Apple iPad Pro 2024 launched with new M4 chip, OLED display

After doing the rounds in the rumour mills for months now, it’s finally here, folks! Apple has just taken the wraps off of the new flagship OLED screen iPad Pro models, along with the latest generation iPad Air and the Apple Pencil Pro as well.

And if you’re wondering just what’s new with the latest iPad Pro models, read on to find out.

iPad Pro: Performance and storage

This year, the new iPad Pro models are not powered by the recently launched M3 chipsets for the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. Instead, they get Apple’s all-new M4 chip. The new M4 chip gets a new CPU architecture with four performance and six efficiency cores, along with a 10-core GPU as well. The new GPU gets dynamic caching and ray tracing, which ensures graphically demanding games such as Diablo look and run better than ever before on the device.

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This makes the new iPad Pro models, according to the company, up to 1.5x faster than the current M2-powered iPad Pro models. Additionally, the company also claims the M4 ensures the iPad Pro consumes up to 50 per cent less power than the older iPad Pro models as well. Storage options on the tablets include 256GB, 512GB, 1TB and 2TB configurations.

Additionally, on-board is a new Neural Processing Unit (NPU), which Apple claims is capable of up to 38 trillion operations per second. This makes it up to 60 times faster than the first-ever NPU in an Apple device, on-board the A11 Bionic chip. There are also advanced frameworks such as Core ML, making it easier for developers to run powerful generative AI models, whether on the cloud or natively on-board.

iPad Pro: Display

OLED screens have already been made available on the Apple Watch and iPhone. However, they were yet to make their way to larger devices including the iPad. Until now. As mentioned earlier, the new iPad Pro models, which come in two sizes – one with a 13-inch display, and another with a 11-inch display.

However, the displays are not your usual OLED displays. The Ultra Retina XDR displays get not one, but two OLED panels sandwiched together, which is called Tandem OLED. This helps provide for sharper images, brighter colours, and sharper contrasts than ever before. Peak brightness on the displays for the two devices stands at 1,000 nits for SDR and HDR content, and 1,600 nits for HDR Content. What’s cool is, there is also a new Nano texture glass, which helps scatter ambient light on the display to minimise glare.

iPad Pro: Design and audio

The new 11-inch and 13-inch iPad Pro Models are housed in an aluminium frame and are 5.3mm and 5.1 mm thick respectively – making them the thinnest Apple products ever. They are super light as well, weighing in at 0.98 pounds (approximately 444 grams) and 1.28 pounds (approximately 580 grams), making them some of the lightest iPads ever.

For audio, there is a quad stereo-speaker setup on the device, which Apple says provides for louder sounds and deeper bass as well.

iPad Pro: Cameras

The camera on the new M4-powered 11 and 13-inch iPad Pro is a 12MP unit, which gets a LiDAR scanner as well as TrueTone flash, which helps identify documents, and instantly takes multiple pictures of the same to gradually remove shadows from it. On the front is a 12MP TrueDepth camera with Face ID support, which has now been moved to a landscape orientation.

iPad Pro: Connectivity

For charging and connecting peripherals on the device is a USB Type-C port with support for Thunderbolt 3 and USB 4, delivering data transfer speeds of up to 40 Gbps. It also gets WiFi-6E connectivity along with 5G support in the cellular models, which can be activated with an eSIM. The latest additions to the Apple iPad Pro lineup also get support for the new Magic Keyboard as well new Apple Pencil Pro, which the company unveiled at the event as well, along with the new iPad Air.

iPad Pro: Pricing and availability

The new 11 and 13-inch iPad Pro models are available in Silver and Space Black colours. They start at $999 (Approximately Rs 83,367) and $1,199 (Approximately Rs 100,000) for the Wi-Fi only and Wifi+Cellular variants respectively, in the case of the 11-inch model.

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The Wi-Fi only and cellular variants of the 13-inch model, on the other hand, start at $1,299 (Approximately Rs 108,500) and $1,499 (Approximately Rs 1,25,000) for the 13-inch model. Pre-orders for the latest Apple iPad Pro models have already begun, and they are slated to go on sale globally by May 15.