My Experience with the New M4 iPad Pro: A Review and Analysis of Apple's Interesting Decisions

I have been using my new M4 iPad Pro for like two weeks now, and I must say that it's almost exactly the same experience as my previous M1 iPad Pro from three years ago. Watching YouTube videos, browsing the internet, answering emails, listening to music - all of these activities are still smooth and snappy, just like before. I know this might sound like a not-so-helpful review, but I've also been thinking about some of the really interesting decisions that Apple made with this iPad Pro.

One of these decisions is the new design. As we all knew, the M4 iPad Pro would be thinner than its predecessor. This was an interesting decision because it felt like we were done with trying to make iPads thinner a few iterations ago. Nobody was asking for thinner iPads, but maybe Apple saw all the gushing over Samsung's Galaxy Tab Ultra and decided to take note. That device is ridiculously thin, impossibly so - 5.1 mm is just barely beating Samsung's flagship, which was slightly thicker at 6.4 mm. I'm not trying to start any beef that doesn't already exist; if you ask Apple, they'll probably say that they made this decision for reasons of their own.

Another interesting decision made by Apple with the M4 iPad Pro is its focus on performance over size and portability. The new device has a slightly larger screen than before, but it's still able to deliver smooth performance even when multitasking or running demanding apps. This is likely due to the improved M4 chip, which provides a significant boost in processing power compared to the previous generation.

I've also noticed that the battery life of the M4 iPad Pro is better than I expected. The new device seems to be able to handle demanding tasks like video editing and streaming without running out of juice too quickly. This is likely due to the improved chip and more efficient hardware, which allows for faster charging times and longer battery life.

In terms of software, Apple has made some changes that might not be immediately noticeable but are still worth mentioning. For example, the new iPad Pro comes with iOS 17, which includes a number of features that are designed to make using your iPad even more intuitive and user-friendly. These include things like improved multitasking capabilities and more advanced gestures for navigating your iPad.

