Apple iPad Pro (2021)
More of a laptop alternative than ever, and it comes with a truly stupendous display
The iPad Pro has slowly matured into quite the powerhouse over the past few years, but it’s taken a giant leap forward in 2021. Adopting the much-lauded Apple M1 processor, it’s finally drawn level with its more “serious” MacBook counterparts when it comes to raw power.
Coupled with the advances that Apple has made to iPadOS, the latest iPad Pro more closely resembles a full-blown laptop than ever before. The question is, can it live up to everyone’s high expectations?
The new and the old
The M1 chip isn’t the only big upgrade for the 2021 iPad Pro. Next on the list is the new “Liquid Retina XDR” display, which employs Mini LED tech to boost its HDR capabilities, improving the visuals without the cost to peak brightness and battery life that OLED often brings. Before you rush off to buy the 11in model, however, be aware that it doesn’t benefit from this screen upgrade.
There’s also 5G support, an ultrawide front camera that can follow you around the room, Thunderbolt 3 connectivity and a new 2TB storage option, although the price of that is heart-stoppingly expensive.
Everything else remains the same, from the colour choices (Space Grey or silver) to the design. For example, the 12.9in version is 5.9mm thick and weighs 682g, or 1.4kg with the optional Magic Keyboard attached to it.
You get the same pair of topquality cameras in a square at the rear, along with the Lidar scanner for measuring objects and using augmented reality (AR) apps. Also on the rear are three metal contacts for keyboard attachment, while around the edges you’ll find that single Thunderbolt 3 port, the volume and power buttons (in the upper-left
“The audio output of the iPad Pro’s speakers remains among the best I’ve listened to on any laptop, tablet, 2-in-1 or otherwise”
corner if you have the tablet in landscape orientation) plus four speaker grilles for the iPad Pro’s quad-speaker array. The audio output of the iPad Pro’s speakers remains among the best I’ve listened to on any laptop, tablet, 2-in-1 or otherwise.
Webcam magic
As before, the iPad Pro employs Face ID as its primary means of biometric authentication, which works as well as it ever did. The camera itself, however, has been upgraded with the introduction of a feature called Centre Stage.
Simply put, Centre Stage uses the new 10.8MP 105° ultrawide front camera to keep your face centred in the frame during video calls. It works well, panning left, right, up and down as you move, and it’s surprising how far off-centre you can move and still stay in frame.
That’s great, but the image quality is disappointing. Colours look good
and the camera’s HDR capabilities capabilitie help it cope with extremes of brig bright and dark in the frame, but there’s plenty of image noise, no doubt amplified by the fact that the Cen Centre Stage tracking only makes use of part of the sensor at any particular tim time.
There are no such caveats with the th Liquid Retina XDR display, which is, to get technical for a moment, bonkers good. It measures 12.9in across the diagonal and has a resolution of 2,732 x 2,048, the same sa as last year, but the benefit of Mini Min LED technology is blindingly bright brig highlights and inky dark blacklevel response.
Why not go OLED? Battery life and d brightness each play a significant part. Most of the OLED displays we’ve w seen on laptops negatively impact impac battery life, with the Samsung Galaxy Ga Book Pro’s 1080p OLED screen proving the only exception ( see p p50).
Peak brightness also rarely reaches rea the same levels as it does with backlit bac LCD screens. You can compensate for that indoors by drawing the curtains, but OLED displays are an inferior choice in the bright outdoors.
The iPad Pro 12.9in’s Mini LED display strikes the perfect compromise. The contrast ratio isn’t perfect as it is on OLED screens, but co mbined with a peak brightness of up to 1,600cd/m² with Dolby Vision HDR material and 1,000cd/m² at full-screen (that’s blindingly bright), it delivers a contrast ratio that’s almost as good. Colour accuracy is fabulous, too, with the average Delta E at only 0. 32 . Th at ’s essentially as good as it gets.
HD R 10 mate rial measures up well . Peak brightne ss agai n reached just ov er 1,000c d/ m² and th e colour accu ra cy was a soli d 2.33. This tr ansl at es to wo nd rously impactful playback of HDR movi es and TV .
Sat side by side wi th the pr evio us model, images have mo re soli di ty on the new iPad, and thos e black ba rs at the top and bottom of th e sc re en fa de into darker in conseq ue nce. Nowh er e is th is mo re obvi ou s th an in th e twil ight world of Apple TV+’s Ea rth at Night in Colo r series. Sc enes shot in the da rk ha ve more impact , ap pe ar more luminous and pack more co nt rast th an on the older tablet. Th e action lo ok s more real and more present on th e Mini LE D display.
