All posts

13" iPad Pro: 1 month later!

10:47 video

The new M4 iPad Pro does all the iPad things, just slightly better: games, video, and many ways to be creative, with all the limitations of other iPads. We know they’re not Macs, and most pro apps don’t work the same on iPad. But if you want the absolute best iPad, this is it. After a few weeks, here are five great updates and one downgrade.

1. Design

The 13-inch is about 100 grams lighter than the previous iPad Pro, and you notice right away. At 5.1 mm, barely thicker than the USB-C port, it almost feels like a novelty, like we’ve arrived in the future. It’s barely thicker than my 14-inch MacBook Pro’s display, but it’s a full computer. Space Black looks really good, somehow even better than on the MacBook Pro, though it shows more fingerprints than silver.

2. Tandem OLED

The headline feature. It’s about the best, most color-accurate consumer display you can get. It sustains 1,000 nits edge to edge, and stacking two OLED panels allows up to 1,600 nits for HDR. For comparison, the MacBook Air peaks at 500 nits and many desktop displays at 300–400. It’s usable outside and in very bright rooms, and HDR movies pop, even compared with the mini-LED in the previous iPad Pro or the MacBook Pro. I kept backing up scenes in Ghostbusters: Afterlife just to look at the bright plasma beams against the black night in awe.

Some people have complained about visual noise in certain situations, but I haven’t noticed it. With ProMotion, this is simply the best display I’ve ever seen, and I can’t wait for it on MacBooks and desktop displays.

UGREEN sponsored this video, with its 2-in-1 magnetic foldable charging station.

3. The camera finally moved

The FaceTime camera is now on the landscape edge. I often use my iPad for video calls because the picture is better than my Mac’s, except you always looked like you were looking away. Now you look like you’re actually talking to the other person, and I almost always use my iPad in landscape anyway.

4. M4

The 256 GB and 512 GB models get a 9-core CPU (3 performance cores); 1 TB and 2 TB get 10 cores and 16 GB of memory instead of 8. Both have a 10-core GPU.

  • GFXBench: 46 fps on the 9-core and 48 on the 10-core, about on par with the 15-inch MacBook Air and about 50% faster than the M1 iPad Pro.
  • Geekbench 6 single-core: about 20% faster than the M3 MacBook Air and 55% faster than the M1 iPad Pro.
  • Multi-core: about 12% faster than the M3 MacBook Air, and the higher-tier model about 10% faster than the base.

But what can you do with all that power on an iPad? I didn’t notice anything dramatic versus my M1 iPad Pro. Maybe games open slightly faster, and some games may benefit from ray tracing.

5. The new Magic Keyboard

There’s also the Apple Pencil Pro with squeeze, barrel roll and animated brush shadows, but I’m not an artist and don’t handwrite notes, so I won’t give an opinion. The Magic Keyboard, though, I use about 90% of the time on my iPad.

  • Aluminum keyboard deck, which should wear much better than the old rubbery material that absorbs oils and gets dingy. Unfortunately the outside is still that rubbery material.
  • Bigger trackpad and palm rests, with plenty of room for gestures.
  • Haptic trackpad, like MacBooks, quieter and easier to click.
  • Function row for brightness, volume and media. I’d happily trade the app switcher and Siri keys for keyboard-backlight keys.

One negative: the new hinge sits the iPad further back, making it even more top-heavy. On your lap, unless you keep a hand on it, your beautiful new iPad will topple backwards. On a desk, it rocks more when you touch the screen.

The downgrade: speakers

Making it thinner left less space inside, and the speakers on the 13-inch M4 are a noticeable downgrade from the M1 and M2 iPad Pros. I heard it right away: less bass, maybe less range, and about 2 dB quieter side by side. It’s not a reason not to buy it, but I was disappointed.

If I had Tim Cook’s ear, I’d ask why it had to be thinner at all if that meant worse audio, or still no more than the 10 hours of battery the original iPad had in 2010. I’d take the old thickness with no downgrades and maybe more battery.

Verdict

This iPad only does iPad things, with every iPad’s limitations, but you may enjoy them more on top-tier hardware. My days of trying to make the iPad my everything computer are probably over, but when I travel it’s indispensable, and now it’ll be a bit faster and better looking.

Some links in this post are affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I may receive a small commission. See my ethics statement.

Watch on YouTube

Keep reading

Related posts