Overall, my experience with the M4 iPad Pro has been overwhelmingly positive. While it's true that some of the design decisions might be seen as unusual or unexpected, Apple seems to have made a concerted effort to improve upon its previous devices in key areas. Whether you're a power user who wants the best performance and features, or simply someone looking for a great tablet experience, the M4 iPad Pro is definitely worth considering.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en(bouncy music)- All right, so I've beenusing the new M4 iPad Profor like two weeks now.I've been doing a lotof the same stuff I didwith my M1 iPad Pro from three years ago:watching YouTube videos,browsing the internet,answering emails, listening to music.And spoiler alert, it's almostexactly the same experience.The M1 iPad Pro wasalready super overpoweredand very smooth and snappyand had great battery life.And this one now, even moreso, of all of the same stuff.Not a very helpful review, I know,but I've also been thinkingabout some of the reallyinteresting decisionsthat Apple made with this iPad.Specifically, some stuff that wasn't likeeven really in the rumor mills,it kind of just came up, didn'teven show up in the keynote,but is unusual and different.So these are five of themost interesting choicesthat Apple made with the iPad Pro.So first of all, thenew iPad Pro is thinner.We all knew that.It was already an interesting decisionbecause I kind of feltlike we were done with thata few iterations ago.Like nobody was asking for thinner iPads,But maybe they saw all the gushingover Samsung's Galaxy Tab Ultra.Guilty.That thing is alsoridiculously, impossibly thin.So iPad goes from 6.4 mm,which was slightly thickerthan Samsung's flagship,to now 5.1 mm,which just barely beats Samsung's number.Now, you know, I'm not tryingto start any beef thatdoesn't already exist.You know, I'm sure if youask Apple, they'll just say,\"Look, it's the thinnestApple product ever,\"which is already nuts.It's crazy thin.But I think it really feels like Appleis just looking for somethingto make this different,to make it feel differentfrom the last coupleof generations of iPad.And now there's rumors thatthey may also be doing thisto next year's iPhone,just going with thinness.Honestly, it is noticeablythinner and lighter to me,someone who's held theprevious one quite a bit.Definitely less of a differencewhen you have a case on it,but this is also gonna naturally meanthere's less room inside the iPad.But weirdly, somehow, the 11\" iPad Pro M4has a larger battery than thelast-generation 11\" iPad Pro,and this new, bigger 13\" has likea tiny bit slightly smaller battery,almost the same size battery as last year.And so what you end up withis a really good battery life,again, awesome standby time.Really good battery whenyou're actually using it.But what strikes me isApple could have made,if they made this the samethickness as last year,they could have made an iPadwith an enormous battery life.With the efficiency of the M4 chip,it could have had someinsane long battery,or they could makesomething strikingly thinand have the same rock-solidbattery life as always.But I would've loved tohave seen option one.But anyway, there's alsoa few other things missingfrom this tablet as well.So they avoided sayingit during the keynote,but they got rid of the ultra-wide camera.Not a huge deal at all, obviously.They kind of have a huge cutoutfor the LiDAR on the camera square.It still kind of looks likeit's maybe a dual or triple camera setup,but nope, single camera,LiDAR, and a flash.And I was also curious if magnet papercould reveal anything newabout the insides of this iPad.This was before JerryRigEverything,like tore his apart.But I know instinctivelyif you make something thinner and smaller,then the speakers have to suffer, right?They would be smaller.And magnet paper, fun fact,is a great way not only to see the magnetsinside of a device, ofwhich there are many here,but it also shows theiPad Pro has these new,much more circular quad speaker driversas opposed to the morerectangular-looking ones from before.I've listened to them back to back,this one versus the last generation.And this one is a little bit less bassy,still loud, still some of thebest speakers in any tabletand very usable, but physics.So less room inside,a little bit less bassywith these new speakers.Now, packaging wise,not a lot has changed.I mean, an iPad box is still an iPad box,but two things: one, no stickers anymore.So, sorry Apple fan boys,if were are hoping to keep collecting.Environmental things, no more plastic.They're trying not to ship so much stuff.But the thing is, okay,they are still shippingthese two things with every iPad.If you get a Space GreyiPad, you get a black cable,so the USB-C cable,but you also still geta brick with every iPad.Fine, but it's this white20-watt charging brick,which, okay, I know they stopped shippingthe brick with the iPhoneand they could use the same logicand stop shipping a brick with the iPad,but they're still gonna ship you a brick.And if you dowith this $1,500, $2,000, $2,500 iPad,could it at least be a good brick?Could you at least give usthe fastest charging the iPad can supportand maybe even match thecolor of the cable maybe.But anyway, maybe that'snitpicking. Hopefully not though.But let's talk about this computer thing.So the knock on the iPadPro for years now has beenthat it's a ridiculously overpowered,amazing piece of hardware,but it's still an iPad.Like it still does basicallythe same set of thingsthat an iPad Air does.There's a couple little thingslike Pencil hover and little stuff.It's basically the same.So they're not goingto let this turn intoa full-fledged computerbecause Apple has Macs to protect.So it's kind of stuckas an overpowered iPad.And with this generation,well, yeah, it's still kind of true.Again, this is the first time Appleis unveiling thenewest-generation M4 chip,and it's only in this iPad Pro for now,but it's even more powerful at its peak.It benchmarks extremely well.It's a second-generation3-nanometer process.It has a larger and morepowerful neural engine as well.I mean this chip is great,but as far as thingsthat actually take advantage of that,the list is very, very short.And some of the stuff is evenlike coming later this year,like the new Final Cut appis just around the corner.So if you just do regular iPad stuff:watching Netflix, webbrowsing, all the classics,like this is gonna feel exactly the same,not just as the last M1 iPadPro, but as an M1 iPad Air.You know, if you get this M4 version hereyou can play those, oneof the like three gamesthat support the newhardware-accelerated ray tracingon this iPad.You can use the new