Summary

• The new M4 iPad Pro has extreme power and speed, perfect for creating professional-quality videos and 3D graphics.
• While the OLED display is gorgeous, the upgrade from the M2 iPad Pro may not be noticeable for casual users.
• Unless you need the latest tech, the M2 iPad Pro is still a solid choice, as the M4 may not offer significant improvements for all users.

I would like to begin this review by admitting something to you. In my initial hands-on article about the 2024 iPad Pro (written after an hour of demos in a controlled environment), I raved about the new iPad Pro's sleeker form factor, superior OLED screen, and better accessories. While all of those praises are still technically true, now that I've had a week to actually use it, I am not sure if they make a big enough difference that M2 iPad Pro owners really need to upgrade.

Let me explain. The 2024 iPad Pro is indeed noticeably thinner than previous models. But the iPad Pro, especially the 13-inch model, is increasingly a deskbound device, not a handheld one. So the benefit of a sleeker form does not matter as much as it would for something like a phone that you carry everywhere. And while the OLED panel is technically superior to the mini-LED panels used in the M1 and M2 iPad Pros, the latter displays were gorgeous panels in their own right. If the new M4 iPad Pro screen is an A-plus display, the prior M2 iPad Pro display is still a solid A-minus even in 2024.

Yes, the M4 silicon is extremely powerful, boasting chart-topping benchmark scores with real-world zippiness that makes Android tablets and even my MacBook Air feel a beat slow. I can open Final Cut Pro sitting 12 apps deep in the background right now, and the app would still open immediately with the editing timeline ready to go, without any perceivable "loading" period. But I can also say that about my M2 iPad Pro too, even to this day. In fact, the majority of casual users will not see much performance boost from the M4 over the M2 (other than battery life, which can be noticed by anyone). You really need to be creating professional quality videos, making 3D graphics, or complex music beats, to really be able to detect any improvement.

Don't get me wrong, the new M4 iPad Pro is absolutely the most capable and powerful tablet in the world right now. If you're in the market for a new tablet or iPad and you want the best, this is it. But honestly speaking, you don't "need" this iPad Pro if you have the M2 version already. This is yet another flex of a machine that's best for someone upgrading from a several-generations old iPad Pro or someone who doesn't mind splurging on the best tech possible for the sake of having the newest one.

About this review: This review was written after testing a 13-inch iPad Pro provided by Apple. Everything mentioned in the review, except for battery life and exact dimensions, also apply to the 11-inch iPad Pro. Apple had no input in this article.

M4 iPad Pro: Pricing and availability

The 2024 iPad Pro is available for pre-order now and officially goes on sale on May 15. The tablet comes in an 11-inch or 13-inch size, with the smaller model starting at $999 and the 13-inch version starting at $1,299. Do note that these prices are for tablets with just the base 256GB storage and Wi-Fi (not cellular) connectivity, you'll be spending more for any additional options. The new Magic Keyboard costs $299 for 11-inch and $349 for 13-inch, and the Apple Pencil Pro costs $129.

For reference: my review unit of the iPad Pro is maxed out, with 2TB storage, the optional nanotexture anti-glare glass, and eSIM capability. With the Magic Keyboard and Apple Pencil Pro, the entire set costs $3,077.

Hardware

Brightest OLED panel and the most powerful silicon in a sleek body

As mentioned, the new iPad Pro is thinner (this 13-inch model measures 5.1mm, while the smaller 11-inch is a hair thicker at 5.3mm) and lighter than its predecessor. This is great if you intend to hold the iPad Pro for long periods, but as I said, I don't think many people are buying the 13-inch iPad Pro to hold in their hands. This tablet feels designed to be used with a keyboard on a table. This is even more evident by the fact that Apple moved the front-facing webcam to the top bezel for use while the tablet is in landscape mode.

Still, even if you won't actually gain significant real-world benefits with this thinner form factor, it does make for a visually impressive piece of hardware. Look how slim it is!

