11" vs 12.9" M1 iPad Pro 2021 - Is Mini-LED Worth it? By Max Tech

This video sponsored by Squarespace the best way to make an amazing website. It has never been more difficult to choose between an 11 inch and a 12.9-inch iPad Pro, especially since Apple has supercharged these with the new m1 chip that supports thunderbolt. We have new software, that's coming out and of course now you have to choose not only based on size, but if you want an lcd or if you want the new mini LED Dr screen, but by the end this video. I will make this choice easy for you, because today we're going to cover everything from performance and thermal throttling to the speaker, differences and, of course, look at the displays to tell you which one you should buy, but before we jump in, I want to give a shout-out to the sponsor of this video Squarespace. If you've been thinking about making your own website, Squarespace is seriously the best way to go. You can build a great looking website like we did with literally no web making experience, and it doesn't matter if you want a portfolio, a blog e-commerce or anything else.

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Let's start out with the size and the weight in hand, as you guys could tell. There is a big difference between these two. When you look online, it's hard to tell, and even just using the 12.9 inch like I did in the earlier video, it seemed fine, it seemed you know like a decent size, not that much bigger, but when you put these side by side, oh, my goodness, the difference is dramatically noticeable. Now. The other thing that I could tell is that the 12.9 inch it not only feels a lot heavier noticeably heavier in the hand. It feels thicker as well.

Now, I've personally always wanted the smaller size, iPads and I've used the iPad Pro for hours in my hand, without any issues but holding the 12.9 inch and using it. I feel like after maybe a half hour an hour depending on which muscle you have you. Your arm and your hand will get tired of holding it out in the air like this, but along with that, it really depends on what you want to do with your iPad. If you're, just using simple apps you're, looking at photos, you're doing some web browsing, this extra screen doesn't really add a lot, because you can only read one thing at a time and with that as well, if you're doing things like photo editing, you may think that oh, I need the larger display, but taking a look at this, I'm not getting much more compared to the 11 inch. If you have creators like adobe, and they're, making applications that are optimized, they make them really nice.

So where I really have no issue using them on the smaller iPad, I can see my photo. I can zoom in and out. I can adjust all the sliders they're designed really well look. The menu bar goes away right there. The 11 inch has no issue with that, but if you're somebody that wants to do things like video editing, for example, running suffusion here, even with this larger iPad, once you have things like your different layers applied- and this is a very simple timeline- you guys can see how much smaller the actual viewer is and then, if we go ahead and open that up on the smaller one, that's where it gets really tough, look, how small that is right there, and this is even a simple project.

You can get crazy with a lot of different layers and this, for example, video editing is when I would really want to have the larger 12.9 inch and if you're, somebody that often draws or creates- and you want to have a larger canvas or, if you're, a pro user- and you want to do the split screen. That is where the 12.9 inch model really comes in handy. So as far as which one to choose based on size, I would say for somebody that mainly uses an iPad as an iPad, you run different apps, maybe play some games, you watch videos, and then you do some productivity. The 11-inch iPad is definitely the better one. The 12.9 right now I've been holding it for a little over an hour. My hand is getting exhausted, but if you're a professional you're, making the most out of your iPad you're doing a lot of productivity, then I say the 12.9 inch is the better choice, but that is just based on the screen size. We have a lot more to cover, and before we cover those things such as the thermal throttling, with the smaller chassis and the display, we have to mention keyboard cases.

We have apple's new white magic keyboard case, and not only does it 12.9 inch, you know it's bulkier, it's heavier. When you add on this keyboard case, it adds on a dramatic amount of thickness and weight. So now this thing weighs quite a bit more than the 11-inch one with that keyboard case, and I know for some people if you buy something: that's big and heavy, for example, a DSLR camera or even a 16-inch MacBook Pro. If it's inconvenient, if it's heavy a lot of times, you leave it at home and then, if you buy something like a MacBook Air or the smaller combo here, you're much more likely to take it with you. So you have to keep that in mind now, as far as the actual keyboards themselves, with that larger display, you do have larger keys.

So this feels a little more cramped. I have used this extensively, and you do get used to it, but with the 12.9 inch, this is a full-size keyboard, just like on a Mac, so you are going to have a more familiar typing experience. It is going to feel a little better and, along with that, we have two more differences with these cases. The first one is how much room it takes up. I was just on an airplane.

I was doing a lot of editing and having this larger one that sits up much higher, it doesn't give you a lot of room if you're on the little tiny tray table and if somebody leans back, it doesn't work well, where the 11 inch it's actually perfect for people that fly unless you can always pay for first class now. The other difference is if you're somebody likes to use your device on your lap. The 11 inch is more balanced, and it sits flatter it's not as wobbly just maybe because it's more compact overall, and it works well, even though you would think that this larger one would sit better, it's actually very top heavy just because of how heavy the iPad itself is, and so I don't know, I don't think the experience is as good for people that type this way, and now it's time to compare the speakers. Both of these have quad speakers, which is great, but the larger iPad has them spread a little further apart and there's a potential that apple made better use of this larger chassis, to make it sound better. So we're going to test that out along with that, we have this new song, so I want you guys to let me know what you think of this new song compared to our previous one, if you have headphones, put them on and let's go ahead and take a listen all right guys.

