iPad Pro (2021) review: M1 power, but begging for new software By Engadget

For, the last week I have been living with apple's new iPad Pro, and there are two thoughts I haven't been able to shake. The first is that this might be apple's best portable computer. Ever I mean think about it. This iPad uses the exact same m1 chipset, that you'll find in the MacBook Air, the MacBook Pro and even the new iMac. That's kind of ridiculous, especially when you consider that this iPad also has a screen that puts apple's laptops to shame and nice little add-ons, like full 5g support. Tim Cook once said, the iPad was the company's vision of the future of computing, and it's finally starting to feel like that's coming to fruition, which leads me to my second unshakable thought, because this thing is as powerful as it is.

It is just it's begging for more robust software. The new iPad Pro really does feel like the beginning of something big for apple, but at this moment right now, it's for better or worse, just an incredibly powerful tablet. As usual apple says, one of its tricked out models. This is the 12.9-inch iPad Pro with one terabyte of storage and a 5g radio that will set you back a cool 2 000 before you factor in accessories like the Apple Pencil and the magic keyboard. You don't need me to tell you that you could buy a really nice laptop for less than that, but it is worth noting that if you want to sort of tiptoe into the iPad Pro experience, the standard 11-inch model without apple's new retina Dr display can be had for about 800.

This year's iPad Pro looks pretty much identical to the models' apple released in 2018 and 2020. , the clearest real physical distinction between this pro and the ones that came before it is its size. How it feels the new model is a little thicker and heavier, which honestly makes it quite a bit less comfortable to hold on to for long periods of time. I can no longer hold this thing in one hand comfortably anymore. In fact, if you strap this thing into one of apple's magic keyboard, it actually weighs more than the comparable MacBook Pro, not by a ton, mind you, but enough to make me really think about what one computing device I would want to carry with me every day.

On the whole, though, that extra weight seems worth it because of all the stuff that apple squeezed into this package for one apple swapped out a traditional front-facing camera for an ultrawide sensor that is made for some of the best looking and also the weirdest face time calls I've ever been on. That's all thanks to a new feature called center stage, which does its best to use machine learning and that wide field of view to keep your face close to the center of the screen, even if you're sort of bopping around, honestly. The feature does do a great job of panning and zooming to make sure other people can always see you clearly, even if you're trying to trick it by coming in from weird angles or walking away a few feet. Still it does have its quirks when you launch FaceTime, for instance, the camera slowly pushes in on your face, like it's filming some sort of slow-motion reaction, GIF at least one person. I've called with the iPad Pro has said.

Center stage makes me look kind of shifty kind of guilty, but maybe that's a problem. I don't, I don't feel like I'm either of those things but center stage, just kind of brings it out. Of course, if you're thinking about buying one of these things, it probably wasn't because you wanted your FaceTime calls to look better. That's just a nice bonus. There are really two things that make this huge iPad special.

So, let's start with the screen, this iPad Pro uses apple's new, liquid retina Dr display and if you're, not a fan of marketing jargon, which who could blame you that just means this is an LCD screen with apple's new mini, led backlighting system apple claims that this screen was a real pain in the ass to develop. Frankly, they needed precision machinery to correctly place more than 10 000 tiny led son that back plane. They had to re-engineer optical films to get everything to fit and to look good, and the work paid off. It does look good. It looks great honestly, but it does look better in certain circumstances.

I wasn't really expecting a big difference in screen quality, and I was right at least some time when you're writing in Google Docs or browsing in safari or whatever the screen's max brightness is 600 nits, and it refreshes at 120 hertz, just like the last iPad Pro, but when you're watching movies or videos, the maximum full screen, brightness shoots up to a thousand bits and especially bright elements and HDR content like explosions or flashy visual effects, those can hit 1600 nits. In other words, apple's backlighting system means stuff. That's supposed to be dark, looks appropriately dark and bright bits are even brighter. The difference isn't just noticeable it's visceral. It looks way better when you're watching a movie on this iPad.

But let's just get one thing clear: the screens' apple has used in its older versions of the iPad Pro and in devices like the iPad Air they're already pretty good, and the palpable difference I'm talking about is only really apparent if you're, comparing this iPad Pro directly to something else, and I mean side by side, and really it's all situational. If you're going to spend most of your time, reading articles or doing crosswords, which I have definitely done, you probably won't see any difference at all. But if you're the kind of creative professional that apple clearly likes to target, then hey enjoy editing your 4k HDR footage or whatever it will look fantastic while you're working on it, and after you hit the export button. Which brings me to the other thing that makes this iPad Pro so unusual. It's chipset, like I mentioned earlier, it uses the exact same m1 you'll, find in most of apple's new computers with either 8 or 16 gigs of ram and a quick sidebar.

The reason I know our review unit has 16 gigs of ram is because apple just says so and if you've been following the company for a while you'll, probably know just how weird that is, I cannot begin to tell you how many times I've asked apple to confirm how much ram is in whatever iPhone or iPad I'm reviewing, and they always just smile and shake their heads and say no. No, no. We don't talk about that kind of thing. The fact that they are now is a pretty clear sign that apple is beyond business as usual. Now, because Apple is using the same silicon across different kinds of devices, I'm not coming into this review as blind as I usually do.

