M4 iPad Pro Impressions: Well This is Awkward

(bright music)

- Okay, so Apple had a nice short little 30 minute event

today announcing just a bunch of new iPad stuff.

Now, this was the longest they've ever gone

without updating anything iPad related,

so they had some cooking to do.

But the thing is,

and I feel like we've been saying this for years,

it kind of doesn't matter how powerful they make the iPad.

It's still an iPad, right? It's still iPadOS.

And we've seen gigantic improvements in the M-series chips

and these iPads are like

the most powerful chips ever on paper,

but they're still iPads.

So the last thing we need after all this time

is just another spec-bumped iPad, right?

Well, let me introduce you to the newest iPads.

So first up, there's a new iPad Air

which follows the script of bringing a few things down

from the previous iPad Pros,

and, of course, you know, making it available

for this lower price.

So it graduates from the M1 to the M2 chip inside,

it starts up at 128 gigs of storage now,

and it moves the webcam to the landscape bezel

where it belongs.

It gets faster wifi,

and for the first time there is a larger one now,

so they're calling it the 11-inch and the 13-inch iPad Air.

I had to clarify it just because

the last one was 10.9 inches;

so are they just simplifying the name,

like is it actually bigger?

And turns out, yeah, there is just

a little bit more screen here.

Great. But other than that, it's pretty predictable.

It's a spec bump. Like this is sticking to the script here.

I think I could hand you the newest iPad right now

and you couldn't really tell

the new Air from the old Air just looking at it

other than if you're holding the bigger one,

or if you recognized the super exciting new colors.

I mean, hopefully you could hear my sarcasm

through the screen, but there's Blue, Purple,

Starlight, and Space Gray.

So it's 599 for the small one and 799 for the bigger one.

But then, we also got a more significant update

to the iPad Pros.

This is where they push the limits of the iPad.

This is where they wanna show their absolute best stuff

and the best possible tablets.

And, man, if we just ignore the software for a second,

these new iPads are ridiculous.

So first of all, they start off by revealing

that these new iPads, the 11-inch and the 13-inch,

are the new thinnest Apple devices ever made, ever.

That's including phones,

that's including like old iPods and everything.

The 11-inch is 5.3 millimeters thin,

and the 13-inch is 5.1 millimeters thin;

so that's literally thinner than the iPod Nano ever was.

It's nuts. It just looks ridiculous.

It's crazy to hold.

It's also lighter, as you might imagine.

It just kind of feels like this

impossible sheet of metal in your hand.

I don't know if anyone ever looked at an iPad Pro

and asked for it to be thinner,

but that's what they went and did.

What could possibly go wrong?

Fun fact, this also now means that the iPad Air

is heavier than the iPad Pro

just to make sure we keep a mess of an iPad lineup going.

The new Pro also gets a new chip and a new screen.

So Apple took this event to introduce us

to the next generation of Apple silicon

with the M4 chip,

and this iPad is the only thing that it's in right now.

It's just the iPad with M4.

So that gives it, stop me if it sounds familiar,

even more ridiculous amounts of power

in such a tiny physical and thermal envelope,

especially since we came from M2.

So it's a more power efficient 3 nanometer chip.

The CPU core is net out to like 50% faster than M2.

The GPU is up to four times faster.

And they're saying that they can do

the same performance output as M2 with half the power,

so it's super efficient.

There's an improved neural engine. There's better cooling.

Now, again, I don't know who was asking for a thinner iPad,

but there's kind of no denying

that it's at least just physically impressive to look at.

And this is the type of thing, this is the form factor

that is specifically enabled by the M4 chip.

Apple is quoting

basically the same battery life as the last iPad Pro,

and I have to assume that there's

significantly less physical battery in the thing

'cause it's so much thinner.

So that just basically means Apple's going,

"Hey, we think that that was enough battery life

"in the last gen, so we're just gonna match that

"and that means we can go way thinner with less battery

because the new chip is more efficient."

So then, the new display, this is another thing

that is actually kind of enabled also by the M4 chip.

