The new iPad Pro with M4 and OLED is Apple’s thinnest device ever
The new iPad Pro adopts OLED display panels while skipping Apple’s M3 chip and going straight for the M4. It’s also unbelievably thin.
The OLED iPad Pro is the first device powered by the Apple M4 chip, with Apple explaining that it needed the added oomph to drive the tablet’s sophisticated Ultra Retina XDR display, which uses not one but two OLED panels.
This dual OLED structure was necessary to boost the brightness, giving the OLED iPad Pro 1000 nits of full-screen brightness for SDR and HDR content.
Meet the Ultra Retina XDR dis0lay
By sustaining brightness across the entire canvas, you can edit HDR images and videos with the whole frame at 1000 nits. For HDR video, the panel can boost the brightness up to 1600 nits (like the Pro Display XDR). The OLED iPad Pro doesn’t suffer from the blooming effect caused by local dimming zones of the mini-LED screen its predecessor used.
For an even better picture, you can opt for nano-texture cover glass, which is “precisely etched at a nanometer scale” to reduce gale from ambient light.
With OLED, each pixel is its own light source. Contrast this with LCD, which requires an array of LED lights behind an LCD panel to illuminate the pixels. As no backlight is required for OLED, the new iPad Pro is even thinner than before.
The 11-inch model has a 5.3mm profile. Its bigger brother is even thinner at just 5.1mm. This makes the OLED iPad Pro Apple’s thinnest product ever, thinner than the iPod nano. These tablets are very light, too, with the 13-inch model nearly a quarter pound lighter than its predecessor.
The OLED iPad Pro debuts Apple’s latest M4 chip
Apple’s M4 chip, built on an improved version of TSMC’s 3-nanometer technology, has “up to four performance cores” and six efficiency cores (two more than the M3).
It’s got eight graphics cores and rocks a faster Neural Engine for AI tasks capable of up to 38 trillion operations per second, which Apple says is “faster than the neural processing unit of any AI PC today.”
Stats-wise, the M4 delivers 1.5x faster CPU performance over the M2 iPad Pro. The GPU can provide up to 4x faster performance in pro rendering apps like Octane. And the M4 pumps out all that oomph using just half the power than before.
Apple claims the M4 can deliver the same performance as “the latest PC chip in a thin and light laptop” but uses a quarter of the power. Like the M3, the M4 has the power-saving AV1 decoder used on many popular streaming services.
Like the M3, the M4 supports dynamic caching, hardware-accelerated ray tracing and hardware-accelerated mesh shading. As no iPads before the OLED models have an M3 chip, these GPU features are available on the iPad platform for the first time.
The new Apple Pencil Pro and Magic Keyboard
Apple also unveiled the new Apple Pencil Pro, which supports the squeeze and barrel roll gestures and is findable via Find My. The Magic Keyboard has been overhauled with an aluminum case and a bigger trackpad to be more durable and laptop-like. These accessories also work with updated iPad Airs.
The front camera has been moved to the landscape orientation for more natural video calls. Apple has redesigned a magnetic interface so you can snap your Apple Pencil on the side, like before, despite the landscape camera.
The rear camera still has 12 megapixels but now captures better color, improved textures, and more low-light detail thanks to Apple’s Smart HDR feature. A new True Tone flash is adaptive, which lets you scan documents without any shadows from you, your iPad or anything else darkening parts of the scan.
The USB-C connector supports Thunderbolt 3 and USB 4 for up to 40Gb/s. There’s also Wi-Fi 6E for faster wired networking and eSIM instead of a physical SIM port.
Pricing and availability
You can order your M4 iPad Pro on apple.com/store and via the Apple Store app ahead of retail availability beginning Wednesday, May 15.
The tablets come in silver and space black finishes and the 256GB, 512GB, 1TB and 2TB storage configurations. If you can afford a 1TB or 2TB model, you’ll enjoy smoother multitasking as those models have double the RAM at 16GB.
The 11-inch model starts at $999 and the 13-inch model at $1299 (add $200 for a cellular model). Education prices via apple.com/us-hed/shop start at $100 less. The nano-texture glass option, available when configuring your purchase on the online Apple store, is only $100 extra.
The new Apple Pencil Pro is $129 ($119 for education) and works with the OLED iPad Pro and Air. The overhauled Magic Keyboard is $299 for the 11-inch model, with the 13-inch model priced at $349 ($279 and $329 for education).
For a cheaper but less sophisticated typing experience, consider an updated Smart Folio in black, white and denim for $79 (11 inches) and $99 (13 inches).
For further information, read the Apple Newsroom announcement, check out the technical specifications, and visit apple.com/ipad-pro and the Compare iPad page.
Source link: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2024/05/07/apple-unveils-oled-ipad-pro-m4-chip-thin-profile/
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