- Hey guys, this is Austin,
and the iPad is better than a console at gaming.
Let me explain.
This is the iPad Pro, and there are a few reasons
why it's become much better for gaming recently.
One of the big ones is a very fundamental issue
from previously, controller support.
Now, with iPadOS you have native support
for not only the Xbox One gamepad,
but also the DualShock 4 from the PS4.
The real key advantage here
is what Apple calls their ProMotion display.
Now, this is essentially a 120 frame per second display,
which ships on all iPad Pros.
Now, the idea here is very straightforward,
at 120 frames per second,
you're getting twice the amount of frames,
and therefore you're going to get gameplay,
and well, pretty much everything else,
running twice as smoothly as pretty much
any kind of standard panel.
This is important because it's a feature
that you really can't get on other consoles,
such as the PS4 or the Switch.
Now, because it runs at such a high refresh rate,
previously, the only other way to really get
that kind of performance
was with a fairly high end gaming PC,
as well as an expensive gaming monitor.
Sure, that's definitely going to be
the ultimate way to play, but it's not cheap,
and it's not anywhere near as portable
as something like the iPad Pro.
Now, this is changing soon.
The next generation PlayStation 5,
as well as the Xbox Series X,
both will support higher frame rates, such as 120 FPS,
but the downside there is that
while the hardware might be capable,
you still need some kind of display or TV that can give you
that full 120 frames per second experience.
That's actually one of the main advantages
of something like a Nintendo Switch,
or in this case, an iPad.
Because Apple controls the entire ecosystem,
they can just say, "Oh, you know what,
"we're going to put everything we need to make this work."
The screen, the software, the spec,
everything can be in one single package,
whereas with consoles and everything,
it's a little bit more, it's possible,
but it's obviously taking a lot longer
to get to that very, very smooth gaming experience
that obviously everyone wants.
Now, when you look at this side-by-side
with something like the Switch,
it's a very interesting comparison.
Now, Nintendo, in a lot of ways, has the same advantages.
This is a portable console, so the screen's built in,
they could easily ship it with high frame rate options.
The difference though, is that the Switch, by itself,
is not powerful enough to really take advantage of 120 FPS,
I mean, most Switch games run at like 30,
and that's where Apple does have
a big advantage here, right?
They are building that chip inside,
which is incredibly well optimized
and very, very powerful for a mobile device.
Pair that with the advantage
that the iPad is very frequently getting updates
with better hardware and more performance,
whereas a console, such as the Switch or the PS4,
might go three, four, or even five years
without any kind of meaningful performance update,
and you've got yourself a recipe
for what actually could be a real gaming powerhouse.
I almost called it a console, but it's not quite,
but they're making, actually, some serious progress.
- Wow, pwogwess. - Progress
Hey, be nice, Ken, be nice.
The idea for this video actually came about
because Epic recently added
full 120 frame per second support inside Fortnite.
Now yes, you're probably over listening to Fortnite,
and well, I actually think
it is a good example for this video.
So, not only did this completely blow up my Twitter,
but almost more importantly,
this is one of those very few games that will run,
not only as a AAA game
across a wide variety of platforms like the PS4,
the Switch, and the iPad,
but importantly, it is one of the very few games
that actually does support that full 120 frames per second
running on the latest generation iPad pro.
To illustrate my point,
I have three different systems to try.
So, first of all, we have the Nintendo Switch,
which operates with a 30 FPS cap.
We also have the PS4 Pro,
which can go up to 60 frames per second,
and then we'll have the iPad Pro running at
that full 120 frames per second.
Now, because this is a YouTube video
and you can't really see the difference between 60 and 120,
we are taking advantage of our Red camera
running in slow motion.
So, right now it's set to 5K resolution
at a full 120 frames per second,
so once we slow that down,
you actually should be able to see
a pretty significant difference
between all three of these setups.
Because really, when it comes to frame rate,
when it comes to this stuff,
you really do need the absolute maximum in responsiveness,
and I think that this is sort of really where the iPad,
theoretically, should be way, way better,
although graphics-wise maybe not, we'll see.
Yeah, you can see that gets really stuttery.
I mean, we're going well below 30 frames per second here.
Now, what I like about looking at the slow motion feed
is that because this is a 60 frame per second display
which is running at 30,
you should see a brand new frame every 33.3 milliseconds,
however, what you're actually seeing
is that a lot of frames are being duplicated,
which means that there's sort of that jutter, that stutter.
It doesn't look as smooth as it should be,
even though, theoretically,
this is a full 30 frame per second game.
But yeah, I mean, that's not a great experience.
I mean, it's kinda playable, it's okay,
but it is nowhere near as smooth as something like a PS4,
and especially not as good as I hope the iPad will be.
So, this is actually fairly comparable
to what you would get on your phone,
although I know Fortnite,
on the most recent generation of iPhone,
actually does run at 60 frames per second.
And in fact, on iOS, actually,
Fortnite's pretty well optimized
because you actually can get into the settings
and tweak it if you want.
Better graphics or higher frame rates,
you can kinda tweak things like on the PC,
whereas on the Switch, on the PS4,
it's kind of like, you get what you get.