Sometimes it seems like they're just saying that,

but this is also true.

So these are OLED iPads now.

Both sizes, it's the exact same set of features

across both iPads, which kind of makes

the $300 price difference between them

a little bit tougher.

But yeah, OLEDs on both the new iPad Pros.

And OLED is awesome, right?

We already knew this. We've had OLED phones forever.

The pitch black blacks, the individually lit pixels,

the super awesome vibrance.

All of the OLED stuff is great,

and we were excited to finally see it

in a relatively gigantic display that is an iPad.

But making a huge OLED that's also incredibly bright

was a challenge that required just a little bit

of extra engineering, a little extra ingenuity.

So they put together something that they're calling

a tandem OLED display, which honestly to me,

I think this is maybe the most interesting part

of the whole tablet event today.

So you can basically think of it as

two different OLED displays stacked on top of each other,

and then the new display driver on M4

can address both layers simultaneously.

So that's what's allowing them to get

really high local brightness, and that's the spec now.

That's 1000 nits of peak full screen brightness

and 1600 nits of peak HDR brightness

on an OLED on an iPad sized screen.

And in person, it looks,

well, it looks like a really bright OLED.

It looks super colorful, really bright, inky blacks.

In this hands-on area I got to spend like 30 minutes in,

it's not gonna look its best

and there was crazy lighting everywhere;

but I will be getting my hands on it to review

and I intend to dive in and find out

if there are any downsides, but it looks pretty great here.

And then, also weirdly, they announced

a Nano texture matte version of the iPad Pro;

so now there's a matte Pro display XDR.

I would be very careful about ordering

this particular option, based on what I've seen.

I can see here that it is definitely better

at dealing with reflections than a normal display.

That's awesome.

But just like a desktop version, that is at the expense

of a little bit of sharpness and contrast.

You know, the blacks don't look nearly as black to me

even at zero degrees off axis.

And I also have to wonder about durability

because the Pro display XDR is very picky

about which microfiber cloth you use,

and you can literally ruin it if you use the wrong one.

And with this iPad, you know, I can feel the difference

between the soft touch texture of the Nano texture

and the glossy bezels, and I just have a feeling

that you're only gonna be able to use or rely on

the microfiber that comes in the box with this thing.

And not only does it cost an extra $100

to get the Nano texture;

it's also only available on the 1 terabyte

and 2 terabyte highest end models.

So I think they know that people

shouldn't just walk in the store and just get it

'cause it's on the base one.

So yeah, just be careful with that one.

But you know what probably made the most headlines

out of all the stuff announced today

is a spec-bumped Apple Pencil.

There's now a new Apple Pencil Pro,

and it looks exactly the same as the previous Apple Pencil

but with this new text on the back

that says Pencil Pro on it now.

Unfortunately, that's still not the eraser.

But yeah, this new Apple Pencil Pro

has a haptic motor inside, so it supports Find My now.

There's also a new squeeze sensor in the barrel for

activating tools in different apps that will support it,

and a new gyroscope actually makes it rotation sensitive.

And I was trying this, it's surprisingly precise,

like really, really good.

So if you're an artist, not like me,

you know, maybe you're doing a barrel roll

with certain drawing apps or calligraphy applications

for the $129 that it costs to get one of these things.

But another incredibly inconvenient note,

this new Pro Pencil is only compatible

with the newest recently announced iPad Pro or iPad Air.

Because when they moved that webcam to the long side,

that's also where a lot of the magnets for lining up

and charging a pencil were.

So they had to redesign the magnets up there

and that's now a different array,

so it's only compatible with the newest iPads.

Why didn't they just move it

to the other side for charging?

I don't know. Maybe that makes too much sense.

There's also a new magic keyboard as well.

Still ungodly expensive, but if you get the new one,

it's also, it's lighter than the previous gen,

the track pad is bigger,

and there's a whole function row at the top now,

which actually that is super useful.

And the pass through charging is even faster;

apparently it's 60 watts through the pins in the back.

But all that being said, at the end of the day, guess what?