The 13-inch screen is the first iPad to use an OLED display, and it is a gorgeous panel indeed. Apple is using a technology dubbed "tandem OLED" which uses two layers of OLED panels to allow the screen to reach a higher maximum brightness (1,000 nits for sustained brightness and 1,600 nits for peak HDR content), more than would otherwise be possible with an OLED screen this large. The Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra's OLED screen, by comparison, has a sustained brightness around the 500 nits mark (960 nits peak). The benefits of an OLED panel include its ability to display truer blacks and punchier vibrant reds. Looking at the iPad Pro screen in a vacuum, it does look amazing.

But when I put the M4 iPad Pro side-by-side against the M2 iPad Pro, the difference wasn't as jarring as I was expecting it to be. The mini-LED display tech Apple designed for the M1 and M2 iPad Pro still led to superb display panels, and the blacks (while not as deep-black) are still much better than a conventional LED or LCD screen.

Ultimately, OLED tech is the best display tech in the world, and the iPad Pro jumping to OLED is a welcome move. But I'm just saying the jump isn't as noticeable as it was when the iPhone switched from outdated LCD to OLED tech with the iPhone X. One thing I really do love on the M4 is the nanotexture glass that gives the iPad screen this matte, anti-reflective coating. It's something we've seen in the iMac, and the recent Galaxy S24 Ultra, and I'm officially a big fan.

The most newsworthy upgrade, however, is the silicon. This is the first time Apple has debuted a new M-chip in an iPad instead of in a "real" computer at launch, and it has some PC industry experts, including several of my colleagues at XDA, wondering if this move was done in order to get ahead of the upcoming Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chip, which, like the M chip, is also built on ARM architecture and is claimed (by Qualcomm) to outperform the M3 chip.

The 13-inch screen here is the first iPad to use OLED display, and it is a gorgeous panel indeed.

Whatever the case, the Snapdragon X Elite is not available in the real world yet, so the M4 (or the M3 for that matter) can still lay claim to being easily the most powerful and efficient silicon in the world right now. The M4 is built on 3-nm architecture just like the M3, but has 28 million transistors compared to 25 million in the M3 and 20 million in the M2. It's worth noting that the M4 is considered an iterative upgrade over the M3 (while the M3 was a pretty substantial upgrade over the M2 due to the move from 5nm to 3nm). But we have to remember that there was no M3 iPad Pro, so technically speaking, the M4 iPad Pro is quite an upgrade over the M2 iPad Pro in terms of processing power. But as I already spoiled in this article's intro, you're really only going to see the difference in extreme use cases. I'll elaborate more later in the performance section.

It's perhaps worth mentioning that Apple quietly removed the rear-facing ultra-wide camera from this new iPad Pro, so technically, the camera system got a "downgrade," but it doesn't really matter. Who in the history of the world has ever carried an iPad Pro outside to shoot sweeping landscape photography? The ultra-wide camera was always pointless on iPads.

The cameras that you may occasionally actually use, like the LIDAR scanner and the standard wide camera, are still there, and they appear mostly unchanged in terms of specs. The back of the iPad, other than the redesigned camera module, look the same as before.

New accessories that are increasingly not optional

The 2024 iPad Pro has new accessories that you will likely want to buy alongside the tablet. These include a redesigned Magic Keyboard that's been improved in nearly every way. It's a bit thinner, marginally lighter, has an aluminum palm rest, larger trackpad, and F-keys that were missing in the previous Magic Keyboard.

I was already a big fan of the prior Magic Keyboard for the iPad, as I was able to type on it at full speed, and the smaller-than-usual trackpad never bothered me due to iPadOS' excellent optimization. So this new Magic Keyboard with a more premium build and larger trackpad is just lapping the competition. I can type and get around UI with a Magic Keyboard much faster than on the same style keyboard cases for Android tablets made by Samsung, OnePlus, Xiaomi, etc.

