One of the recurring questions from new iPadowners is whether they should buy an Apple Pencil. The short answer is that unless you’re planning to do sketching, image editing, or handwritten notes, you can probably skip one. And if you are planning to do those things, you can probably get away with a cheaper third-party stylus if you don’t need the features of the Apple Pencil Pro.
With that out of the way, there are still plenty of other accessories you can and should consider. Strictly speaking, none of these are necessary — but you’ll be missing out on your iPad’s full potential if you don’t have them. I’d argue that for the average person, these are more significant than a stylus.
A keyboard/trackpad case
Or at least a keyboard and mouse
If the main reason you bought an iPad is illustration or casual entertainment, you don’t need a keyboard. For just about every other task, though, a keyboard is tremendously useful. Even replying to an email or entering a web address can be cumbersome without one, because you not only have to type on a screen with no tactile feedback, but do it in a tinier window. If I had to write an entire article using the touchscreen interface, I’d go berserk.
If you can afford it, you should spring for a case with an integrated trackpad. That might seem redundant — but a trackpad allows for precision selection a touchscreen just can’t manage. Some of you might prefer to buy a mouse and/or a separate keyboard for that reason. Just be warned, however, that this means more accessories to pack up when you head out the door.
Many people default to Apple’s Magic Keyboard cases, which support things like USB passthrough charging and quickly pulling your iPad off when a keyboard and trackpad are unnecessary. They’re the gold standard, but they’re also ridiculously expensive, and you can find other detachable cases (like ESR’s) that are good enough for a fraction of the price.
An external SSD
Although this has no doubt changed, with AI datacenters spiking the price of memory everywhere, Apple has historically charged way more for storage upgrades than they cost to manufacture. It was an easy way to turn a profit. You’re probably still being overcharged to some degree, since Apple doesn’t like sacrificing margins.
An external SSD is potentially the more cost-effective expansion option. You can still find a 256GB drive for $80 or less, and when capacity counts, it’s possible to ramp up to 1, 2, or even 4TB. No one should have to pay $2,300 (or more) for a 2TB iPad Pro.
I say “potentially” not just because of the inconvenience of an external drive, but because of some arbitrary limits within iPadOS. You can’t install apps to an external source, and even apps that support offline caching — like Spotify or Netflix — will force you to save those files on internal storage. You’ll be using your SSD mostly for “independent” files, like documents and personal movie libraries. Thankfully, it does have another purpose, which is shuttling files to and from other devices, such as your iPhone or laptop.
A USB hub or Thunderbolt dock
Count on wanting more ports
Part of the price for extreme thinness is the absence of ports. All iPads offer a single USB port and a Smart Connector, at best, and the Smart Connector isn’t good for much beyond Apple’s keyboard cases.
If you want to get real work done on an iPad, then, you’ll probably want some sort of USB hub. This turns a single port into several, and some hubs incorporate features like HDMI output or an SD card reader. Depending on the hub and your other accessories, this may be the key to making your iPad a road warrior, or even the heart of a workstation.
If you’ve got an iPad Pro, you should seriously consider a Thunderbolt dock. Thunderbolt 4 provides 40Gbps of bandwidth, as well as daisy-chaining, making it possible to connect more (and more powerful) peripherals. The right dock will not only expand your ports, but power your entire setup, and allow displays to be connected via USB/Thunderbolt instead of HDMI or DisplayPort.
The one drawback to Thunderbolt docks is that most are meant to stay put, and thus aren’t very compact. If you can make that work, though, you’ll be able to transition from couch to office mode by plugging in a single cable.
