The wait is finally over. Apple has just announced two brand new iPad Pros – an 11-inch and a 13-inch model Let go Event today, confirmation of our months speculation about you. Two new iPad Air models, 11 and 13 inches, were also introduced at the event.
New 11 and 13-inch iPad Pros
One of the most praised features of the new one iPad Pros is their revised design. The company claims these are the “thinnest Apple products ever” and are even slimmer than the iPod Nano. The 11-inch iPad Pro is just 5.3mm thick and the 13-inch iPad is just 5.1mm thick. The 11-inch iPad Pro weighs less than a pound (0.98 lbs), which is really impressive. Apple added that despite reducing the thickness by a few millimeters and reducing the weight by a few pounds, the two new iPad Pros are just as strong as the previous versions and feature a robust all-aluminum body.
The biggest news here is that Apple has finally brought the long-awaited OLED display to its iPads. But we’re talking about Apple here. They’re not just going to give us a regular OLED display and call it a day. On the two new iPad Pros they have introduced the so-called tandem OLED technology. We’ll go deeper into this later, but for now all you need to know is that tandem OLED is essentially two OLED displays stacked on top of each other to increase brightness.
The new Pros reach a maximum of 1,000 nits for SDR and HDR content and 1600 for HDR. The Cupertino company promises deeper blacks, more detail in shadows and low light, and more responsive motion content. The tandem OLED also receives a nanostructured glass coating for the first time, which helps to diffuse the ambient light and thus ensure less glare. Given this huge improvement in display specs, they’re calling it an Ultra Retina XDR display and claiming it’s their most advanced display yet.
The massive performance increase in the new iPad Pros is also a big deal. It seems like Apple made a breakthrough last year by not releasing an 11th-generation iPad, breaking its decade-long streak of going all out on 2024 releases. In terms of performance, we see an upgrade from the M2 to an M4 chip in the new Pro models.
The M4 chips are based on second-generation 3nm technology and use an all-new display engine for improved precision, color and brightness. We also get a redesigned 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU, which equates to 50% faster performance than the M2 CPU and four times faster than the GPU on the M2 chip. Apple’s promise that the M4 chip will only use half the power of the M2 makes this upgrade even more impressive, while also offering significantly better performance than before.
The folks at Apple have been touting the integration of an NPU (Neural Processing Engine) into their machines for years – something other tech companies have recently started exploring. But the new iPad Pros appear to have the most powerful NPU you’ll find on a device. It’s upgraded to 38 trillion operations per second and is a whopping 60 times faster than Apple’s first NPU on its A11 chip.
The new 11 and 13-inch iPad Pros are available to order now with an estimated ship date of May 15th in Silver and Space Black at a starting price of $1,000 and $1,300 respectively.
New 11- and 13-inch iPad Airs
The iPad Air was the first to feature a 13-inch model and a revision of the regular 11-inch version. The company sounded inspired by the 13-inch iPad Pro and wanted to give users the same space as on an Air. Both models have landscape stereo speakers with spatial audio, but the larger iPad Air offers upgraded speakers with more bass. In terms of performance, we see an upgrade from the M1 to an M2 chip in the two new iPad Airs, as well as a faster CPU, GPU and NPU, making them 50% faster than the previous Air.
The 11- and 13-inch iPad Airs are also available to order now and come in 15 copies in blue, purple, starlight and space gray for $600 and $800 respectively.