Apple M1 iPad Pro Review - The Good and The Bad By zollotech

Hi everyone Aaron here for zollotech- and this is the 2021 m1 iPad Pro 12.9. I've been using it for a week or so since it came out- and this is my main device when I'm not editing video, so I've used it the same as I used the previous generation iPad Pro, and so I wanted to go over the good and the bad and help you decide. If you should update to this latest version and the first good thing is its overall design since apple switched to this more squared off design. It's something I really like, and I know, there's some concern about it, bending or flexing, but with those different ones. I've never had an issue. I generally have it in the magic keyboard case.

Furthermore, I'll talk more about that a little later, and also I have it in the regular folio case. If I didn't have that one before the magic keyboard came out and with this newer design, I've never had any of them bend or break, or anything like that. Now I don't set them in a backpack where there would be a huge amount of weight on them, but if you put them in a backpack that has a vertical slot to keep it protected, you're not going to have an issue, it's got the same design as the previous generation as far as the speakers, and this one is the cellular model, so it has extra spots for antenna cutouts for 5g and in general, the design is really nice. It's definitely heavier, though, than the previous generation. That's something I've noticed just in picking it up using the keyboard case with it or the magic keyboard.

It's definitely heavier and a little thicker. I didn't think I would notice it, but it's something that's definitely noticeable ever so slightly thicker or basically, a tenth of a pound heavier or so now. The next good thing is its overall performance. This has the m1 chipset in it. This is the one terabyte model, so it means it has 16 gigs of ram.

So overall performance you'll see the single core and multi-core benchmarks. If I bring in the previous generation iPad Pro just to show you as a comparison, it's a significant jump up just from a benchmark standpoint, so that doesn't really mean a lot in everyday use. If you can't utilize it, but you'll see, the single core is significantly higher, as is the multi-core, so 1720 versus 1129 for single core and 4466 versus 7313 for multicore. So it's definitely faster overall. Just in that overall and as you can see, to compute scores are a huge jump as well 12 020 versus 21 390.

So there is a significant amount of power increase with the newer iPad Pro now. That translates to basically a similar experience when you're, using both devices with regular everyday use, because most apps are not super intensive they're, just opening things from whether that be news or maybe you're watching a movie. It doesn't really make a difference until you get to an intensive video export or something along those lines. It takes a lot of power to really utilize this sort of chipset, and I'll talk more about that a little later. But the overall speed of this is just incredible.

So if you want to open an app the same app here, maybe Apple TV, for example- it's going to be about the same. It's loading via Wi-Fi you'll, see it maybe was a second or two different. It's not a huge difference when you're just using it every day to day. So, if you're going into settings, you're not going to notice a difference and the speed is going to be the same, I didn't really notice any difference in regular use, whether I was going to say YouTube, or maybe just looking at email, those sorts of things you're not going to notice any difference now to utilize all that power. I did want to show you the difference between an export test.

Now I did this in the unboxing video, but people said I want to see what it's like with a more intensive export. So if we go into the multitasker go into suffusion, I have the same exact clip set up on both of them. What I did is put the same clip I actually doubled the clip and then added a lot to the beginning, clip the first clip, and you'll see it just lets red show instead of every other color, and then it's the same clip after that. So there's a lot on the first clip the exact same setup on the older iPad, which I have on the left and let's go ahead and export this 16 minute clip it's almost 17 minutes long. So let's go ahead and share this I'll bring in a stopwatch here.

So let me slide these over just a little, and we'll see what kind of export times we get with them, so we'll go to movie on both of them, and then we'll export it to files, and you'll see here's all the export settings 4k at 30 frames per second in wanted to export in standard 50, megabytes or megabits per second. So let's go ahead and save this, so we'll tap on the arrow here, and we'll save it to we'll just call it my project, and now it's saving, and we'll hit start. So we'll wait for it to export and let's see how long it takes since there's a lot on the first clip on both and then just a standard one on the export, and it's exporting to h.264 I'll speed this up. So you don't have to wait now, as you can see the time to export the movie on both of them was very, very close, and if I feel the back of this, it's barely even warm. So it's amazing that you're actually exporting a 4k video, and it doesn't even feel warm.