Stem Splitter featurein the new Logic Pro 2 app for iPadthat actually looks incredibleif you use Logic on the iPad.But the most interestingnew thing to me about M4is something that theydidn't really talk about.They kind of glossed over it.They didn't really diveinto it in the keynoteand they don't show it ontheir website very clearly.But okay, in the past whenyou were buying an iPad,all you really pay morefor in a single iPad lineupis storage, right?That's just, you startwith, it'll be 128 gigs,kind of a joke, butthen you go up in priceand you just pay for more storageand you can get different colors.And then a few years ago, very sneakily,we started realizing, okay,you actually also get more RAMin the highest-end models.So if you buy more storage,you'll also get more RAM.So 8 gigs of RAM on the base onesand 16 gigs of RAM on the oneand two-terabyte iPad pros.But now on this latest one,the stratification goes even further.Now it's also CPU cores.So first of all, the base iPad Prois 256 gigs now, thankfully.And you go from an eight-core CPUto a nine-core CPU with the M4,but that's just withthe base two versions.The top two versions getanother performance core.So those are 10-core CPUs instead of 9.And then there's also thenano-texture display option.And this is that matte finish onethat I briefly got hands-ontime with at the event.I haven't gotten to see it since,but it does look pretty impressiveeven though I do have mydurability concerns with it.But that anti-reflective finishis only available, again,on the top two options, theone and two-terabyte iPad Pros,the expensive ones.So now if you're buying amore expensive iPad Pro,you're getting differentamounts of RAM, different CPU,different storage options anddifferent display options.Very computer-like if you ask me.Now, the Tandem OLED display, to me,is the most interesting thingabout this new iPad Pro under the hood.But in practice, it's actually honestlyjust a bit of a brighter,more-contrasty versionof the same thing we'vebeen looking at for years.A perfect example ofthe iPad's hardware outpacing the softwareis, obviously, a new OLEDdisplay would be greatif you had like an all-black backgroundand maybe showed just the time,maybe fed an always-on display,it could look super cool,but the iPad doesn't havean always-on display.I don't wanna bet money,but I wouldn't be shocked ifthe next version of iPadOSdid support an always-ondisplay with just the Pros'cause they have theOLEDs now, but it doesn't.We gotta wait till WWDC andthen maybe we'll see it there.But I mean, aside from that,it still has less bloomingfor just like the perfect HDR contentwith pitch-black blacks.I love to see that.If you're just watchingregular SDR content though,or just doing any number of regular tasks,watching Netflix, browsingemails, or web stuff,I mean, you won't noticemuch of a differenceunless you're in directsun, max brightness.That's a testament to howgood iPad Pro displayshave been for years in the past though.Now for your artists out there,they've also got this sweet new Pencil.No, the back still doesnot act as an eraser,as much as I wish they would do that.But the rest of thisthing is better than ever.It supports Find My now,it has a new squeeze sensor insidefor selecting different tools.Super intuitive. I startedusing it immediately.It also has a new haptic motor inside,so you can feel this littleclick as you squeeze,which is a nice little confirmation.Kind of surprised theydidn't add this earlier.And then it supports barrelrotation for a few toolsthat specifically changewhen you rotate the point.And look, it even has this fake shadow.So this is not a realshadow of the Apple Pencil.This is a fake,totally unnecessarycomputer-generated shadowthat's shown on the iPad's display,and it actually matches thetype of tool you're usingin real time, with rotation.That's just ridiculous.And instead of just callingit the updated Apple Pencil,they're continuing tosell the old Apple Pencilat the same priceand they're calling thisone the new Pencil Pro.And look, I am not an artist.I am squarely outside ofthe target demographic for this thing,but what I do know is if thisand its features are tempting to you,then you will need to buy a whole new iPadto take advantage of it.(dramatic suspicious music)And that was on purpose.See, they moved the camerato the landscape side of theiPad now, which is great.That's where we wantedit to be the whole time.That's where the Face IDarray is now. It's awesome.It's an ultra-wide camerafor FaceTime and all that,but that's also where the Pencilhas always magnetized and charged.So they actually had torearrange the components insideto be slightly differentto work with both now in the same place.So it still snaps on the top like that.But did they have to do that?Couldn't they have put thePencil on the top of the iPador even maybe offset it sothat the Pencil's on one sideand the camera's on the other side,but no, they've got it justin the middle where it always is.And I put some magnet paper up to the backso I can see that they did in factchange the magnet layout inside.Like I tried pairingthe new Apple Pencil Proto my old iPad Pro and itkind of stuck on, sort of,but didn't pair or do anything.All right, convenient.Look, I'm still personally not goingto be buying one of these new M4 iPad Prosbecause of what I do on the iPad Proand I already have arelatively new M1 iPad,so I don't need one.But if you don't have arelatively recent iPad,then yeah, this thing is great.It's better than ever.But I think we're all on the same pagethat we're waiting WWDC later this yearto see what's new with thelatest version of iPadOSto see if there's anythingactually interestingthat this will be capable ofthat we don't already know about.Because other than that,it's kind of the same storyas the last few generationsof the iPad Pro.Speaking of things that are thin, though,dbrand iPad skins.Fun fact, you'd have to stackup 22 of dbrand's iPad skinsto make it the samethickness as the iPad itself.Trust me, I've tried. It's exactly 22.Anyway, dbrand has been makingthe best leather skins inthe business for a while now,which is great because Apple actuallyisn't really makinganything leather anymore.And this is good quality soft leather,like it's not some sanded-downand stamped fake texture.It's actually all-natural,full-grain leather.It's plush and it'll actually developa nice patina over timesince you can literallyown these iPads for years.So if you wanna check outpremium leather accessoriesfor your iPad, check outchannel sponsored dbrand.Link is in the description.Either way, that's been it.Lemme know what you think.Thanks for watching.Catch you guys on next one. Peace.(inquisitive music)\n"