For years, the iPad Pro has been Apple’s attempt to give creative professionals a way to do the bulk of their work on a tablet rather than a laptop – but for the first time, the 2024 model actually features a more advanced CPU than a MacBook: The M4. While this may seem to be a spec bump like any other, the fact that Apple has prioritized its tablet over its MacBooks is another move in the company’s attempt to make the iPad into a true laptop alternative. But it’s just not there yet.
Don’t get me wrong, the 2024 iPad Pro is hands-down the best tablet I’ve ever used, but you shouldn’t be looking at this device as a true laptop alternative. However, if a powerful tablet built around creative workloads is specifically what you’re looking for, I can’t think of many other tablets that can do the job better than the new iPad Pro.
iPad Pro (2024) – Design and Features
I don’t need to tell you the iPad Pro is a beautiful device, but, well, it is. It’s incredibly thin, light and has a gorgeous display.
The big change here is how much Apple has shaved off the chassis, thinning it down to 0.21 inches, which also cuts the weight to under 1 pound for the first time. That’s all well and good, and for the most part I love holding this 11-inch iPad in my hands, but there’s only so much chassis you can shave off of a device before it starts impacting durability. In my one week with the new iPad Pro, I obviously didn’t break the thing, but I absolutely noticed that it is incredibly easy to flex the device, which simply makes me concerned about how well it will hold up in the long term.
You can obviously mitigate that risk by throwing it in a case, one of which Apple sent along with the review unit, but that’s an extra $79 that you need to throw into a shopping cart with an already-expensive tablet.
Still, it’s hard to stay mad about the device’s flexibility when it has one of the most beautiful displays I’ve ever had the pleasure of looking at.
Sound on the iPad Pro isn’t as great as I expected it to be. It uses a four-speaker system, housed under the screen at the top and bottom of the device. And while it’s definitely passable for watching various YouTube videos, it doesn’t sound great with anything that has even a little bit of bass. That’s not to say you’re going to get the shaky distortion that some other devices give you, but there are times I’d rather have bass sound outright bad than not being able to hear it at all, and the latter is generally what happens with the iPad Pro.
But while Apple didn’t want to spare too much room for amazing speakers, it absolutely did pack the iPad with more magnets than you can shake a stick at. You have magnets to hold cases on the device, magnets to turn the display off when you cover it with certain accessories. You even have a magnet to attach the new Apple Pencil Pro – which is admittedly awesome. These are all nice features to have, and do make for truly elegant cases, keyboards and other accessories, but if you’re not pairing your iPad with any of those things, it’s basically wasted space.
For accessories that aren’t magnetically attached to the thing, the iPad Pro still uses a USB-C port for charging and data, which supports Thunderbolt 4. This is great for anyone using the iPad for work, as it means the tablet is compatible with hubs that greatly increase its compatibility.
The biggest thing missing, though, is the new Action button found on the iPhone 15 Pro, which is a new programmable button that replaced the Ring/Silent Switch on the new generation of phones. You’d think Apple would want to shove its cool new feature into all of its flagship mobile devices, but I was really missing it here. For one, if I want to turn off notification sounds, I have to go into the Action Center and manually mess about with it, whereas with the Action button, I just wouldn’t have to do that. Apple is still putting the volume rocker on the iPad Pro – why not a button or a switch to turn off notifications?
iPad Pro (2024) – Camera
The iPad Pro, features two cameras, one in the front – which takes care of things like FaceID and selfies – and one around the back that takes care of everything else. You get a 12MP shooter on either end, but the specific features change depending on which of these cameras you’re looking at.
Around the back you get a wide-lens camera with a f/1.8 aperture, which is incredibly mid for mobile cameras in 2024. You do still get nice features like 5x digital zoom and image stabilization, but the lackluster image quality means you’re not going to be using the camera very often. When you look at what most mobile phones can do right now, it does kind of feel like you’re traveling back in time a bit, no matter what features Apple put into the shooter.
The front-facing camera, on the other hand, is also not especially great. Apple has to have a decent front-facing camera because of FaceID, which works extremely well on this device, but when you go to take a selfie, it’s extremely pixelated, even under bright lighting. Sure, most people aren’t really buying an iPad to use as their primary photo snapper, but when you’re paying upwards of a thousand bucks for a tablet, it’d be nice to not have a camera from 2014.
iPad Pro (2024) – Specs and Performance
This is the iPad Pro we got in for review
Display
11-inch OLED @ 2,420 x 1,668
The iPad Pro 2024 comes with Apple’s latest M4 chip, skipping over the M3 that currently powers the best MacBooks. This means it’s technically the newest laptop processor in Apple’s lineup – and it’s not even in a laptop, no matter how much Apple markets the iPad Pro as such. And the M4 is an incredibly powerful processor, thanks to at least a 9-core processor paired with a 10-core GPU and 8GB of RAM if you opt for a 256GB or 512GB configuration.
