The 2021 iPad Pro is a very good…..iPad
Hey, I’m Jerry and this is my review of the 2021 iPad Pro after more than a week of
use. I know a lot of people want to know if they should buy this iPad Pro over the iPad
Air 4 or if they should upgrade from the 2018 or 2020 iPad Pro but this video is not really
a comparison video but I will say if you want or need the best tablet computer you can buy,
and you can afford it, buy the iPad Pro. …………
The 2021 iPad Pro design is carried forward from the 2020 iPad Pro which has been carried
over from the 2018 iPad Pro. The iPad Pro is completely flat on all sides with rounded
corners that really just feels good to hold and use. The edges of the iPad Pro are littered,
but not in a bad way, with speaker grills, mic holes, volume and power buttons, apple
pencil magnet cutouts, and the new thunderbolt port. This is pretty much that sci-fi tablet
from movies when I was growing up that allowed people to do so many crazy things that we
couldn’t imagine being true in a device like this.
The design overall is just clean and modern and Apple has been slowly bringing the same
design to the iPhone, iPad Air and iMac. Even the new Apple TV remote and rumored new MacBooks
will be getting this new design that started with the iPad Pro.
On the front of the ipad is just a screen. A very beautiful, bright, screen with P3 color,
true tone, and a variable 120hz refresh rate that makes scrolling text on webpages and
documents feel less digital. The 12.9” version does get an upgrade over the 11” in 2021
with the new liquid retina xdr display that includes over 10,000 mini LEDs, broken into
2500 individual dimming zones that each light up separately to give you a 1 million to 1
contrast ratio.
Now, along with up to 1600 nits of brightness for HDR content this supposedly this gives
you near OLED contrast which means your whites are bright white and your blacks are pure
black. The HDR content I have tested on the liquid retina XDR display does look absolutely
amazing. One of the easiest ways to see the difference between the contrast is showing
the letterboxing around a video on the 12.9” vs the 11” or previous generation.
There has been some concerns about blooming on the display where you have a bright object
with a dark background and because of the size of the 2500 dimming zones you essentially
have some light bleed around those objects. There is also an issue where there is a slight
shadow around the border of the display on the xdr that does not appear on the other
iPad Pros. In my opinion this is pretty much overblown and in regular use of watching a
video, and actually paying attention to the content instead of pixel peeping, you don’t
notice any issue. You should just enjoy the content. If you are wondering if the liquid
retina xdr display is worth the $300 upgrade cost over the 11” I would say that the decision
should really come down to how much you want the larger screen and not necessarily the
screen technology. As you use either iPad in regular use, the differences in contrast
are going to fade away…………..Especially with the 4 speaker array that continues to
sound amazing coming out of a device with this form factor. The speakers will automatically
adjust for left and right depending on how you hold it and has no problem filling a small
room with music, a podcast or even when crowding around to watch a movie or tv show.
Face ID is still included on the new iPad Pro and it seems to be the exact same as with
the previous iPad Pro and is by far my favorite way to unlock an iPad. Its super-fast, accurate,
and consistent. I wish I had more to say about it, but I don’t, and that’s pretty much
my feeling about the rear cameras, as well. There is a wide and ultra wide camera on the
back that do not have the same features and quality as the iPhone 12 but they are there
if you just happen to need to take a photo while already using the ipad. Then there is
the lidar sensor which if you use an app regularly on your iPad or iPhone with lidar that isn’t
essentially a technology demo, I would love to know what that is so drop it in the comments
because I don’t know what to use it for.
The front camera was updated with a much wider 122° field of view and new Center stage feature
which will focus on and track you as you move around in a video app. Its actually pretty
neat and will go pretty far to the sides and adjust for others coming into frame as well.
You can enable or disable it per app if you prefer. My only complaint about the front
camera on the iPad is that it is still on the side when using it in landscape mode,
which I do nearly all the time. Even with center stage it always looks like I am looking
off to the side even when I am looking straight on the display. I think it is time to move
the camera on the iPad to the longer side.
This year the iPad Pro comes equipped with the same Apple M1 chip that Apple has been
putting in its computers since last fall. It has an 8 core CPU with 4 performance and
4 efficiency cores, an 8 core GPU and comes with 8 or 16GB of ram depending on the storage
configuration. And its fast, but I’m not even going to bore you with benchmark tests
in the video except that Apple says the 2021 iPad Pro is 50% faster than the CPU in the
2020 iPad pro and 40% faster in graphics.
Now, the 2018 and 2020 iPad pro were no slouch and I can’t recall anyone saying how slow
there’s was and the fact that Apple can claim it is up to 50% faster just seems like
they are bragging at this point…And I would to, but, only in a few of my tests like exporting
video or opening a bigger game can I see some slight improvements. Everything else from
web browsing to working on docs, watching videos in Netflix or youtube all feels about
the same.
The M1 processor also brought along Thunderbolt to the ipad for the first time and now we
have a 40gbps connection. This could be huge for the future of iPad. We were able to connect
a USB-C dock to the previous iPad Pro and connect external displays, SSDs, card readers,
ethernet and more. With Thunderbolt we can do all of that same stuff but now you can
connect up to a 6k display and Thunderbolt SSDs.
Unfortunately, just like with the M1 it seems, Thunderbolt is held back a bit by the iPad
and iPadOS. Its no secret that iPadOS just feels restrictive on the iPad hardware with
simple things like file management, but also with larger things like extended display support.
When you connect an iPad to an external display it is just mirrored to the display, so you
get these black pillars on each side. There are a couple of apps that can take advantage
of the full display like Luma Fusion and that is nice because you can actually create and
have a nice large display to verify it’s what you want. There is some speculation that
iPadOS 15, which is being announced next week at WWDC, may finally bring some much-needed
improvements to the iPad operating system that will allow users to take advantage of
this massive hardware upgrade.
I really am hoping for huge changes in file and app management and more access to hardware
accessories. Maybe a new iPad version of finder that is more powerful would like to be able
to switch between the built-in speakers and speakers connected to a thunderbolt dock or
just connect my iPad to a display and use an external keyboard and mouse while in clamshell
mode……Or maybe Apple can figure out eGPUs?
For nearly 2 years I used my 12.9” iPad Pro as my main computer and I enjoyed finding
ways to do almost everything I needed to and I have lots of videos on that. I think a refreshed
iPadOS with new pro apps that can take advantage of this insanely good hardware could draw
me back to wanting to use the iPad pro for everything. We now have desktop class hardware
and desktop class memory in an iPad so please, apple, lets get a desktop class OS.
So, this iPad Pro with M1 is the best iPad you can buy but it’s an iPad…..for better
or worse. If you want the best.. get the iPad Pro, either model. If you want the larger
screen, I would spend the extra but I wouldn’t spend the extra just because of the screen
technology, if you prefer smaller iPads.
I didn’t cover any accessories for the iPad pro in this video but if you are looking to
get a keyboard case for your new iPad Pro then check out this comparison between the
magic keyboard and the Logitech combo touch. Hit the thumbs up button if you liked it,
hit subscribe if you want and I’ll see you next time.