But this guy is also very, very expensive, at $349 for the 13-inch model. Third party keyboard cases can do 80-90% of the same thing at literally 1/4 or 1/3 the price. The Magic Keyboard is really a luxury bonus.

The Apple Pencil got an upgrade to the Pro moniker, and it's basically the excellent 2nd generation Apple Pencil but with a squeeze function to switch between modes, a gyroscope to sense a new "rolling" gesture, more precise brush strokes, and a vibration motor inside the stylus for a more tactile experience. The Apple Pencil Pro also now supports Find My. This is still the best mainstream tool for sketching and jotting notes, making its closest rival, the S Pen for Samsung tablets, feel a bit less elegant (but then again, the S Pen is not a separate purchase for Samsung tablet owners).

Software

iPadOS isn't as limited as skeptics say, in my opinion

Every time a new iPad Pro comes out, tech enthusiasts debate whether the iPad can be a "computer replacement." We had this debate on the XDA call following this iPad's announcement, and I've been seeing it all over Twitter the last few days. I'd say most techies lean towards "no" because the iPad is still running on what is essentially a forked version of iOS.

But I don't think the answer is so black and white, especially with iPadOS making some major progress with multitasking in recent years. I am currently writing this review on the iPad Pro at a coffee shop. I have a pair of Viture AR glasses plugged into the iPad Pro to use as an "external display," which on iPadOS projects information in widescreen landscape form (as opposed to the square-ish iPad Pro screen itself). With this setup, I am able to run XDA's CMS (which isn't optimized very well for a mobile web browser) on the iPadOS's "external" screen in desktop format. iPadOS's Stage Manager feature allows me to run multiple windows in resizable, floating form. On the main iPad screen, I have the iPad Pro spec sheet and Adobe Lightroom open. With this setup, I've been writing this entire article, editing photos in Lightroom, and uploading it all to the CMS without any issues.

Of course, I could do all of this faster on an iMac or a MacBook plugged into a large external monitor. But I am currently traveling, and I generally live a digital nomad life in which I do not have access to deskbound monitors and computers. For my work as a tech writer who works remotely, the iPad Pro is doing just fine.

I have also noticed that the previously terrible iPad file system has been greatly improved with the last few iPadOS updates. I can save images and documents directly from the Gmail app to the Files app and open them elsewhere.

Even if I am not using a pair of glasses as external monitor, I find iPadOS (version 17.5 running here) to be pretty solid at multitasking. Opening apps in split-screen mode is not hard, I can control the size of the grid, and I can quickly launch an app in "Slide Over" mode.

Final Cut Pro for the iPad Pro is so capable (both in terms of hardware and software) that I have, in fact, edited and produced several videos for my YouTube channel directly from the iPad Pro. So I can, in fact, use this machine as my sole work machine. Now would I actively choose the iPad Pro over a 16-inch MacBook Pro if I'm at home? No. But if I'm on the road? If I'm on a four-day work trip at a trade show and only want to lug around one machine? The iPad Pro is my device of choice.

But everyone's mileage will vary. If you're an office worker drowning in Excel sheets, or if you need to juggle eight windows all the time, then of course MacOS (or Windows) is still better than iPadOS. But I don't think the idea of an iPad Pro being a capable computer replacement is far fetched, especially for the younger generation of remote workers, or people whose entire work is based on creating content. I can edit Instagram Reels a lot easier on the iPad Pro than on a MacBook, that's for sure.

Performance

Overkill for an iPad

The new iPad Pro is an absolute beast of a performer. As I said earlier, there was nothing I could throw at it to slow it down. I played an hour of BEAST: Bio Ex Arean Suit Team and NBA 2K24 on it, and both games ran smoothly without noticeable stutters or slowdowns, even when I exited out of the game a few times to check Twitter or respond to emails. Each time I swiped back to the game, it was ready to go. An hour of heavy gaming like this only drained about 20% of the battery.