So it's encoding that and that's pretty fast, it's much faster than the video was as far as the length of it, and it's impressive on either one of these. So if you're doing an intensive task like that, it may not matter as much until maybe some of these apps are updated and allow for much more ram usage. But overall, this is much faster in that it has more power, but also much more ram. So it can keep things in memory forever. Not once has I have I seen anything reload, including YouTube, or anything like that on the newer iPad.

Pro so there's a big difference as far as that goes, you also have the advantage on the newer iPad of thunderbolt 3. So if you need to transfer data files or maybe a movie, you've got up to 40 gigabytes, a second transfer speed, so that's something you get with the m1 that you don't get with say the older ones. So it's a big advantage as far as that goes so the overall speed of the iPad Pro the new m1 does make a little of a difference when you've got a lot of different apps open. None of the background apps ever close because of the amount of memory you have, and I think you'll see more of the different apps take advantage of the new m1 and its memory in future updates. Since some apps are already updating to allow for more ram usage, that's where we could see the big difference, but it will take time for those apps to be updated now.

The next good thing is the speakers. Just like the previous generation, we have four speakers so one on the top or one on each side on the top and again the same on the bottom or, if you're, holding it in landscape, for example, on the sides they'll move, depending on how you're holding the iPad or adjust volumes to make sure it sounds clear and clean at every volume level and, however you're holding it they're, nice and loud, and they have a slight redesign compared to the previous generation. So I showed this a little on the unboxing video. But if I take the previous generation here on the left- and we put this magnet paper over, if you'll see that we actually have a round speaker on the newer one. It's more of an oval speaker and the speakers are nice and loud.

They sound very, very similar. So there's not a huge difference between the two, but they are nice and loud on the new one. So take a listen to this we'll go into YouTube to one of my videos- and this is a comparison I did and there's some music here. So let's take a listen to this. So the speakers have an incredible quality to them as far as the sound for what you get in the size of the iPad they're great to use, I use them all the time when watching video and I rarely put on headphones, although you could use this with AirPods Pro or AirPods max with spatial audio as well.

Now when it comes to the cameras, that's the next great thing. Now we have a couple new things. We have a little different, wide angle, camera on the back, which is supposed to sort of correct itself for sort of lens distortion. But I don't see too much of a difference there and the cameras are great. You have the LIDAR camera, just like you did before, but there's not a huge difference between say this one and the previous generation, so they're still good, but I would recommend using your iPhone unless you have an older iPhone to take photo and video, but they're great for reference and things like that.

But the forward-facing camera is where there's an improvement. You have what's called center stage now. So if you go into the settings, and then you go to say your FaceTime settings, for example, under your FaceTime settings, you have center stage and center stage will sort of follow you around, while you're on a call for example. So let me show you how that looks and works, and I think it's a huge improvement, if maybe you're trying to talk to someone on a Zoom call you're in a meeting, and you need to move around a little, so I'll put on the magic keyboard. Since it's a little easier to see that way, it tries to track me and if there's two people in the room, it will do the same thing.

This is a really helpful feature, maybe you're on a Zoom call. You need to step back a little. Do something and then come closer to the camera. It works really well, and it works within other apps. Also, so that's a big improvement and a great thing with this updated iPad.

Now another good thing or positive thing about the iPad Pro is they've added 5g. We have a new Qualcomm 5g modem. You can see the millimeter wave antenna on the bottom and that allows for incredible speeds if you're using Verizon, depending on where you live. Of course, you're going to have millimeter, wave or sub 6. I actually have subbed 6, and you'll, see that I'm on 5g with 3 bars.

If we go into speed test, it's pretty fast for the most part, depending on where you live, I'm inside a building right now, which is actually brick, so it may be a little slower than normal, but you'll see I just hit 60 to 70. , now we're over 80 megabits per second. So, depending on where you're located, maybe you're closer to a cell tower, you can get pretty good speeds. That's plenty fast enough to watch YouTube or maybe work on a video, and sometimes I've gotten up to 40 megabits per second upload right. Now, I'm only getting about five but regularly, where I'm at here I'll get about eight or nine, so it just depends.

