Apple M1 iPad Pro review: Smaller and more powerful than most pro laptops

That mini LED screen to whom Apple has given the XDR moniker is a pro-grade screen which will certainly be a boon to designers, video editors and photo editors who depend on the colour accuracy and vibrancy of a panel. It is certainly the next best screen Apple makes to the Super Retina XDR screen that it uses for the Mac Pro screen which is sold separately.

But for someone who has more normal work and minute levels of precision aren’t a matter of life or death, the 11-inch screen continues to be excellent. It is one of the best screens around only to be usurped by the new mini-LED panel on the 12.9-inch model. This screen remains extremely vibrant but with slightly more neutral and neutered colours, sterling viewing angles, Dolby Vision compatibility and good brightness levels. This means if you are going to be watching Netflix it is going to be awesome. It will be even better if you watch content on Apple TV+. Apple’s streaming service makes the best use of the iPad Pro screen but the general theme is that it is a mind-blowing screen for viewing videos, playing games and reading books or articles.

It remains decent for even creating content but now the bar has been raised by the bigger iPad and some Samsung tablets because of superior screen technology things will likely improve with time. What hobbles it more is its 11-inch size which makes it just a pain for video editing for long hours as on video editing apps like LumaFusion you will be squinting after a point. Technically though if your eyes and neck can handle it can do things most laptops can’t do.

But then there are advantages to its smaller form factor. It certainly is a more portable device because these days the iPad Pro 12.9-inch with a magic keyboard in particular is heavier than a full-blown MacBook Air. This is lighter, smaller and easier to carry around.

So for people who want to use it more normally like a laptop with the magic keyboard can comfortably do so. I was worried that the trackpad on the smaller magic keyboard would be smaller than the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, but that’s identical. In fact, even the keys are largely the same size, apart from the enter, shift, tab, delete and caps lock keys. There are some other keys that are also smaller but the adaptation isn’t hard for someone like me with slim fingers. This means save for some adjustments which one always needs to do, this can be a good work device, be it for writing long articles or mails or even as a photo editing station or reading or even creating content like music on tools like GarageBand which have increasingly become capable.

Perhaps, the best use case for this iPad Pro is as a portable gaming rig considering the audacious capabilities of the M1 chipset which works even better as the smaller panel is driving fewer pixels. It also helps that Apple’s platform is home to some incredible games and game streaming services, though not available in India, will be working via the Safari browser on the iPad Pro. Apple Arcade games have started to shine through on such a level that they now have early PS4 level graphics on many games.

It is important to remember the 2021 iPad Pro has some serious firepower. The model I tested had 16GB RAM, 2TB of storage and a seriously capable M1 processor. The iPad Pro till last year maxed out at 6GB RAM and now Apple has more than doubled this alongside adding 2x more storage on the top of the line model. All this gives the iPad Pro tremendous headroom as even the 2020 and 2018 models handle most things without breaking into a sweat. But of course, the new one is better, and in time as applications learn how to harness all this extra power, it will feel better for many.

Generally, the iPad Pro is now more capable than most Windows ultrabooks as well with a faster GPU, CPU and better battery life. It is only beaten by a MacBook Pro in terms of battery life, but still, it delivers the age-old Apple promise of 10 hours of battery life and also gets charged quite rapidly within an hour and a half. This is incredible for a device that can obliterate high-resolution games while doing basic computing tasks arguably even better than even a traditional computer.

Yes, the bit about the traditional computer has also come someway with iPad OS 15, but perhaps not as much as some would’ve imagined. Apple has refined the multitasking system borrowing some tricks from Windows 11 for working with multiple windows at the same time. It adds widgets like the iPhone and the file system is slightly more sussed out. All core apps have received an update while the notification system also gets an update.

I have a more in-depth review of all the new software platform updates by Apple here.

There are a bunch of quality of life updates in iPad OS 15 which admittedly is still in a beta phase but things like the new FaceTime links and new audio system for video chat apps have made zoom calls and Microsoft teams calls more pleasant as you can get better noise cancellation enabled. The cameras of the iPad were already excellent, better than even the Mac, but with the new 2021 iPad Pro for video conferencing there is a new feature called centre stage which uses machine learning to intelligently crop in or out and keep your face always in the centre of the frame.

The rear cameras are more or less the same as the previous iPad Pro coupled with a LiDAR but now leveraging the ISP of the M1 chipset they bring more improvements. So, in a nutshell, this means you can take better photos and videos than any tablet. For a creator, you can go from shooting high quality 4K video to editing it on the iPad itself in one swoop. No other device offers this level of dynamism.

The LiDAR is an interesting addition that was added in 2020 but it has taken a full year and also integration in the iPhone 12 Pro models for developers to catch up to what they can do with it. On many apps that architects and designers use they can quickly use it to scan through a room and create a 3D model of it, something the 2021 iPad Pro can do very easily because of the M1 processor.

Connectivity is now enhanced as the M1 processor also adds thunderbolt to the iPad which enables thunderously rapid data transfers over the type C connection which is relevant when you’re trying to offload large dumps of video or photographic data.

Apple has even added support for spatial audio and high-resolution audio to the speakers of the iPad Pro which were already excellent and this is now being leveraged by services like Netflix apart from Apple’s own platforms which makes the multimedia experience even more delightful. These are the best speakers on a portable device, period and since the last generation its microphones have been good enough for professional voiceovers, so again from a creative perspective, Apple is adding and focusing on things that no PC maker is, making the iPad Pro an integral creative tool.

From a hardware perspective, the iPad Pro is reaching peak performance – especially on the 11-inch model, it achieves an uncanny blend between portability and power. What it now needs are the applications to harness this power – games are starting to catch up and so are design-oriented and mission-critical apps but more is needed from Apple itself with regards to video editing and music production applications where Apple has a great lineage to propel the iPad further. The fact that there is now 16GB RAM which was a bottleneck for more complex applications is a tell-tale sign that something is on the horizon, but it is not out now.

Already Adobe has started to achieve this with its pro apps like Photoshop and Lightroom as well, so there is light at the end of the tunnel. But Apple also doesn’t want to risk complicating the iPad OS too much as anything that’s taken away from its simplicity would take away from Apple’s post PC future something that Steve Jobs spoke about the last couple of times, he appeared on stage around about a 10 decade ago with the launch of the iPad 2.

It is a balancing act and Apple is approaching the goal bit by bit methodically, unrushed by the fact that it is the undisputed champion of the tablet market. But for some, this change is happening too slowly and the iPad’s hardware is outpacing its software which is problematic when you consider its price that would put many a PC or notebook at shame even Apple’s impressive new Mac products.