It’s not just how slowly video files transfer, for high-quality video files simply trying to watch or scrub through a clip can lead to stuttering. The problem is that the relatively low speeds become a problem fast. Mechanical external hard drives work just fine with the 2018 12.9-inch iPad Pro I tried it with, Wwich is great when you have to grab some documents or copy a small amount of information from an archival disk.
This means that it’s far, far cheaper to buy an external hard drive if you want to do iPad video editing with large media files or multiple projects. The problem is that the high-performance, high-quality solid state memory Apple uses comes at a massive price premium. This means that either way, you’ll have to buy a new tablet in order to get the capacity you want. Why not just get an iPad with a large amount of internal storage? Well, for one thing, if you already own an iPad you can’t simply increase the internal storage. This means you can keep large media files and documents on an external drive and either access them directly from there via a cable or copy them over to the iPads internal storage should you need them un-tethered. Since the advent of iPadOS, Apple’s tablets have native support for external hard drives, via USB-C or Lightning to USB adapters.