So, I think, actually,
Fortnite is probably better on a phone than on your Switch,
but let's try the PS4 now.
Yeah, I mean, we can immediately see
the PS4 runs a lot smoother than the Switch did.
Not only is it not really dropping frames,
it's staying pretty consistent at 60,
but we also have twice as many frames to look at.
Now, there's a lot of sort of talk
about why frame rate matters,
and I could go a lot more in depth on it,
but essentially, the idea is that
when you get more frames per second,
there's less latency between when you press a button,
or click something, or do anything
and when you actually see it reflected in the game.
So, for example, if we're playing on the Switch,
you should get a new frame every 33.3 milliseconds,
and that's still pretty quick.
However, if say, I'm playing on PS4 against you,
and I get a new frame every 16 milliseconds,
or basically twice as fast,
it means that I have a real competitive advantage.
There's less time between when I press that button,
and when I get the headshot,
or miss my shot, which is more realistic.
The way to think about frame rate is twofold.
You can see the smoothness, right?
I mean, if you're playing a 30, versus 60, versus 120,
obviously it looks better,
but it also will make you better at games,
because if you're playing on the Switch
and you have 30 frames per second
and I'm playing on the iPad at 120,
you have to wait four times as long to get a new frame,
if I step to the left or step to the right, as I do.
Now obviously, none of this is ideal
because there are obviously variables all across,
but generally speaking,
a higher frame rate not only looks smoother,
but also will give you a much more substantial advantage
when it comes to I see what you're doing,
or you see what I'm doing 20 milliseconds later
or whatever the case is.
Does that makes sense? - It's one more thing
to make you better.
So, after all of this talk about frame rate
and why it matters, it's time to actually try
the iPad Pro version of Fortnite.
So, if we hop into the settings,
we actually have a couple of different options.
So, you can actually cap the frame rate
at 20, 30, 60, or 120.
And then, if we go into the quality presets,
we can go low, medium, high, or epic.
So, if we do epic, it's 30 FPS,
high, I think is maximum of 60.
Yeah, if we go to 120 it sort of defaults us to medium.
So, with our PS4 controller paired,
let's see exactly how smooth
120 frames per second is on the iPad,
and whether I should throw the PlayStation in the garbage.
No more gaming PCs, iPad gamers only, rise up.
Dude, that latency is crazy.
I mean, literally, it feels like
as soon as I tap that stick, I'm immediately jumping in.
And that frame rate's actually staying pretty stable.
Now mind you, it is definitely running
at a fairly low resolution,
and to give sort of some of other these other consoles,
specifically the PS4, some credit,
you are making some cutbacks.
For example, draw distance is not as far.
So, while you might have
a better response time against someone,
you might not be able to see them as far into the distance.
But the smoothness of this experience
is really hard to get away from.
I mean, that is, and that's a really solid 120 FPS.
We can definitely pull it up on the slow motion,
but generally, just sort of to my eye,
this is incredibly smooth.
I can immediately say while yeah,
the settings are a little bit distracting,
you can see, it's literally drawing in the light in front,
but yeah, there's no doubt that this is a better experience.
If you're gonna ask me
whether I wanna play on the PS4 or the iPad,
I'm gonna say iPad here.
You just can't get away from the fact
that this is such a smooth experience.
Now, mind you, if I want better quality,
I can just hop into the settings
and switch it over to say, epic.
Oh, okay, I can't change it while I'm in a match,
but theoretically, if I do want higher quality graphics,
I can just turn that setting down
and I'll just lose some frame rate.
But if you want sort of the maximum smooth experience,
it's crazy to me that an iPad will give you that
and it's gonna look better
than literally console you can buy right now.
That's pretty cool.
- [Ken] Also, you can take this one somewhere,
and that one you kind of can, but that's a little harder.
- That, essentially looks like we are getting,
I mean, you can see, we're running at 120 frames per second
and it looks dead smooth.
I'm actually surprised
it's not even really dipping too much.
I feel like if I get into some action
I might drop a little bit, but that's impressive,
especially if you put the side by side with the Switch,
while yes, with these graphic settings,
it looks a little blurrier,
but the difference is night and day
between the responsiveness of 30
versus 120 frames per second.
And again, these are two mobile devices.
This is really impressive.
When I heard 120 frames per second,
I figured they had just uncapped the frame rate
and it would kinda be bouncing around,
but at least for a fairly standard gameplay,
you are getting that full experience on an iPad.
Now, is that iPad more expensive than a Switch?
Absolutely, but I mean,
we've come a long way for mobile devices,
and I love the fact that you can get
such a smooth frame rate, such a real gaming experience,
especially with a controller,
on something which no one would ever look twice at.
You can pull out your iPad in every coffee shop in the world
and they think you're gonna be writing your thesis
or you're watching YouTube,
but instead, what you're doing is
you're beating people at Fortnite at 120 frames per second.
It's okay, I won't tell.
It is a brave new world, my friends, but if you enjoy,
definitely be sure to subscribe to the channel.
And if you wanna know more about this kinda stuff,
we did a video at CES
with a ridiculous 360 frame per second monitor from Asus,
so you guys can go check that out over here.
And until next time, I'm now an iPad Fortnite gamer,
so there's that, I guess.