If you upgrade that to 1TB or 2TB of storage, Apple enables another CPU core (bringing it to 10 cores), and ups the RAM to 16GB. This is a significantly more powerful option, just by virtue of doubling the RAM on offer, so you need to be aware that if you don’t fork over the cash for more storage, you’re getting a slower tablet as a whole. And especially if you’re using the iPad Pro for, you know, professional workloads, the 8GB of RAM in the entry-level model is really going to hold you back when you’re editing photos and video.
Luckily, no matter which model you get, you’re going to get the same 10-core GPU, and let me tell you: this thing is awesome for gaming.
Playing games on the iPad Pro is incredible. Even brand-new games like Wuthering Waves and AFK Journey run like a dream, and don’t seem to really push the M4 very hard. Even after hours of gameplay, the iPad Pro didn’t get too hot, making it probably the most comfortable gaming tablet on the market right now. And if you have a case with a stand, you can connect a controller to play pretty much any game on the gorgeous display through Xbox Game Pass. The way I see it, if you’re going to subject yourself to the added lag that game streaming inevitably introduces, you might as well do it on a beautiful display, and the iPad Pro is the most beautiful display on the market right now.
What Is a Computer?
Apple has put a lot of work into making the iPad Pro seem like a workstation, especially paired with the Magic Keyboard. The company claims that this tablet, when paired with its keyboard accessory – which requires an additional $299 – outclasses the best laptops as creative workstations. The thing is, with the M4 processor and the gorgeous display, it isn’t necessarily wrong.
The problem comes with the price of entry. Again, you’re paying a minimum of $999 for the 11-inch model, but at that price you’re only getting 8GB of RAM, which is not enough for heavy creative workloads like photo and video editing. You can up that to 16GB of RAM by upgrading to a 1TB model, but that brings the price to $1,599 to start. Add in the $299 magic keyboard, and you’re looking at a $1899 price of entry for a device that’s comparable in specs to an identically-specced MacBook Air at $1699 – though with an M3 instead of an M4.
Plenty of creative workflows can really take advantage of the unique form factor of the iPad Pro, though. Illustrators and photographers alike are going to love the new Apple Pencil Pro and how it works with this tablet. I can’t even think of a better device for professional artists.
Apple has made a lot of progress in making iPadOS more comparable to a desktop operating system, as well. Navigating the iPad Pro with the touchpad on the Magic Keyboard is great and all, but there are plenty of things the tablet can’t do that a MacBook can. One of the biggest is the lack of Finder. You get the same ‘Files’ app as the iPhone, but it is still nowhere near as flexible as the macOS file browser. You also don’t get access to Terminal, which limits how much you can configure the system to your needs.
None of this is to say the iPad Pro isn’t a great tablet. In fact, it’s the best tablet on the market right now. I’m just saying it would be awesome if Apple would allow you to run macOS on an iPad, even if it’s something you have to choose when you check out with the device. That, and, it would be cool if the Magic Keyboard wasn’t so expensive.
iPad Pro (2024) – Display
The iPad Pro has always looked good, but the 2024 model is on another level. Last year’s model had a 1668p display that could hit 600 nits of brightness and covered the P3 color gamut. This year, the resolution is the same, but Apple finally shifted the display up to OLED, with a peak brightness of 1600 nits in HDR content (and 1000 nits in SDR). That’s a night-and-day difference, and I can’t tell you how much I’ve been scrolling on this device just because tweets look better on it.
The quality of the display has a direct impact on who it’s actually designed for, too. There are many tablets out there that artists can create with, but the color accuracy and brightness of this display takes photo and video editing to another level – which is further helped along by the beefy M4 chip.
Even for folks that aren’t into creating media, the iPad Pro is one of the best devices to consume it. My first night with the new iPad Pro, I stayed up practically all night reading Star Wars: The High Republic comics, mostly because I was hyped for The Acolyte, but also because reading them on this screen was such a great experience. Even watching movies and shows was awesome, and I’m usually a stickler for having a solid soundbar and a giant TV when I watch my shows.
It’s more than just a looker, though. The iPad Pro also supports ProMotion technology, which is a fancy way of saying “variable refresh rate”. The iPad Pro will intelligently move between 10Hz and 120Hz depending on what you’re doing with your device. For instance, if the iPad senses that there’s a lot of motion going on, it’ll up the refresh rate up to 120Hz. This makes the display incredibly smooth and is especially awesome when playing games that allow for a higher frame rate.
Annoyingly, however, you can’t turn off ProMotion to lock the display in at 120Hz. You can turn the technology off, and limit the frame rate to 60 fps, but if you want to force a high refresh rate all the time, you’re out of luck. This is probably for the best, as it eliminates any chance of screen tearing, but it would have been nice to have the option.