Let me know your thoughts down below and also, if you guys enjoyed this new song, if we should stick with it. To give you my opinion, I have to say: I'm really surprised. I was not expecting the new one to sound that much better. Not only is it louder, which I expected to be a little louder, but the bass is much more deep and rich. That doesn't mean that the 11 sounds bad.

It sounds excellent for a tablet, but if you care about sound quality and loudness, if you're, watching movies listening to music, the 12.9 inch is definitely better and now, let's cover the cameras and microphones, and the good news is that they are identical between both, so that doesn't force you to choose one over the other. The rear camera is the same. This front. Camera is this crazy ultra-wide, so you guys can see that top camera right there, both of them get the center stage, feature no differences, and now, let's get into performance now I typically wouldn't be doing this, but with the new m1 chip, that's ultra powerful. The larger 12.9 inch model could get better performance because it has better cooling than the 11 inch. So I'm very curious.

I am going to start out with geek bench 5. I'm going to hit run actually before that. You guys can see that both of these do have eight gigs of ram. We also do have one that's still completely sealed that has 16 gigs, so we're going to do a dedicated video, doing multiple different real life stress tests with different productivity tasks to see if the 16 gig gives you any more performance in the 8 gig. If you guys want to see that click that subscribe button down below and that also helps us to reach our goal of getting 1 million subscribers before the end of the year, we would greatly appreciate it.

Alright, look at that. The 11 inch actually was done slightly faster, and it does actually have a slightly higher score. It's nice seeing that over 1700, but in reality the scores are almost identical. Now before I do a much more difficult test, that's much longer. I also want to go ahead and benchmark the graphics, so both these have the core graphics units of where from the m1, so instead of 7 core GPU, it's great that apple did put in the 8 core units, and there you go this time.

We have the opposite effect. The 12.9 inch is a little faster in this case, almost three percent faster, so maybe cooling is starting to come in after we're doing multiple runs, but either way. The metal score is absolutely incredible for a tablet we're getting insane levels of performance. So now I'm going to go ahead and close this, and we're going to run a much harder test. This is 3d marks wildlife.

This time we're going to make sure both of these are running the extreme test and let's go ahead and let this run and take a look at that the scores are identical. We have 29.8 frames per second compared to 29.8, so it looks like for regular tasks, there's not much of a difference at all, but there's one more test that we could do, and that is the extreme stress test, which is a 20-minute test that will just put these things to their limits. So let's go ahead and see if you're doing something long-term tons of photo exports. Video exports, whatever you're doing, let's see if that makes a difference all right guys. So we are finished, and the results are much more interesting.

It looks like over a period of 20 minutes. We definitely have a difference here. If you look at the stress test here, you see how quickly that drops down levels out and drops again, whereas here it's much more tapered on the 12.9 inch now the best loop score, we got actually slightly higher just a little higher than 11 inches, but the lowest loop score. That definitely is a bigger difference, so it looks like both these do actually throttle over time, which, of course, you can expect. These are super thin with a super powerful chip, but the 12.9 inch performs about 10 percent better once you actually heat this thing up and as far as stability. That is also about 10 percent different slightly more than that.

So it looks like if you're somebody that pushes the machine to the extreme for a long period of time, maybe some productivity or even maybe gaming. Once we have games that can take advantage of these CPUs, you will get better performance about 10, better performance with a 12.9 inch. Now I do have to say that I think that most people will not have an issue, and you should not choose the larger one because of better performance or just because of the better performance, because the m1 in this 11 inch is still super powerful, even when it throttles down, and now it's time for probably the biggest difference that you guys have been waiting for, and that is the lcd compared to mini led instead of having one backlight system, the 12.9 inch has apple's new Dr system, which has 2, 500 or so different zones of tiny LEDs that can adjust by themselves, and we're gonna, look at some HDR footage and also blooming, which could be, and is an issue with this, but because this display apple raised the base price of the 2.9 inch by another hundred dollars compared to last year. So is it worth it now? First, I want to test out the brightness and see: can this new thousand it or up to 1600 nits of brightness outshine the 600 nit regular iPad when you're actually adjusting it yourself. But the first thing that I noticed is that, although I set both these to 50 using siris, so they automatically perfectly adjusted.

If you look at him from an off angle, you guys could probably tell the 11 inch with the LCD panel is much, much dimmer so that top camera is directly above. They look pretty much identical, but from the side and from down here there's a massive difference, so the viewing angles on the new mini LED display. They are just much better and as far as the maximum brightness I went ahead and adjusted that top camera, so it doesn't blow out, and they look exactly identical. So, even though this one's rated up to 1 600 nits compared to 600, which is a massive difference in reality, the brightness is the same and apple actually says that in their fine print the extra brightness is only used for HDR. So now with that said, let's go ahead and close this and take a look at some HDR footage.

