Apple today unveiled its new iPad Pro models, powered by a new M4 chip, featuring Ultra Retina XDR OLED displays, a nano-texture display option, and more.
The new iPad Pro is the thinnest Apple product ever. While the 11-inch model is 5.3 mm thin, and the 13-inch model is even thinner at 5.1 mm, Apple says both models are just as strong as the previous iPad Pro lineup. The 11-inch model weighs less than a pound, and the 13-inch model is nearly a quarter pound lighter than its predecessor. The new iPad Pro is available in silver and space black finishes. with 100% recycled aluminum enclosures.
The new iPad Pro lineup is powered by Apple’s new M4 processor, built on TSMC’s second-generation 3-nanometer technology. The M4 boasts an entirely new display engine, offering the “stunning precision, color, and brightness of the Ultra Retina XDR display.” The new CPU offers up to four performance cores and now six efficiency cores, with next-generation machine learning (ML) accelerators, to deliver up to 1.5x faster CPU performance over M2 in the previous-generation iPad Pro. The M4’s 10-core GPU includes features like Dynamic Caching, and hardware-accelerated mesh shading and ray tracing, a first for an iPad. A new advanced Media Engine includes support for AV1 decode.
The M4 features Apple’s most powerful Neural Engine ever, capable of 38 trillion operations per second, which is 60x faster than Apple’s first Neural Engine in the A11 Bionic chip.
The new iPad Pro lineup debuts the Ultra Retina XDR display, featuring state-of-the-art tandem OLED technology that uses two OLED panels and combines the light from both to provide phenomenal full-screen brightness. The display offers support for 1000 nits of full-screen brightness for SDR and HDR content, and 1600 nits peak for HDR.
Apple has moved the iPad Pro’s 12-megapixel front-facing camera to the side of the device for an improved video calling experience. The rear camera now offers support for ProRes video recording and Smart HDR 4. An Adaptive TrueTone flash provides better document scanning.
The iPad Pro includes a high-performance USB-C connector with support for Thunderbolt 3 and USB 4, delivering fast wired connectivity up to 40Gb/s.
iPad Pro supports Wi-Fi 6E for fast Wi-Fi connections. Wi-Fi + Cellular models offer 5G connectivity.
The 11-inch iPad Pro starts at $999 and the 13-inch iPad Pro starts at $1,299. It is available for pre-order starting today and launches on Wednesday, May 15.
