M1 iPad Pro 2021 - How Apple KILLED the Tablet Market! By Max Tech

Yesterday, Apple revealed their new 2021 iPad Pro at their Spring Loaded event and I’ve gotta say.. What they did with it is absolutely mind-blowing, surprising me on multiple fronts, and throughout the entire presentation, I could only think of one thing.. Apple seriously just killed the rest of the tablet market.. That’s it.. REST IN PEACE! I honestly have no idea how Samsung, Microsoft or any of the other tablet makers are gonna recover from this.. But before I get into how Apple killed them, hit that subscribe button below real quick to help us reach 600K subs! And now.. I want to go through a brief history of the iPad Pro, because it wasn’t always this good.. Let me explain! The 2018 iPad Pro blew a lot of people’s minds when it was released, but it had some major issues that I addressed in my original Honest review, mainly limited software support for file management and the new USB-C port, making the experience a bit disappointing.

On top of that, the mouse support was terrible, even after they released the first version of iPadOS, and the display support was really bad as well. At the time, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S5e had mouse and cursor support that made it very convenient to use, especially with the Samsung Dex feature which made file management work great. And then the Tab S6 came out, giving the iPad Pro even more competition since Samsung added a trackpad onto the keyboard case, making it super convenient to use, until finally in 2020, Apple released the brand new Magic Keyboard case with a trackpad alongside the new iPad Pro, making it the best iPad experience we’ve ever seen, especially since they improved multitasking, file management and more! It was so impressive that we started to recommend the iPad Pro magic keyboard combo over Apple’s Intel-based MacBooks which at the time were experiencing huge butterfly keyboard issues, while the iPad Pro had a touchscreen, even better performance and a completely fanless design. And even when Samsung released the Tab S7, the iPad Pro continued to destroy it in many different ways, being the obvious choice for a premium tablet. However, the iPad Pro still had issues, like being limited to 6GB of RAM on the base model, the display was still using the same LCD tech from 2017, and external display support still sucked.

But even with those issues, the iPad Pro was by far still the best tablet to buy.. But now.. Apple has put the nail in the coffin.. The new 2021 iPad Pro is SO good that you’d be crazy to buy anything anywhere if you want a premium tablet! The thing that absolutely blew my mind was when Tim Cook put the M1 chip into the iPad Pro.. I honestly thought that they would name it the A14X, but they literally put a Mac chip with all of it’s extra Mac-related components into a super thin and light tablet.

Now if you’re expecting the performance to match the other Macs, don’t, because they’re for sure lowering the wattage of the M1 chip so that the iPad Pro can stay cool and get the same 10 hours of battery life as before. But thankfully, we can actually calculate the performance by using Apple’s own performance improvement numbers, which are usually a bit conservative. By applying a 50% jump to the previous iPad pros A12Z chip’s CPU score, we can expect around 7,042 multi-core points in Geekbench 5, which isn’t that far off from the actual M1 Macs. But forget about comparing it to a Mac, watch what happens when we compare the iPad Pro to the performance of other tablets. The rumored Galaxy Tab S8 which might be coming within the next few months is rumored to come with the latest Snapdragon 888 chip, which only scored around 3400 points in the Samsung’s S21 Ultra.

So the new iPad Pro will quite literally have more than double the performance of the future Tab S8, which is mind-blowing! Now moving over to the graphics side, the iPad Pro gets the full 8-core GPU in the M1 chip, and Apple says that we should see a 40% improvement in graphics. So if we take the 12,000 metal score points that we got with the A12Z and add 40%, we should be expecting close to 17,000 points in the Geekbench 5 metal test. Based on that, the base M1 Macbook Air is only around 10% faster than the iPad Pro, which isn’t that bad of a performance hit considering how thin the iPad Pro really is. Since the MacBook Air scored around 69.85 FPS in the GFX Bench 1440P Aztec Ruins offscreen test, we can expect the iPad Pro to score around 63.5FPS in that test. And then if we take that number and compare it to what the Snapdragon 888 scored in the S21 Ultra, we can expect the iPad Pro to be around 2.3x faster than the future Tab S8. So just like that, the iPad Pro just buried Samsung’s Tab S8, which isn’t even expecting to be released until this August, which is when the previous two Tabs came out.