For Final Cut Pro, this new iPad has a new feature called Live Multicam which allows live, real-time streams from four iOS cameras. The footage shows up on Final Cut for iPad directly, and I can preview the footage or control the cameras directly from the iPad. Once the footage is complete, everything syncs with Final Cut Pro and I can begin a multicam edit right away. That's actually too advanced a use case for me. My videos are shot with one camera, and for my workflow, I can export a multi-track 11 minute 4K/30 video in ProRes 422 in 2:42 seconds. I tried the same video on the M2 iPAd Pro and it took 3:24. True, not a life-altering difference, but this is because the M2 is already so powerful. I can't do a direct comparison with an Android tablet for example, because Final Cut Pro is for Apple machines only. But I can say from my own experience that if I do the same type of video exporting on an Android tablet or upper mid-tier Windows laptop (like a 2023 Huawei MateBook X Pro running Intel's Raptor Lake i7), the export time is typically six to eight minutes.

I am not a big benchmark guy, but for the sake of this review, I must run some. Here are the numbers. We can see the M4's single-core score is really high. I was also impressed with performance in the Wild Life Extreme Stress Test on 3D Mark, with the framerate hovering between 60-100fps throughout the entire 20 minute test.

Furthermore, watching movies on this iPad is a joy, with the bright OLED panel and tremendous quad speaker setup that pumps out the loudest and fullest audio of any tablet I've tested. The improved camera position means you can make video calls now without appearing that you are looking off to the side.

Battery life is very good, thanks to the M4 being more efficient. For basic productivity work, like writing into a CMS on Safari, with Slack running in background, while Spotify is also streaming music, the iPad Pro drains only about 4-5% per hour. For gaming, as mentioned, I can game for about 4-4.5 hours on a single charge. I haven't binged on videos yet, but with the OLED screen, I'm pretty confident this guy can last for an entire 13-hour flight of video watching.

But really, most of what I just typed above, other than the Live Multicam and the battery life, could apply to the M2 iPad Pro. The 2024 iPad Pro is extremely powerful, but so was the M2.

This is where I think that a lot of the talk about how Qualcomm's X Elite is "more powerful" than the M3 and M4 is actually a moot point, at least for tablets. Sure, the fact that Windows laptops will finally have silicon as powerful and efficient as the MacBook is a major development, and my Windows-using colleagues are rightfully excited. But for iPads? What people love about the iPad is the superior app ecosystem, plus the way the iPad fits seamlessly into their workflow. Android and Windows tablets are still not on that level, especially Windows tablets (which are usually terrible as a touchscreen device).

The iPad Pro is an absolute beast of a performer.

Should you buy the M4 iPad Pro?

You should buy the M4 iPad Pro if:

• You want the best possible tablet available right now
• You are a creative professional looking for a do-it-all device
• You want a single machine for work and play, and you have money to splurge on the best

You should not buy the M4 iPad Pro if:

• You already own the M2 iPad Pro
• You don't live a life that requires portable computing power
• You've been using an iPad or iPad Air and are perfectly fine with its performance

The M4 iPad Pro is absolutely the best tablet on the market right now. But if spending anywhere from $1,300 to $3,000 requires hesitation on your part, then I think you should consider the M2 iPad Air or buy a second-hand M2 iPad Pro instead. Apple is pumping out silicon at such a breakneck pace (the M3 isn't even 10 months old), there's no point playing this "chase the latest silicon" game if you're an Apple fan, especially since Apple silicon chips are so powerful they're future-proofed for years to come.

What I'm more curious about is how much longer Apple plans to arbitrarily keep the iPad Pro and MacBook as two separate products. They can run on the same silicon. There's increasing overlap in features between MacOS and iPadOS. Why not give us the ultimate all-in-one device? That's probably a pipe dream, because the rules of capitalism dictate that Apple not cannibalize its own products. But I haven't touched my MacBook all week and I've been perfectly fine.