iPad Pro Review: A Creator’s Perspective

I hope everyone is fine. So welcome to a new post on Tech Talk. I think the iPad Pro is the most promising device that Apple has released in recent times. A question that many people ask me is, “Bro, is this all I need? Should I get an iPad?” When it comes to getting a MacBook, many people are confused as to why they are using an iPad.

I have been using the iPad Pro with Apple’s most powerful chip, the M4 chip, for the past two weeks, so I am going to share with you my user experience about this device as always. This review unit is provided by a local store. To buy any Apple products with confidence, you can contact this store for the best customer support and deals. I have given their contact details in the description.

Price and Versatility

If you look at the price of using a device, Apple has positioned this product as one of the biggest strengths of the iPad, which is comparable to the price of a MacBook Pro. One of its versatility is that you can watch content on the go, play games, and use it very efficiently for day-to-day needs and productivity. iPads are a capable device especially for content creators like us, with internals capable of image editing and high-quality video production that meet current standards.

Display Features

The device comes with a lot of exciting features, the first thing to mention is the latest display it comes with, called Tantum Oil, a display with stacked dual LED panels. One of the benefits of this is the brightest display ever, high dynamic range, and vivid colors. This Ultra Retina XDR display will help to eliminate the pixel burning normally seen in OLED screens. The dual gold panels will provide 1000 nits in standard brightness and 1600 nits peak in HDR.

Supported is a color-calibrated display that can be trusted by professional photo editors and color graders. The iPad Pro has an impressive display I’ve never seen on a device in recent years. Definitely, that one promotion 120hz display makes scrolling very easy and when not in use, it automatically switches to 24hz for increased power efficiency. It comes with a nano-textured glass variant with anti-reflective coating, only available in the 1TB to 2TB storage option.

Apple Pencil Pro

This is a new Pencil Pro. Unfortunately, I am reminding one more thing that we cannot use the previous iPad models with this Pencil. When it comes to Pencil hardware, Haptic feedback is new. It has been upgraded to Apple Pencil and has a squeeze feature, barrel roll feature that can rotate the brush shape, double-tap option, and hover option which gives a cool experience to write, sketch, and illustrate with great precision.

User Feedback

We agreed to do it. Vipin, an artist who is very popular through his profile called Sketch Floor, gave us valuable feedback. Vipin and Gayatri, who is also Vipin’s wife, went for a sketch walk together. Vipin gave us valuable feedback that when he came to digital painting from watercolor painting, which he had been doing regularly, he got the same experience as real painting. The only concern is the slipperiness of the pencil display. To avoid this, many paper-like screen stickers are available.

Audio and Speaker System

The array of speaker system is the same because there are speakers on all four sides, so the sound is heard in the same way in any orientation without any change. Another advantage is that the base frequency produced by such a small device is unbelievable. It can really be said to describe the immersive sound space you get when watching a movie with an iPad on your lap. It’s an incredible feeling.

Best quality audio is the single most life-giving factor to a video and so gives life to my videos. Beautiful audio library provided by Art List. Art List now comes with all the assets a creator needs: various genres of music tracks, high-quality sound effects, video templates, as well as direct plugin integration to our editing software makes our workflow very easy. Art List is the latest edition of AI Voice Over with a wide variety of voice collections and highly expressive voice-overs that beat professional voice-over artists.

Design and Build

This video is the 11-inch 256GB variant in my hand. If you look at the size, in terms of thickness, it is very compact. It is only 5.3mm thick. And this one iPad Pro has got the label of The Thinnest Apple Product. To be honest, the thickness is a bit more when using it as an iPad without a folio case. I felt that this sleek design is needed, so when using the case, it can be used very conveniently without the additional thickness. There has been a reduction in weight compared to the previous generation. Even if the weight and thickness have been reduced, there has been a slight improvement in battery capacity.

Camera and Connectivity

The front camera is horizontal this time. The Stage feature and FaceTime Call are available on the iPad. On the back, the dual camera setup of the last generation has been switched to a single camera setup of 12 megapixels. To be honest, I don’t think it’s a drawback because we rarely use the camera on the iPad, mostly to scan documents and do it in the File app and the Notes app. The default camera app also has a scan document option. The strong anodized aluminum body is the same as the previous iPads. The new M4 iPad Pro also comes in space gray and silver colors. Any Bluetooth-supported keyboard and mouse as well as trackpads can be connected and used.

Port and Storage

Talking about the port, the USB 4 Type C port with Thunderbolt support comes with up to 40gbps transfer rate. This one port lets us connect mass storage like SSD and a wide variety of USB adapters are also supported. I have made a detailed video about this adapter using the Mini Soper 181 adapter that I bought for my Mac Mini and connected it to a 4K monitor and mass storage. I got the same experience as the iPad Pro supports a maximum of two 4K displays at a time and there are no limitations on USB connectivity.

If you are already using a Mac, you can use the Sidecar feature and use the iPad’s display as an extended monitor. App switching can be done very simply, but many native apps like Final Cut DaVinci are not full screen. It can be used as a screen even if there are limitations like this. The M4 chip in the iPad Pro series comes with the same performance as a MacBook Pro. Up to ten core CPU with four performance cores and six efficiency cores, 16-core neural engine, 120GB memory bandwidth, and 16GB RAM has turned the iPad Pro series into a performance beast.

Performance and Benchmarks

If you compare the values obtained in the benchmark test in single-core and multi-core, you can get an idea of its performance. The 11-inch iPad Pro has got ML Accelerator in its graphics which has drastically enhanced the gaming performance. 3D rendering smoothness, ray tracing, and shadows have improved a lot while playing games like Assassin’s Creed. These changes are very noticeable while playing high-end games, except for the slight warm feeling and overheating. I’ve never experienced anything like it and it’s a highly recommended device for professional photography as well as image editing.

This M4 iPad Pro is a cool device to handle because of the Hasselblad camera and the 100-megapixel raw image files captured on the Fujifilm GFX100. It definitely has such color accuracy and you can create a proper professional workflow using tethering devices like Capture One. Multi-tasking is another highlight of the iPad Pro. The Stage Manager option I mentioned earlier allows you to easily switch programs and text as well as image content. It is also very convenient to copy to the app. Apple has brought Final Cut Pro for video editing and Logic Pro for audio production to iPad OS, which has excited me the most. Similarly, the iPad version of DaVinci Resolve is already very popular.

Final Thoughts

As you have seen in this review, even though the iPad Pro is very power efficient, many things that you can do on a desktop or laptop are limited by the iPad OS. That being said, some options are limited to full screen. If you look at it, I can never consider the iPad as a stand-alone system for my workflow. On the contrary, if you are a person who does basic editing with the built-in assets, then the iPad is the best option for you. If you look at the aspect of designing, you can bring out the maximum potential of this iPad as it has the advantage of Apple Pencil Pro, but remember that there is no support for external plugins.

After asking if it can be replaced by a laptop or completed with an iPad, no, it’s not time for that. So this is my personal assessment about the M4 iPad Pro. I want to know your opinion. Okay, thanks for reading. If you like the post, like and share, and subscribe with your friends who like this kind of content. This is Harish signing off.