An d it co mp ares fa vourab ly with the OL ED panels that rivals are beginning to inst all on their prem ium laptops and tablets, to o. Fo r ex am ple, th e OLED sc reen on the Sa ms ung Galaxy Ta b S7+ ( see issue 31 6, p9 1) looks glorious indoors but only hit a peak 367c d/ m² in our tests.
Beyond fast
One area where the 2020 iPad Pro beats its 2021 iteration is battery life. In our video-rundown test, the M1 iPad Pro 12.9in lasted 11hrs 35mins compared to 15hrs 4mins for last year’s mo de l. Nor can it match the Ma cBook Air, which lasted 14hrs 40 mins in the same test, but that’s hardly su rprisi ng given that the iPad ’s ba tt ery is 40.9Wh versus the Air’ s 49.9Wh.
But th e bigger question is this: how much more powerful is th e M1 on iPadOS comp ar ed to the outgoing Apple A12X in the 2020 iPad Pro? The answer is “a lot”. We already know fr om the MacBooks that the Ap ple M1 chip is po werful en ough to drive macOS and full -blown de sk top software and it’s the same here , al though there’s no big sw it ch in ar chitectu re.
The graphs ov er leaf put this into pe rs pect iv e. You can see that the M1 iP ad Pr o 12.9in pe rforms roughly on a par wi th the MacBoo k Air but, co mp ar ed wi th th e previous iPad Pro 12.9 in , it ’s considerab ly quicker. It achi ev ed a 56 % hi gher score on average in the Ge ekbench 5 be nchmark an d a 45% higher frame rate in th e demandin g Car Chase GFXBen ch offscr een graphics test.
The previous iPad Pro was no slouch, but th e M1 ma chin e is simply in a di ff erent league.
The laptop dilemma
Do es this mean th at the M1 iPad Pro sh ou ld be vi ewed in the same
“How much more powerful is the M1 processor than the outgoing Apple A12X from 2020’s iPad Pro? The answer is ‘a lot’”
category as the M1 MacBook Air?
After all, despite the difference in form factor, the hardware inside is, effectively, the same. The answer is: it’s complicated.
Apple has certainly made big strides with iPadOS in the past few years and it’s no longer painful to do serious work on. With the Files app, you can now perform simple filetransfer operations and copy and paste stuff back and forth from external storage.
There are plenty of heavyweight apps available on the platform, too, from professional photo-editing apps such as Photoshop and Affinity Photo to high-end video-editing packages such as LumaFusion. You can even connect a mouse and keyboard and use it like a regular Mac.
The main issue that would prevent me from using an iPad for work full time is that it still doesn’t have proper external monitor support. While you can connect a second screen to the iPad’s Thunderbolt 3 port, the only display option open to you currently is to duplicate what’s shown on the screen of the iPad. That means there’s no option to extend the space available and spread apps across two screens as you can with a MacBook or a Windows 10 laptop. And the fact that the Sidecar feature in macOS allows MacBooks and iMacs to use an iPad as a second monitor simply rubs salt into the wound.
This may change, of course, as Apple updates iPadOS over the coming months and years but, right now, it’s a serious hurdle to the iPad Pro’s professional aspirations.
Final considerations
Putting that aside for one moment, it’s quite clear that the iPad Pro 12.9in is a fabulous piece of hardware and categorically the best tablet you can buy. The question is whether it’s worth the expense compared to, for instance, the 10.9in iPad Air, which costs £1,008 for the 256GB Wi-Fi model plus Magic Keyboard; the same configuration of 11in iPad Pro costs a reasonable £1,128, but the 12.9in edition with its Mini LED screen is a painful £1,428.
Or consider its Android rivals.
The Galaxy Tab S7+, complete with 120Hz 12.5in AMOLED screen, costs precisely £1,001 with 256GB of RAM and a keyboard cover if you buy direct from samsung.com/uk. And last month we reviewed the attractive Lenovo Tab P11 Pro ( see issue 322,
p60) with a tasty 11.5in OLED screen for £599, and that included both a keyboard and a stylus. Can it hold a candle to the finesse or power of the 12.9in iPad Pro? Absolutely not, but it emphasises that the 12.9in iPad Pro’s rivals are laptops rather than traditional tablets.
Look at it this way: the iPad Pro is now as powerful as the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, it has great battery life for a device this compact and the new Mini LED display technology puts it in a different league. In many ways, its hardware offering isn’t just as good as a traditional laptop, including Apple’s own, but better.
However, it’s held back by silly restrictions such as the inability to make full use of a second display.
More tellingly still, if you buy both the tablet and keyboard, it’s considerably more expensive than the equivalent Apple MacBook Air (see issue 319, p79).
Apple must be appluaded for bringing the iPad to full parity with its laptop and desktop machines. It’s fabulous hardware, no doubt. What a shame, then, that it’s being blocked from true greatness by the limitations of the iPad’s software.