At the “Let Loose” event today, Apple launched the latest iterations of its iPad Pro tablets. They come in the familiar 11-inch and 13-inch sizes, but the marquee upgrades are all about what’s inside and what you see.
Slim Profile, OLED Display
To start, the new iPad Pro brings an incredibly slim profile making them the thinnest Apple product ever. The 11” model measures 5.3mm while the 13” one further trims it down to just 5.1mm.
Apple is able to achieve such incredible thinness partly thanks to the use of OLED displays, moving away from mini-LED in 2022 models. The company uses them in tandem, meaning one OLED panel is stacked on the other. It’s done to achieve fullscreen brightness of up to 1000 nits, according to the company, while the screen has a peak brightness of 1600 nits for HDR content.
The tablets retain other display features from their predecessors, such as 120Hz ProMotion refresh rate, True Tone, and P3 color gamut. Additionally, Apple will offer users an option to etch the protective glass with a nano-texture coating to reduce screen glare. But it will cost you an extra 100 bucks and is only available with the 1TB and 2TB models.
New M4 chip
Probably the biggest jump for these Pro iPads is the new M4 chip. It’s interesting that Apple has decided to make its next-gen chip debut with tablets rather than MacBooks. It shows the company is putting a lot of faith in them.
The M4 is built on a second-generation 3nm process and is claimed to have a 1.5x faster CPU and a 4x improved GPU performance than the M2. Its efficiency gains are impressive too, with Apple claiming it can deliver the same performance as the M2 at half the power. The chip also packs Apple’s most powerful Neural Engine yet, capable of a staggering 38 trillion operations per second.
But note that there are two core configurations of M4 available for different storage variants. The 256GB and 512GB models come with a 9-core CPU (3 performance, 6 efficiency), while the 1TB and 2TB models get a 10-core CPU (4 performance, 6 efficiency).
The higher storage variants also have 16GB of RAM compared to 8GB for the base models. However, the GPU and NPU are the same at 10-core and 16-core for all versions.
Upgraded Magic Keyboard and Apple Pencil Pro
Apple has complemented the iPad Pros with an upgraded Magic Keyboard and a new Apple Pencil Pro.
The keyboard is made thinner and lighter to match the slender design of tablets and it now includes a larger trackpad and function keys on top for quick access to settings screen brightness, mic, search, and more.
On the other hand, Apple Pencil Pro has new features like squeeze gestures that bring out the tool palette, roll gesture that changes the orientation of the pen or brush tools you’re using, and a haptic engine for feedback. You can also connect it to Find My network, so it will be easy to locate it if you happen to misplace it.
The new stylus is priced at $129 while the Magic Keyboard retails at $299 for the 11-inch model and $349 for the 13-inch version.
Apple iPad Pro (2024) Price in the US and Availability
| Size | Storage | Wi-Fi only | 5G |
|---|---|---|---|
| 11″ | 256GB | $1,000 | $1,400 |
| 512GB | $1,200 | $1,700 | |
| 1TB | $1,600 | $1,800 | |
| 2TB | $2,000 | $2,200 | |
| 13″ | 256GB | $1,300 | $1,500 |
| 512GB | $1,500 | $1,900 | |
| 1TB | $1,900 | $2,100 | |
| 2TB | $2,300 | $2,500 |
Both 11-inch and 13-inch iPad Pro (2024) models are available for pre-order starting today and will be available in-store from May 15th.
