I paid $2099 for my M1 12.9” iPad Pro in 2021 with the Magic Keyboard. I just paid $2450 for the same machine in 2024 albeit with double the storage (1 terabyte) and the updated keyboard. Maybe it lines up with inflation? I honestly don’t know but I do know it’s a lot of money for a tablet computer.
I could take much of what I wrote in 2021’s review and paste it here. What I can’t do is copy anything written in the blooming post where I take a jab at Mini-LED and how I’m so happy that 1 of my 3 devices with it (the other is my M1 powered MacBook Pro(s)) no longer has any issues with blooming. It’s so bad that I’ve stopped running dark mode on my MacBook Pros (16” for home, 14” for work) Activating more of the LEDs keeps blooming at bay. If you run a black desktop wallpaper, bloom swill surround all of the icons. It’s so un-apple-like that the machines primary output (display) is ruined by a shitty technology.
With OLED on the M4 iPad (presumably coming to future MacBooks), our long national nightmare is almost over.
I love everything about this M4 iPad except the cost. I don’t need a 1 terabyte model but future proofing it with the fastest storage, most RAM and best display (nano-textured glass) required opting for the 2nd largest storage tier. It’s the iPad Pro (pro) I guess to go for at least 1 terabyte of storage. This made for a starting price of $2000 and luckily, my Best Buy Total Tech membership continues to pay off with $150 off iPad Pros and AppleCare+ included along with being in New Hampshire this summer so a break on sales tax since I have a house up here although consult your tax experts on that loop hole.
iPadOS is still not pro enough and now Apple is on the record saying they don’t plan on making it any more professional so just deal with it. However, the M4 is a beast and I’d say anyone reading posts on Reddit where folks are saying anyone with a 2018 iPad Pro or newer doesn’t need to upgrade have obviously spent no time with this new device. It feels 3 times faster than my M1 iPad Pro. That’s not a joke. It’s insanely fast. Restoring from iCloud backup was minutes, loading all of my data and making it available was an hour and it took just overnight for it to index my entire iCloud Photo Library.
…that’s fast?
Well yes because until this point, every mobile Apple device I’ve owned is “searching for people” and “generating memories” for up to 8 weeks after purchase. I usually expect when I replace my iPhone every year and iPad every 2-4 years that I have no access to any photo library recommendations for at least 2 months. The reason is my library is 150,000 RAW+HEIF photos at 45 megapixels shot on full frame cameras going back 25 years and 10,000 4K 60FPS videos. It’s a 5 terabyte photo library and it’s stored on iCloud. Since all machine learning is done on device, a new from scratch setup will take many weeks.
The M4 iPad Pro did it in one night.
This is mind blowing. The library scrolls like butter, search works fast, memories are loaded and every one of the 7,000 photos of my 8 month old were indexed, people detected and placed on a map. I’m astonished.
I’m sure this chip will continue to pay dividends for the next 5 years but app launches / loading Final Cut projects and more are all just instant. You don’t have to wait for anything. It’s honestly unbelievable and makes me hungry for an M4 Max MacBook Pro soon.
The 16GB of RAM should make the iPad a dream with Apple Inteligence as it launches over the next 9 months and future proof iPad updates as more features that require a lot of ram launch.
The nano-texture display is something I was expecting to not like or need due to both the cost and fussiness of it but I LOVE it. I can tell the contrast is slightly worse than the iPad it replaces (12.9” MiniLED M1) but I don’t care. Having absolutely zero glare (something I’m not enjoying at the moment writing this on my glaring MacBook Pro against a well lit lake-front array of windows) is really remarkable. There’s no way to describe it other than I want this coating on everything. I just spent 11,000 miles driving to Alaska and back on my motorcycle and every day, there were a few hours where an iPhone was shining impossibly bright sunlight directly into my eyes when my back was to the sun. In Dawson City, where the sun didn’t set on me for the 5 days I was there, the iPhone glare was driving me insane. It’s driving me crazy now with this MacBook Pro and it used to drive me crazy on car / airplane rides when the sun was at just the perfect angle. I also see its reflection off Apple Watches and other devices right into people’s eyes at work or on busses. The sun’s reflection off our devices into people’s eyeballs is something I hope Apple can fix over the next decade as this nano-texture display is perfected and rolled out everywhere. It truly is revolutionary and needs to be everywhere.
iPad Pro Thin-ness, I don’t really care.
However, weight of the iPad Pro + Magic Keyboard finally being less than the MacBook Air is huge. I always felt a little sad that I was using an M1 iPad that was twice the cost of a MacBook Air and half the operating system (iPadOS versus MacOS) and yet it was bigger and heavier. At least one of those is no longer true with the weight and size reductions of the new iPad + Keyboard combination. At least this being more portable than a MacBook Air makes it easier than ever to carry everywhere which I was already doing anyway.
Despite iPad’s software shortcomings, this machine is still much better than a laptop. It’s always on 5G cellular and portability make it an essential part of my work backpack where I have my work MacBook that’s locked down and the iPad is my meetings, lunch, cafe computer. I work in FinTech where I can’t put Slack or email on my personal laptop but iPadOS being like iOS I can put it on my iPad so I can do 90% of my work on an iPad. I can literally leave the office and leave my laptop there and still do my work. It’s fantastic and a big reason why an iPad is superior to a MacBook Air and now it’s smaller than one.
The rest of iPad Pro’s 2018 redesign is all still there, great audio, a lot of great software, the pencil support, the Magic Keyboard, etc etc but now it’s faster, smaller and the screen more brilliant. It’s a worthwhile upgrade from any previous iPad but it’s also so expensive you’ll want to justify it with some sort of productivity which you probably won’t be able to unless you’re an artist.
I wish I could write more about the new device but I have an 8 month old baby and, as you can all see, blogging has been pretty hard but I didn’t want to get a new Apple Device and not write a few things down and share some initial impressions.
Oh and color, I went with black again because the white keyboard is a dirt magnet. The black is too but it doesn’t show the damage as easily. My iPad Magic Keyboard is used to carry food, coffee, etc around my office like a shelf and the white gets too dirty and is almost impossible to clean. So, I went black. I’d go red if they offered it though.