But you could also, of course, use your phone to just tether to it and then use that data. So it wasn't the greatest upload. It varies depending on where you're at sometimes 4g is faster. Sometimes 5g is faster and once 5g really is rolled out, 100 with millimeter wave everywhere, we'll see a huge difference, but it's prepared for that and of course you have 4g and 5g now on the iPad as well, and thankfully it doesn't seem to affect the battery life much at all. Now.

The next thing is battery life. That's a positive thing as it's consistent with all the other iPads before it, meaning that you're going to get about 10 hours of screen on time with maybe just using safari and email. If you're going to maybe do more intensive tasks like work on editing, video, that's going to use up more battery, but that's what you would expect on any iPad. So over the last eight days you can see here while it was just charged up to 70 31 minutes ago, since I was down to about 20, I'm getting about seven or eight hours of screen on time, using YouTube, for example, regularly along with safari and mail. So that's pretty good! That's what I get in the previous generation eight to ten hours, depending on what you're doing, and you'll see I'll use it a couple of hours a day throughout the day every single day- and this is my main device like I said before so no problems.

I generally will use it for a couple of days and then plug it in charge it back up and use it again. That's normally how I use my iPad, and it's really not something I have to think about when the batteries as expected, so even after starting this video, and we're about 25 minutes later. As far as total record time with exporting the video and that sort of test, I've only gone down two percent, so it actually does really, really well even under heavy tasks. Now the next great thing is probably the number one feature of this iPad and that's its display with the new mini LED display. It's got 10 000 different dimming zones because there's many LEDs behind the screen backlighting it now.

A lot of people are going to say why didn't they use OLED and there are certain disadvantages to OLED, such as color accuracy. Over time, and even PWM that can bother people's eyes. Thankfully this display doesn't seem to do that. It doesn't have PWM that's detectable easily, and it doesn't bother my eyes at all. So that's a great thing, but the display looks great.

It has great viewing angles, as you can see here and if you're watching HDR content, it looks incredible. It's super bright. So if I go to a video, for example, you've got HDR as far as an option. So if we go to the settings, and you've got 4k HDR, so 2160p HDR for example- and let me turn this down, and I'll play it, and you'll see how bright it can get. And since this current video is not in HDR, it's going to be too bright for the video.

But this will give you an idea if I turn the brightness up, we're only at half brightness, and it's too bright for this video, and now we can double that brightness, and you probably just see mostly white in the background, but it's very detailed. You can see the highlights and the dark and the blacks look great on this very close to what an OLED looks like, and I can show you that as well. If we switch over to maybe a black wallpaper or photo and go into settings and again on the left, I have the last generation iPad Pro. If we go to the all black wallpaper and maybe turn the lights off and then turn the brightness all the way up, you should see that the black is actually a darker black on the right iPad Pro, so the mini led iPad Pro. This looks all black, as you can see here, and you've got a little gray tin or a little light on the left iPad Pro because it's not mini led, so it doesn't have the latest display, and it just looks a little brighter in dark situations.

So it's much nicer to look at on the newer iPad. However, this leads me over to what might be some bad things about the iPad Pro and that starts with the display. While the display looks incredible, is amazing in HDR goes super bright, it does have a slight bloom issue and what that means is its sort of bright around dark areas because there's little lights behind the display? That's lighting up the area surrounding each thing that it's lit lighting up. So if you're on a black background, for example- and you use the cursor, you may be able to see this so again, let me get the magic keyboard now I have the magic keyboard in place and if I go into settings we'll go to that same wallpaper, I'll turn the lights off, and then I'll bring the brightness way up. So you can see this a little better.

