iPad Pro: 10,000 LEDs under the body and an M1 processor. The Apple tablet is now more powerful than the MacBook Air

The rumors are true. Apple announced a new iPad Pro, and if we exclude the operating system that is still iPadOS, the system that will go on sale in mid-May with a starting price of 1,219 euros is a product that has little in common with the first tablet for creatives. Apple announced in the past years.

There is a lot to say about the new iPad Pro, from the Thunderbolt port to the presence of 5G through to the M1 processor, like the MacBook, but we want to start with the screen.

12.9-inch Liquid Retina XDR display It’s a little engineering miracle.

We are in the year of miniLED TVs, and so far manufacturers have indicated a general number of LEDs of several thousand for products ranging from 55 inches to 85 inches.

Apple managed to get in More than 10,000 small LED emitters Under display grouped into groups of four with a total of 2596 areas managed in local opacity.

That’s on a relatively small 12.9-inch IPS screen, and at an overall thickness it can stay within 7mm: 6.9mm exactly. The only doubt we left has to do with backlight management: Managing multiple regions synchronized with the signal is not easy, especially if we think the iPad Pro has a variant update, and it would be weird to know if Apple has used a dedicated processor. As on the Pro Display or if everything is done by the M1, maybe some graphics cores will be sacrificed for the sake of it.

If we remove the € 5,999 Pro Display, the new iPad Pro is It is the most advanced display in any Apple product. It has 2732 x 2048 pixels and 264 pixels per inch (pixels per inch), ProMotion runs, thus 120Hz with variable refresh, has wide color and true color tone, like a Pro display, can reach 1600 nits of peak brightness With HDR. Without HDR it hits 1,000 nits across the screen as a peak, while staying at 600 nits of standard brightness.

MacBook Pro owners have asked Apple for a cheaper version of the Pro Display, and if we consider the possibility of using the iPad Pro as a secondary display for the MacBook, thanks to the new tablet you can finally get it. True portable display for HDR / Dolby Vision rating and editing on the go. It remains to be seen if it would take advantage of different color profiles, such as the external display – it would make perfect sense if it were the main productivity apps. It will be updated to take advantage of HDR.

The new iPad isn’t just a display, there’s also an M1 processor underneath the chassis: the same SoC running an operating system like macOS Big Sur with ultra-high performance should run a relatively lighter system like iPadOS.

The performance jump, compared to the old model, should be significant.

We’ll have to open a very long arc around software support: iPadOS, with limited multitasking, appears to be narrow now for the iPad that If it had the Big Sur on board, it would suddenly be a better product than the 13-inch MacBook Pro. We have to wait for WWDC to understand how iPadOS 15 will evolve, which cannot remain indifferent to the news of this iPad.

All this with the anonymous Hypervisor VR: Will it be possible on the iPad Pro, thanks to the M1, to default to Windows and Linux with the Parallel version of the iPad? So far this was never possible due to the limits of the Soc, as there is now the M1 The ability to convert iPad into Surface is a far cry from remote control.

Thanks to the M1 processor, the iPad Pro also gains Thunderbolt and 5G connectivity, which in the states-specific model would also have mmWave on the iPhone. Wi-fi + Cellular version as usual has a higher entry price: If wi-fi costs 1,219.00, then 5G costs € 1,389 in Italy.

Not to overpay for a tablet that now costs more than a Mac Apple kept the memory allocation for the base version low: 128GB. The iPad comes in at 2 TB, but these are configurations to choose from in the pre-order phase: Needless to say, 128GB on a product of this type isn’t very many.

Just to give more details if on iMac and MacBook Air depending on the version, the M1 processor can have a 7 or 8-core CPU, on iPad Pro for all models, 11 and 12.9 inches, The GPU is always 8 cores. The RAM is 8 GB instead on the 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB and the 16 GB RAM on 1 TB and 2 TB models.

Another new is the new 12MP ultra-wide front camera: it uses machine learning to recognize subjects and adds that function called Center Stage which keeps the topic relevant during calls by cropping and zooming, such as Echo View and Portal.

Thanks to the new M1 ISP, Smart HDR 3 arrives on iPad along with advanced imaging functions and improves the capabilities provided by Lidar. A small thing, however, compared to everything else.

The 11-inch version is identical in functionality, but uses a more traditional screen: 11 inches and a resolution of 2388 x 1668 pixels. Change the battery, but not the autonomy of the two models that remain identical. Despite the LED display, Apple promises up to 10 hours of video playback.

The 11-inch version starts at € 899.00 and will also be available in mid-May.