Now, this kind of things are always really hard to show off on camera because we're not recording or displaying a HDR, but I'm going to do my best to just explain the differences and right now I set that camera to about an average exposure, so this could be getting blown out. But taking a look at the video footage, the electricity right there is just coming out so much brighter, it's much more vibrant, but at the same time the darker areas are also a little darker, which I don't know. If I'm a fan of at least in this brighter room environment bam, not lighting right there, it just it flashes. It really stands out compared to being kind of flat. Looking here and wow that stands out right there, I'm worried that it's just blown out for you guys, but to my eyes it looks incredible, and the image is definitely better.

At least with you know, scenes like this in this kind of lighting and right there wow. That is popping way more. So it looks like four movies, like avengers, where you have a lot of color. You have specific, really bright areas, this HDR effect it just works really well, and it gives the image a lot more dynamics. I guess I should say, but then again we are watching in the daytime.

There's another difference between these two, and that is contrast. So let's go ahead and shut off the lights. Alright, wow look at that difference. Now this is much more dramatic. Now we have the black bars here.

I went ahead, and I zoomed back out, so you can see the black bars. This is gray here, clearly great compared to pitch black and not only that, but the actual contrast of the image you're watching. Let me zoom in here again the mini led, looks really nice really contrast. Oh my goodness, that is bright. You guys probably can't tell the difference because both of them are bright, but this really stands out all right.

If you're watching movies in a dark environment or YouTube videos, the difference is much bigger and here's probably an even better difference. This is an OLED test on YouTube. Look at the difference, in contrast, once it's dark in your room, if you're watching a movie or HDR video on YouTube, the difference is absolutely shocking, at least at these brighter levels. Now, with that, not everything is great. About mini LED displays.

You guys may have heard of the blooming issues that people are talking about with this new 12.9 inch, and that is when you see a glow around edges of bright objects on dark backgrounds. Now the most extreme case is having pure black in the background and pure bright and then having it turned up now sitting here right now with this image that I downloaded specifically to show this off honestly at brightness, that's normal! Actually, this probably about 75 brightness. Here I cannot see anything. The mini, LED display, looks perfect and on the 11 inch it also looks great. I could tell that the black isn't true black.

It is a little gray, but if you go ahead and max out that brightness, let's go ahead and do that now. What can I see? Well, if I'm sitting at an angle, especially if I go even more angle like this, I do start seeing a slight amount of glow around the outside, whereas with 11 inches. I see that glow, if you want to call it across the whole display, but it's less noticeable, because everything is gray instead of black instead of just around the text. Now. This is with the display maxed out, which I don't need about.50 is perfect for this environment. Now, when this is much more noticeable is if you shut off the lights, let me go do that and now the blooming effect from the zones is much more apparent now from the top-down view.

If I'm holding it correctly, it is still minor. Surprisingly with that white being so bright. And then, if I look from an angle, I see it much more and that's what some of the photos that I saw online when it's off an angle, and then it's also what kind of camera you're using that comes into effect, and it's up to you. Do you want to deal with a little of blooming and the worst cases scenarios which are not very likely, or do you want to have a display? That is very great in those exact same scenarios, that choice is yours. Now, if you want to know more about this, we actually did a dedicated video, seeing if this blooming issue is an actual issue or not, and we show off a lot of different use cases real world scenarios.

So you guys can check that video out after this one, and now it's time for the verdict, should you buy the 11 inch or should you buy the 12.9 inch and for me the choice is really easy. If you're somebody that is mostly using your tablet as a tablet, and you're doing some productivity, and you're budget conscious, I would definitely go for the 11 inch. Even though I love the Dr display, the mini LED display looks fantastic, but the portability of this iPad packed with that performance and the fact that it costs a hundred dollars less and the keyboard case comes in at fifty dollars less for the smaller one makes this such a great value, and personally, I would take it with me much more often and use it for a variety of tasks than the 12.9 inch, which is much bigger and bulkier. Now for this one, if you're, somebody is doing a ton of productivity, and you know you need that larger size and the extra weight doesn't matter, you still will use it. Then.

In that case I would get the 12.9 inch and, of course, along with that, the very, very few of you out there that want to work with HDR content, you're doing HDR, video, editing or HDR photo editing, which is now starting to become a thing you absolutely have to have. The Dr mini LED display. Without that, you cannot do HDR editing, so the 11 inch will not work for that, but for most people, although this display is amazing, I would stick with the 11 inch. Of course, we have links to both these down in the description and you guys can go ahead and check out the other great videos. I mentioned over there and click above to subscribe.

If you enjoy this video that will help us out and help us reach our goal of 1 million subscribers before the end of the year. That would be absolutely amazing. This max, and I'll see you in the next video.

Source : Max Tech