An 11-inch iPad Pro that’s more than 50 times faster than M2: comparing performance and size with a 13-inch Air
The new chip is built on a second-generation three-nanometer process, packing more transistors into a smaller space, enhancing both power efficiency and speed. The CPU has four performance cores and six efficiency cores, which Apple says delivers up to 50 percent faster CPU performance than M2 in the previous iPad Pro. There’s a 10-core for four times faster performance. It is similar to the M3 in that it comes with features like ray tracing and mesh shading.
The larger model feels more comfortable to hold and use than the smaller one, it is such a big difference. (And it’s technically even larger now, up to 13 inches from 12.9 before1) You can tell the difference between the Pro and the new Air from practically across the room, and as someone who has carried around an 11-inch Pro for the last year and a half, it’s really a big difference. The biggest question I have for now is about fragility: is the new Pro potentially too thin? There are tradeoffs with a device like this, even though it is sturdy enough in my hands. We have lots of testing to do.
An M4 processor: what will we learn from the next generation of the iPad? – Mac OS versus a new M4 chipset
The whole thing is powered by the M4 chip. We have to see. The M4 is meant to power extremely intense use cases, like the new multicam setup in Final Cut Pro or some more advanced artistic features in apps, which is why the iPad has had enough power for a long time. It was fast in the demo. The iPad is a very fast device.
The row of function keys at the top makes it a much more useful machine, as it makes the keyboard much more useful. It is not a great operating system for the trackpad and we would have to wait for Apple to improve that, but that is something we can only wait for.
The pencil pro feels like a pencil. It was fast and easy to draw and move around on the Pro screen when I squeezed or double-taped it, which is a nice addition to the setup. I am not an artist, so we will need someone to more thoroughly test this. Most of the coolest stuff is software, too, and a lot of the Pencil Pro’s best features will come from third-party developers.
The new iPad Air or the cheaper 10th- generation iPad are not suitable for casual consumption because of the high costs of the iPad Pro. This Pro looks like it holds up nicely, because Apple likes to do the best hardware work on its highest end devices.
Since 2020, Apple has exclusively launched its M-series processors alongside another Mac. That’s no longer the case as Apple unveiled the all-new M4 chipset debuting inside the new iPad Pro.
As Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference is next month, the shift in strategy makes sense. In April, it was reported that Apple was in talks with Openai about incorporating some of the company’s features into the next version of the iPhone operating system as well as a new slate of generative Artificial Intelligence features.