At Apple’s Let Loose launch event, the company introduced its latest M4 chip, featuring 3nm technology, which powers the new iPad Pro (2024) model with tandem OLED screens. With up to 10 CPU cores and a Neural Engine capable of 38 TOPS, the M4 chip is suitable for gaming, with ray tracing and dynamic caching features.
What do we think? The new iPad Pro is truly amazing. Amazingly thin, amazingly powerful, an amazingly bright super high-resolution screen, and amazingly able to run AAA games with ray tracing, all for just $1,000.
Apple unveils the iPad Pro 2024, and it’s quite a-mazing
The line between a powerful desktop or notebook computer and a tablet is growing so thin and gray that it is almost impossible to see. The new Apple iPad Pro introduced at Apple’s recent Let Loose event has made that imaginary line even more invisible. Available in 11- and 13-inch models, with a detachable keyboard, it is more a notebook computer than a tablet. And in addition to an incredibly high-resolution (2752×2064) screen with 1,600 nits of peak HDR brightness, it comes with an all-new Apple Pencil Pro and ray-tracing capabilities—but that’s just the display side of it.
The new iPad also has a 12MP ultra-wide camera with Lidar scanner, studio-quality mics, and four speakers. It can capture 4K video (subject to memory limitations).
Apple’s M4 also handles on-device AI tasks with its upgraded Neural Engine capable of 38 TOPS. The M4 has 28 billion 3nm transistors along with four performance cores and six efficiency cores.
Most interesting (to us) is that the new M4 chip also brings hardware-accelerated ray tracing to the iPad Pro—the capability was added to the company’s Mac and MacBook models last year with the M3 chip. M4 is built on second-gen 3nm technology that’s more power efficient, a plus for the iPad Pro. Apple says the new M4 offers the same performance as the M2 while consuming half the power.
The iPad Pro is also thinner than any previous iPad model at 5.3mm for the 11-inch model and 5.1mm for the 13-inch model. As Apple explained, the new iPads are even thinner than an iPod Nano. Apple also, finally, moved the front-facing camera to be more in line with a MacBook’s placement to enable better videoconferencing for business use cases.
The all-new Apple Pencil Pro has enhanced functionalities such as squeeze, barrel roll, and haptic feedback to streamline tasks like marking up, note-taking, and artistic creation, making them more instinctive than ever before. With Apple Pencil hover, users can preview precisely where Apple Pencil Pro will make contact with the display. A double tap allows for quick tool switching.
The iPad Pro launches on May 15. Pricing for the 11-inch model starts at $999, and the 13-inch model’s pricing starts at $1,299 with Wi-Fi only. New accessories for the device include the Apple Pencil Pro ($129), the new Magic Keyboard ($299 for the 11-inch model; $349 for the 13-inch model), and the new Smart Folio ($79 for the 11-inch model; $99 for the 13-inch model).