it. You can't just one-hand the thing like you've been doing with your iPad Air 2. You have to carry it like it's an old Oxford dictionary, or an atlas, on the forearm held against the chest. 

One of the things that I loved about the iPad Air when it first came out was that I could sit in a chair and use it for reading a book without my arm falling off after five minutes. I can't do that with the Pro. It's too big.

But with the size come some benefits. 

The most obvious is for watching videos. The extra size in the screen makes a difference, especially when watching high-definition video. And the speakers in the iPad Pro are vastly superior to any other iPad. 

I believe it will be appreciated by artists and designers, who have a robust palette to work on. And with the Pencil—it's sold separately—the Pro becomes a great tool for them. But I'm not an artist, and I've not yet found a way that I can use Pencil. 

Taking a page from Microsoft's Surface, Apple has also released a keyboard case that turns the Pro into a true laptop replacement. I tried to use the Pro as a replacement for my laptop while in San Francisco on assignment last weekend, and both mechanically and physically, the Pro and its keyboard work great. The drawback for me was that I hadn't come up with a workflow, and Dropbox just doesn't play very nicely with iOS. 

So until I figure out how to streamline my document creation—and my need to manually save everything in a place that makes sense to me—I'll keep my laptop, thank you very much.  

I'm going to keep playing around with this Pro, though. If nothing else, it'll be great for watching movies over the holidays.

iPad Pro comes in three configurations: 

• 32 GB with Wi-Fi: $1.049
• 128 GB with Wi-Fi: $1,249
• 128 GB with Wi-Fi and cellular: $1,429

Google's Pixel C is magnetic

There's some amazing things going on with magnets in consumer products these days, and the Pixel C is one example.  

Designed by Google, the Pixel C ($649 and $799) is a hybrid tablet that works best with the keyboard ($199) that was designed to go with it. The two easily snap together with some clever magnet configuration. You can put the keyboard on the back while you use the Pixel as a tablet, or on the front to protect the screen when you're carrying it around. 

And when you want to use the Pixel as a laptop, the magnets pair up differently, and the screen folds up. 

The display is a beauty, bright and with a resolution of 2560 x 1800 (308 pixels per inch). It's a reasonably sized 10.2 inches, which works fine, but because of the way the Pixel is designed, it means that even though the keyboard is full-sized, there is no extra space around the keys. So while in theory the two pieces are held together well enough that you can use the Pixel on your lap, you'll need a narrow lap for it to rest on. Otherwise you'll be trying to figure out how to balance the thing on one knee.

In terms of hardware specs, the Pixel is built to deliver desktop-quality performance, with NVIDIA's Tegra X1 "super chip" and 3 GB of memory. The Pixel comes with either 32 GB or 64 GB of storage. While it's got Wi-Fi and Bluetooth communications, there is no cellular option. 

Pixel is built for Google's latest Android operating system update, 6.0 Marshmallow, which integrates voice commands, just say "Okay, Google" to initiate, and Google Photos. And, of course, it completely integrates with Google's other apps, from YouTube to the business productivity software, Google Docs. 

Google reports that battery life should be about 10 hours, depending what you're doing with the Pixel. 

It's a sweet little package when it's all closed up with the two halves magnetically attached to each other. People are going to be watching you with great interest as you slide them apart and snap them together to get to work. And they're going to like what they see.