Now you're going to see what's called bloom around some of these numbers, where it's sort of lit up around the numbers- and this is only noticeable on very dark backgrounds, for example. So you can see it up here in the upper right with the time for example, and then down here where it says, set and then also, if I use the trackpad and bring up the cursor. This is where I first noticed it. You've got a little circle or box around that cursor that you can see on black backgrounds, and it will follow you as you move around, so you may or may not be able to see that, but it's lit up around the outside edge there a little, and it is noticeable. Now it's only noticeable on very black backgrounds, but this is a disadvantage.

It's something they could change, possibly with a future software update, but you will see almost a box lit up in the background around the time here, so something you can definitely see, so we'll turn the lights back on bring the brightness down, and I really like the display- it's not a problem, but that may be a concern for some people on cert in certain situations. Now the next thing that's bad or negative is iPadOS 14. It feels like it very much under utilizes the capability of the m1 processor, for example, the same setup. That's inside this iPad Pro is inside the new m1 iMac, the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, and it's probably closer to the MacBook Air. Since it doesn't have any cooling other than what's passive, there's no fan, for example, so the MacBook Air is very capable in the m1.

It has Final Cut Pro. It has Logic Pro and all sorts of different applications, but on the iPad, we're limited because we don't have those we do have suffusion, but there are limitations with this overall operating system and I think we'll see an update with iPadOS 15 that remedies a lot of those concerns and problems. But right now it feels very under utilized and like you're buying something to wait for the future. So that's something that may be a little negative for people. If you already have the previous generation, for example, the next bad thing or negative thing is the price.

This starts at a hundred dollars more than last year and goes from about a thousand ninety-nine dollars all the way up to two thousand three hundred and ninety-nine dollars for the cellular model, with two terabytes of storage. Again, that's around the price of what you get a m1 MacBook Pro completely specked out for you've got similar specs, but you do get cellular on this one. So that's an advantage, but it's extremely expensive for what it is and if you have something you utilize regularly with that amount of storage suffusion. If this is your main editing computer well, this is might be worth it for you. However, upgrading from the previous generation it may not at that price and then the last bad thing or negative thing is probably the overall size with the magic keyboard.

This is quite thick and to show you a comparison here. Is the latest m1 MacBook Pro side by side it's about one and a half times as thick as that MacBook Pro. So it is a little larger than carrying around a MacBook, for example. So for some people this may be an inconvenience because it's quite heavy, it's actually heavier than the MacBook Pro, and it's just very big and heavy-duty now. The good thing is: is the magic keyboard keeps it protected, of course, and then also keeps it quite secure? And then you have the trackpad and keyboard, but again it's under utilized.

It feels like at least from using it for the past week. I don't know that it's a huge upgrade over the previous one, and so that leads me to should you buy the new iPad Pro 2021 or upgrade from the previous generation, and I would say in two scenarios the answer would be yes. One of them is this: is your main computer you've been using it? Maybe with the 2018 iPad, you've been using suffusion or iMovie, and maybe you're heavily editing photos with pixelate photo or procreate or one of those, if you're a heavy user of that, then sure this is going to be a great upgrade for you. Also, if you're looking forward to what apple has with iPadOS 15 in a week or two, then yes, this would be a huge upgrade and something to look forward to that. I think, will be heavily utilized with that update.

However, any other reason, I would probably wait and see what apple's going to do with this, because if you have a 2020 iPad Pro there's not a huge change other than the display. The speed feels nice and fast, but it's not such a huge jump or anything that I would recommend just running out and spending another one to two thousand dollars on this device. For that reason, so I love this device. I think it's great, and it will be my main computer other than editing videos, so I recommend it as long as you have the money, or it's something that you'll use regularly. Otherwise, it's not that huge of an upgrade, yet I think it will be in the future, but let me know what you think of this new iPad Pro in the comments below again.

Like I said, I absolutely love it. I love the keyboard, and it's something that I use every single day and I watch content on it, such as HDR videos and things like that. So it's great for that. But again, I'm waiting to see what apple has next, if you'd like to get your hands on this wallpaper, of course, I'll link it in the description like I normally do and if you haven't subscribed already please subscribe and if you enjoyed the video please give it a like, as always thanks for watching this is Aaron I'll, see you next time you.

Source : zollotech