Screen size: 11 inches or 13 inches | Display resolution: 2420 x 1668 (11-inch), 2752 x 2064 (13-inch) | Storage: Up to 2TB | RAM: Up to 16GB | Weight: 0.98 pounds (11-inch), 1.28 pounds (13-inch) | Battery life: Up to 10 hours | Front camera: 12 MP | Rear camera: 12MP
Read our full Apple iPad Pro (M4) review.
The latest iPad Pro is more of a tablet than most people need, full stop. But if you’ve got money to burn, you’re willing to use an iPad as your primary laptop or you just want the most impressive iPad possible, this is it.
We gave the new iPad Pro 84 points in our review. Like the iPad Air, it comes in 11- and 13-inch models: The former starts at $999, while the latter starts at $1,299. That’s a bit pricey for most people, but for the money you get a number of premium, if unnecessary, upgrades over other Apple tablets.
The most important of these is the Pro “tandem OLED” panel. Compared to the LCD screen on the iPad Air, this produces richer colors and deeper, more uniform black tones. Gaming and scrolling web pages look fluid thanks to their fast 120Hz refresh rate. It can also be very bright, up to 1,000 nits in SDR and up to 1,600 nits with HDR highlights.
This is where the “tandem” part comes in. Basically, Apple stacks two OLED panels on top of each other to improve the high brightness, which is usually weak (relatively) for traditional OLED displays. It’s an improvement, but what you really need to know is that this screen is a delight — one of the best we’ve seen on any consumer device, let alone a tablet. For watching movies or editing media, you really can’t do better. This display technology is used in both the 11- and 13-inch iPad Pro models, unlike the previous generation, so which one is better just depends on your personal preferences.
The Pro’s design is broadly similar to that of the iPad Air, but thinner and lighter. The difference isn’t huge on paper, but the Pro’s thinner frames make them easier to hold. This is especially meaningful for the 13-inch model.
Another upgrade is the new Apple M4 SoC title, which is only available in the new Pros at the moment. If the M2 is more expensive due to the more unusual and pro-level iPad functions, then the M4 is more lethal; it easily chewed anything we threw at it. But it should be even more secure in the future, and might save a few seconds here and there if your work involves heavy media editing, heavy machine learning and the like.
Additionally, the base iPad Pro has 256GB of storage, which is double that of the iPad Air. It also supports more advanced features like hardware-accelerated ray tracing in its GPU, which could help light up future games, and a fast neural engine, which should help with the AI features Apple has planned for the coming months and years.
If you indeed want to expand things, note that the 1TB and 2TB configurations have double the RAM (16GB) and use the more powerful version of the M4 with an additional processing core enabled. Jumping into one of those SKUs costs a minimum for $1,599, though — and that’s before you add any accessories. Those who want to use the iPad Pro as an (expensive) media tool don’t need this; if you work with memory-hungry applications or need the best, be aware that it will cost you.
The iPad Pro is the only iPad with Face ID, which is always a little easier than accessing the fingerprint scanner. It is the only one with a Thunderbolt USB-C port, which is technically faster for transferring large files. It sounds more robust than the Air, with four built-in speakers instead of two. Its camera system isn’t that different, but it includes a light for scanning documents easily, and it can record video in Apple’s ProRes format. Its front camera is on the long edge, too. As for accessories, the Pro alone can use Apple’s latest Magic Keyboard, which itself is more expensive but has a premium aluminum finish, a wider trackpad and a row of functional keys. It also supports the Pencil Pro stylus (but not the second-generation Pencil).
If most of these features sound niche to you, then yes, that is the idea. Unless you’re willing to pay for that horrible OLED display, the iPad Air comes close enough at a more palatable price. And while the iPad Pro is a best-in-class tablet, it’s still ultimately an iPad. Some creative professionals may just use it as a replacement for a laptop, but for many, iPadOS makes multitasking and other computing tasks more integrated than a MacBook would be. Looking at the features Apple has announced the next major update for iPadOS, which is not changing anytime soon. (The most popular addition there? The new calculator app.) That said, the Pro is a great iPad — fast, small and stylish. And it’s expensive.
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