As per rumors in recent months, Apple today announced the new iPad Pro, based for the first time on OLED technology displays and already equipped with the new, more powerful Apple M4 processor, which debuts as a preview on the new tablets, in view of the expected focus on the artificial intelligence functions that will be the protagonists of the new versions of iOS and iPadOS, which will be revealed at the upcoming WWDC 2024.
Finally OLED
Starting from the design, the new iPad Pros stand out for being incredibly thin, 5.3 mm for the version with 11-inch display and 5.1 mm for the one with 13-inch screen, both formats expected. The new form factor was made possible thanks to the transition to OLED technology for the display, which, being devoid of backlighting, reduces the number of components.
As per rumors that have been circulating for almost a year now, Apple has opted for OLED display with “tandem” architecture that is, with a double emissive layer, in order to guarantee greater longevity on the one hand, and greater brightness on the other: in HDR mode, the new display is able to offer, according to Apple, up to 1600 cd/m2 of peak luminance and 1000 cd /m2 full screen with SDR and HDR content. The resolution of the screens is 2420×1668 pixels and 2752×2064 pixels respectively, in both cases with adaptive refresh from 10 to 120 Hz and support for the P3 color space.
The weight is 444 grams for the 11-inch model and 579 grams for the 13-inch Wi-Fi version. The versions with 5G connectivity weigh 2 and 3 grams more respectively. The two models are available in two finishes, Silver and Sidereal Black.
It’s already time for M4, waiting for AI to arrive in iPad OS
The most important news after the display is the arrival on the iPad Pro, before a Mac or MacBook, of the new M4 processor. Based on a “second generation” 3nm architecture, with 28 billion transistors, the new processor would offer a new leap in terms of energy efficiency, offering the same level of performance as an M2 processor with half the powerup to 50% more CPU processing power than M2 and up to four times the rendering performance than M2 for the GPU.
The new M4 offers up to 10 CPU cores (up to 6 efficiency cores and 4 next-generation performance cores with integrated machine learning accelerators), and up to 10 GPU cores, based on the same next-generation architecture launched with the GPU of the M3 processor, bringing features such as dynamic caching, ray tracing and hardware-accelerated mesh shading to iPad Pro.
Emphasis was placed above all on hardware acceleration for neural networks, with the new NPU block with 16 core design capable of offering computing power of 38 trillion operations per secondequal to 60 times the original NPU first launched on the A11 Bionic processor for iPhone.
The processor is also equipped with a new graphics engine developed not only to support the new OLED display, with a frame rate of up to 120 Hz, but also with the addition of hardware acceleration for AV1 video coding. To understand what all this power will be used for, we will have to wait for the launch of the new operating system, but in the meantime Apple has announced new versions of Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro for iPad with new features based on machine learning. Apple during the event showed how the new iPad Pro is capable of managing the live stream of four cameras in real time within Final Cut Pro 2 for iPad.
The technical characteristics improve, but so do the prices
The new iPad Pros also feature other new features. The 12 megapixel front camera is positioned on the wide side, so as to favor the screen in landscape position, when the iPad is docked new Magic Keyboard announced at the same time as the new models. The new optional keyboard includes a row of function keys and a larger, improved trackpad now with haptic feedback, making the keyboard more and more laptop-like.
The rear camera offers a 12 Megapixel sensor and a 5-element lens with F1.8 aperture, adaptive True Tone flash and LiDAR sensor. The new iPad Pro also supports the new Apple Pencil Pro, which is enriched with an integrated gyroscope and a new pressure sensor on the rod which allows you to access new features by tightening your grip on the electronic pencil.
However, with the new models, the prices of the iPad Pro range also rise significantly, among other things with some technical specifications available only on the versions with greater storage memory. The 11-inch iPad Pro starts at 1219 euros for the version with 256 GB memory, while the 13-inch model starts at 1569 eurosalways with 256 GB of storage.
However, the versions with up to 512 GB of storage memory are equipped with an M4 processor with 9-core CPU, 8 GB of RAM and with a display without the anti-reflection Nano-Texture Glass coating. To have the most powerful version of M4, with 10 core CPU and 16 GB of RAM, you need to choose at least the 1 TB of storage memory cut, which raises the price of the 11 inch to 1949 euros without nano-texture and 2079 euro with nano-texture. For the 13-inch model we are talking about 2299 euros and 2429 euros respectively. The 13-inch top of the range, with 2 TB of storage and nano-texture coating costs a whopping 2909 euros.
iPad Air 2024 comes in two: 11″ and 13″ screen. Inside it has the M2 processor and supports Apple Pencil Pro
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