We've already tested the m1 and 2 mac books, and we were already impressed by how well Apple Silicon stacks up to rival processors from companies like intel. Just about every positive thing. Our PC reviewer, Davina hardware has said in his reviews applies here too. The m1 is remarkably fast, and it's handled everything I've thrown at it without so much as a hiccup games like Genshin Impact and the hyperrealistic grid. Autosport run beautifully piecing together, long meandering, 4k videos is a breeze, even manipulating individual layers and elements in a four gigabyte.

Photoshop file was surprisingly painless, which is made more surprising by the fact that making that file in the first place slowed my entry level m1 MacBook Pro to a crawl. It was bad. These images were enormous. Clearly, there's a lot of power here. In fact, if you were thinking of just buying one of these things to use it as a tablet that would frankly be a huge waste.

I mean seriously. That is what the iPad Air is for. This might be the first iPad Pro ever where you really have to be some sort of creative professional to really get the most out of it, and even then, I'm still not convinced you'd see a huge difference in most cases to test the iPad Pro's creative chops. I stitched together multiple 4k video clips from old reviews when I had hair in suffusion and exported it. The 2020 iPad Pro finished that feat in 14 minutes and 20 seconds.

Meanwhile, the new m1 in the 2020 iPad Pro completed the test in 14 minutes and 12 seconds, so yeah not really a huge leap at all. Then I tried a similar test in adobe's premiere rush, but with a twist instead of outputting the footage in its native 4k, I exported to 1080p at 30 frames per second. The difference was a little more noticeable this time, but still not dramatic. It took just over six minutes for last year's iPad Pro, while the new one pulled it off in five minutes and 37 seconds. So yes, the m1 does make the iPad Pro the most powerful tablet we've ever seen the company make, but the extra horsepower just doesn't always feel like a game.

Changer yet, and part of that boils down to software developers haven't had time to optimize their apps for the m1. Yet so it'll probably be a little while before we really get a sense of what apple's new chipset can do inside a high-end tablet. That goes for Apple's developers too. It took them years, but iPads have finally become more than just giant. iPhones multitasking has gotten a lot better mouse and trackpad support is now standard.

Safari, mostly acts like a desktop grade browser. That's a lot of progress, but a machine. This powerful demands even more progress from Apple software. A lot of people are talking about how a tablet like this needs some version of mac, OS and yeah. I agree in theory that would be nice, but let's be real apple, probably isn't going to do that anytime soon.

The underlying architecture might make that possible, but none of my conversations with Apple have ever indicated. That's what they actually want. That's fine by me there's plenty of room to make iPadOS shine on its own terms. True multi-window multitasking would be a great start and totally doable on this hardware, and you know what else would be a nice wider support for professional video formats. That would be a huge deal for the creative pros' apple really likes selling stuff too.

This is by the way, a good moment to mention that this iPad Pro supports thunderbolt. So you can connect it to really nice external displays, like the ones I don't have, and you can transfer data more quickly between compatible devices but again Apple software sort of gets in the way. I would love to extend my iPad's display to a second monitor and do more stuff, but right now it just mirrors, what's already happening on the iPad and faster data transfers are great. No one will ever complain about those, but working with the iPad's extremely limited files app that sort of file system built within it. It's just kind of a pain if you're watching this video close to when we publish it apple's worldwide developer conference is still a few weeks away, and it's entirely possible that the company will show off new software to take better advantage of the iPad Pro's muscle.

For now, we're just going to have to wait and see. There is one more thing we need to talk about, though, and that is battery life. As usual apple says, you can expect 10 hours of use from a single charge, and I did get that. I did see that a few times. That said, I did also see the battery just tank.

Occasionally this past weekend, for example, I spent a fairly leisurely afternoon reading articles in safari watching about an hour's worth of YouTube videos poking through some old photos and doing my taxes apart from blitzing through turbo tax, that's about as standard as tablet use gets, but it was somehow enough to drain the iPad Pro's battery to 10 in less than five hours granted. I did have the screen brightness set to between 50 and 100 brightness for most of that time, and I did restore from a backup about a week earlier, but that's not unheard of so just be on the lookout for that. So, with all of that said, should you buy this iPad? Well, look! Do what makes you happy. There is no question that this is the best most impressive iPad apple has ever built and that there's more than enough horsepower to future-proof. This thing for at least a few generations.

It's a relatively safe investment in that way. If you want a front row seat to the future of the iPad experience or if you just don't mind shelling out Baku bucks for nice, things go for it. There is a lot to like here and if that's not, you don't sweat it. The iPad Air is still the best iPad for most people, no matter where your tastes lie, though, please do me a personal favor wait until apple shows off everything it plans to at WWDC and then make your decision, and that is our look at apple's 2020 iPad Pro with the m1, with 5g, with liquid retina, whatever, whatever it's a lot. I've really enjoyed using this thing, and I think a lot of you might too, if you have thoughts about how we handled this review on the iPad itself or predictions for that matter, about what we'll see at for this iPad, please we'd love to see it down in the comments below.

As always, we really appreciate your support. Thank you so much for watching, and we'll see you next time. So you.

Source : Engadget