We just got another set of spec-bumped iPads.

They are metal rectangles with incredible power

and efficiency in our hands that are just still iPads.

And I don't know how many more times I can say this,

but like taking advantage of all of this power

is nearly impossible.

There are a tiny sliver of apps that actually make it

feel like worth upgrading.

There's almost nothing these iPads can do

that my M1 iPad Pro can't do.

And this isn't even to downplay the hardware

'cause the hardware is actually amazing.

That's where the difference comes from.

It's got this super bright high resolution OLED display

with pitch black blacks,

this M4 chip with ridiculous power,

and efficiency, new CPU, new, GPU better neural engine.

I've never wanted an iPad to be thinner,

but that line about them wanting the iPad

to feel like a magic sheet of glass

really resonated with this model in particular,

even if you do feel like you could snap it in half

the whole time.

It's just the awkwardness of this one

mainly comes from timing 'cause I think we all know,

well, it's already been announced.

WWDC, their Worldwide Developers Conference,

is right around the corner, and we all know

and expect them to update all of the software

across all their stuff:

a new iOS, a new iPadOS, so I guess iPadOS 18.

And whatever Apple is gonna decide to do with that

is around the corner.

So we've got these new iPads shipping next week,

but all the new software, that could be awesome.

Well, that's this summer.

And this feels like it could be one of the biggest updates

yet to these iPads.

You know, it's Apple showing their hand

at how many more AI features they wanna build in

and how many more features people wanna add

that lets this be their primary computer,

maybe more Siri improvements, all of this stuff.

So in this awkward meantime, here we have

these really, really impressive spec-bumped iPad Pros,

the most powerful iPads of all time,

the thinnest Apple devices literally ever made;

but the list of things it can do is the same

as my three-year-old M1, just saying.

What a time to be alive.

Speaking of announcements, though,

Ridge and I have finally launched

our first product together.

So it starts with the Ridge Wallet,

you know, the minimal high quality industrial wallet,

the more modern way to carry cash and cards.

Well, you might know I joined Ridge

as the chief creative partner earlier this year

and we're finally releasing our first MKBHD gear together.

So one of the first things we wanted to do

is just make MKBHD versions of some of the existing stuff.

It felt too obvious, so that's exactly what we're doing.

So I love carbon fiber and matte black;

I don't know if you knew that about me already,

but those are my base inspirations for these two wallets.

So the MKBHD Carbon Fiber 3k,

this is just a bunch of lightweight,

ultra durable carbon fiber with the logo.

And then, the Matte Black Everything Wallet,

this is just aluminum but it's got this

black oil filled engravement print, which is so sick.

And then, these wallets also come with

a deboss MKBHD money clip or you can do a cash strap.

You can also attach these or detach them.

You could also do an attachment for an AirTag,

so just make sure you don't lose it.

Or, you can do like a Find My card,

which I've done as well.

But yeah, I just carry this in my wallet all the time

and I definitely won't lose it.

And, of course, if you don't like my designs, that's fine.

Ridge has like 50 plus other designs in their catalog.

They've got NFL licensed team stuff

if you wanna rock your team.

The store is endless.

And if you even think it could be time to upgrade,

it's a great time to just try

because if you don't love it after 99 days,

you can literally send it right back, no questions asked.

Pretty sick.

And I'll let you in on a little secret.

It's 30% off the new gear right now,

but also any style if you order a wallet

and a key holder at the same time.

So just the two together, boom, 30% off.

And also 10% off whatever you want at ridge.com/mkbhd.

You're welcome.

Yeah, I'm excited to be launching this stuff

and also a bunch more coming up later this year.

I won't say too much about it,

but you can sign up at the same link

if you wanna get product updates.

I've told them just to only email you

about that if you sign up.

But yeah, let me know what you think

of these new iPads in general.

I mean, it's kind of an awkward waiting period

until we get all the new iOS 18 stuff,

but let me know what you think,

new thinner than ever iPads.

Thanks for watching. Catch you guys on the next one.

Peace.