The iPad was an incredible piece of tech when it revealed, taking the main principles of the iPhone, but putting them in a much larger tablet that was super intuitive to use for anyone that held it, and the rest is history. In comes the new M4 iPad Pro which redefines what we thought was possible in this form-factor and is once again a mind-blowing piece of tech.
The new iPad Pro is Apple’s thinnest ever product and even knowing that fact before I unboxed it, I was absolutely blown away at how thin and light it is. I reviewed the 13-inch version which comes in at just 5.1 mm thin, and in turn, it’s also lighter making it a lot more comfortable for one-handed use.
Previously when I’d used the 13-inch iPad Pro, it was a glorious device, and great when paired with the Magic Keyboard, but it was a little on the awkward side when holding like a tablet, and that’s no longer the case at all.
The other big wow moment is the screen, which was always impressive, but the new Ultra Retina XDR display has not one, but two OLED displays that Apple calls a tandem OLED display to allow for maximum brightness with perfect contrast. You can expect to get upto 1600 nits of peak brightness in HDR and 1000 nits of full-screen brightness.
This results in a screen that looks vibrant, bright but maintains the perfect blacks that OLED are known for. There’s just something so special about scrolling through photos taken, or watching a video with HDR support on this screen. I’d absolutely go as far as saying that it’s the nicest screen on any portable device that I’ve witnessed.
As far as other design changes go, the front camera has now been moved to the landscape position which just makes more sense in the context of how we use these devices in 2024.
The other big improvement is the new M4 chip, with Apple skipping right past the M3. This is the first device to utilise the chip, and it has obvious improvements over the M2 that came before in the iPad Pro, but the reality is, unless you’re really pushing the device with DaVinci Resolve or something of that ilk, you’re probably not going to notice much of a difference.
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What did really impress me though is the gaming performance. I checked out Assassin’s Creed Mirage, as can seen below, which seems to run at a fairly solid 30FPS and your save will also sync from the console version. It’s extremely exciting to see a recently released AAA game on the iPad, it’s getting to the point that with a bit of consistency, the iPad will become a genuine handheld gaming device for AAA games.
All of the major accessories have also been improved, starting with the Magic Keyboard that is a big, big improvement. It’s now thinner and lighter, but it has an aluminium keyboard rest which feels nicer to touch and looks more premium.
There’s now a row of 14 function keys along the top and there’s a new, larger glass trackpad that has haptic feedback and also feels really good. The entire experience is just that little bit better and feels like a better partner to the iPad Pro.
Similarly, the new Smart Folio adds next to nothing in terms of thickness, but it can now fold at more angles, giving you even more flexibility in how you use your iPad in the case, so if you’re someone that uses the iPad more as a traditional tablet, without need for the Magic Keyboard, it’s great to see this improved too.
An update that creatives will be super excited about is the Apple Pencil Pro, which has a number of new features. You can now squeeze the pencil to bring up a tool palette (or assign it to a number of shortcuts) along with haptic feedback as well.
There’s now a gyroscope built in to allow for a new barrel roll feature that allows you actually angle your brush or tool to whichever way you prefer which is also supported with hover as well.
The only other way I’d like to see Apple improve on the device is by using the other edge as an eraser, but I can see all of these improvements being super helpful with creating digital art or taking notes on the iPad Pro, which I know is a big part of a lot of people’s use cases.
I think I’d go as far as saying that the iPad Pro M4 is the best portable computing device on the market, and it’s no secret that Apple Silicon is more than capable, but I hope that Apple continue to take it further on the software side with improvements such as Stage Manager helping, but not going far enough to make this an everyday PC for most people, which is a shame as it’s a great 2-in-1 device that frankly goes beyond anything else on the market (and it’s not even close).