And don’t even ask me about Microsoft’s new Surface Pro X with the SQ2 chip which is even weaker than the Snapdragon 888. And the one complaint that many iPad Pro users had in the past is finally fixed. We now get 8GB of RAM on the base iPad Pro, and up to 16 if you get a higher-storage model, so the iPad Pro is now a literal powerhouse! But wait.. We’re only just getting started with the tablet slaughterfest. The iPad Pro is now the only tablet out there that comes with an actual Thunderbolt port, which is extremely impressive and opens it up to a world of possibilities.

First off, you can now connect full-speed Thunderbolt drives like this Sabrent one which we recently reviewed. You can now connect high-bandwidth Thunderbolt hubs and docks, like this crazy OWC hub which gives you a USB 3.2 port and an extra 2 Thunderbolt ports that run at full speed, as we’ve already tested and showed off with our M1 Mac Mini. And of course, the iPad Pro now finally gets full external display support, even with the 6K Pro Display XDR, which is mind-blowing! Let’s see if any other tablet can make that claim.. No. They can't! Of course, we have the other new great features like the optional 5G support which is actually faster than what you get on the iPhone 12, better camera features like Smart HDR 3 and night mode, as well as the new ultrawide camera center stage feature which I think is great because previously, the webcam was WAY too zoomed in on the iPad Pro.

But by far, the most important feature of all is the new Mini-LED display on the 12.9” iPad Pro model. When Apple announced this, it blew my mind because even though I was already expecting the mini-LED display, I did not expect a massive 1600 nits of peak brightness for supporting HDR content like HDR10, HLG and even Dolby Vision, with an amazing 1,000,000 to 1 contrast ratio. The reason this blows my mind is because those specs match up perfectly to Apple’s Pro Display XDR, which by the way, costs $5,000 without the STAND! So for just $100 more than last year’s 12.9” iPad Pro, you’re getting an M1 chip AND a display that matches the performance of a 5 to $6,000 Pro display. This means that actual professionals are gonna be buying the 12.9” iPad Pro for color grading, photo editing, and whatever else, even if they just need it for the display. And based on a leak from Jon Prosser, I’m almost 100% sure that at this years WWDC, Apple is gonna be adding Final Cut, Logic, and Xcode and maybe even more apps to the iPad Pro, which is gonna be able to use all that power.

Now comparing it to the rest of the tablet industry, nothing else can compete. Yes, the larger 12.4” Tab S7+ has a really nice Super AMOLED display with a high contrast ratio and nice colors, but there are a lot of drawbacks with OLED. First off, it doesn’t get nearly as bright, only up to 430 nits, so it doesn’t even give you real HDR support. Second, you’re gonna be dealing with issues like screen flickering and potential display burn-in issues as well. But with the iPad Pro’s new Mini-LED display, none of those issues exist at all because it’s actually still using an LCD panel, but the backlighting is redesigned with over 10,000 Mini-LEDs and over 2500 local dimming zones to help achieve that contrast ratio.

So in terms of the display.. The 12.9” iPad Pro absolutely kills any other tablet out there.. And I don’t think they’ll catch up for years. And even if you choose to buy the 11” model without the Mini-LED display, you’re still getting a killer value for $800 compared to any other tablet because of the performance of the M1 chip, the new Thunderbolt port, and everything else. The only downside is that we’re not gonna be getting our hands on it until sometime next month, but if you wanna see us compare it to other tablets and M1 Macs, click that circle above to subscribe for more videos like this one! And definitely check out one of those videos right over there.

Thanks for watching and we’ll see you in the next one!.

Source : Max Tech