Apple announces new iPad Pro 11-inch and 13-inch tablets: Power overwhelming

Apple has hiked prices by up to $99 for all models and configurations. The new iPad will be immediately available for pre-order on Apple.com and will be available on May 15. 

Here's how the current prices stack up against the previous iPad generation.

As far as design goes, the iPad Pro is still available in two differently sized versions. The more compact iPad Pro stands at 11 inches across, while the larger slate measures 13 inches from corner to corner, a slight display size increase in comparison with the previous 12.9-inch screen size. The two new iPads are available in Silver and Space Black colors. 

As previous iPads, the aspect ratio is 3:2 once again, so you get a noticeably more squarish tablet in comparison with the majority of the competition, which leans towards the 16:9 aspect ratio. With a 3:2 tablet, you get much more usable screen real estate for productivity, while 16:9 ones are more suitable for media consumption. 

Size has remained mostly the same, with slight changes here and there. Notable are the thinner bodies of both new iPad Pro tablets. The 13-inch device is just 5.1mm thin, while the 11-inch iPad Pro is also just 5.3mm thick. That's much thinner than the previous iPad Pro tablets, which measured 6.4mm and 5.9mm, respectively. 

Here's a size comparison of the new iPad Pro against the older generation:

As we mentioned, the iPad Pro lineup is now boasting new OLED displays called Ultra Retina XDR. After relying on miniLED for a few generations, Apple has employed a so-called Called Tandem OLED screen technology, which uses two stacked OLED panels that can achieve spectacular brightness: 1,000 nits for SDR and HDR brightness, and up to1600 nits of peak brightness. There's even a nano-texture glass option for even less reflections, which would surely help the Ultra Retina XDR display's legibility under all types of lighting scenarios. 

OLED displays possibly deliver perfect black color reproduction, superb colors, great viewing angles, and great brightness. miniLED displays, however, have a serious benefit: they are virtually impervious to display burn-in.  

Other than that, the iPad Pro 11" and 13" retain the ProMotion refresh rate that allows them to kick up to 120Hz for the smoothest scrolling experience depending on the on-screen content. 

The main novelty about the iPad Pro is the use of the Apple M4 chipset. Hoping to quickly get up to speed with the competition regarding on-device AI, Apple has chosen to debut the next-gen Apple M4 chipset on this here iPad Pro generation rather than its MacBook laptops, which are normally used to showcase its latest chipset advancements.

The M4 chip is built on the same 3nm manufacturing process as the Apple M3 chip, but it's heavily hinted that the new silicon instead relies on TSMC's 3NE process, which should technically deliver improvements to the performance and power efficiency of the chip. 

The M4 consists of 4 performance cores and 6 efficiency cores. The chip has four times faster performance than the M2 chip of the previous generation but requires way less power, making it much more power-efficient.

The M4 has the most powerful neural engine on an Apple M chip so far, with some 60X better performance than Apple's first Neural Engine that debuted with the Apple A11 Bionic chip (the one that powered the iPhone 8 family).

A major development at the rear of the iPad is the lack of an ultra-wide camera. That's right, there's a single 12MP wide camera at the rear, as well as a LiDAR sensor. At the front, the camera is now positioned on the long edge of the tablet for a more natural user appearance during FaceTime calls and video meetings. 

Apple has also unveiled a new Magic Keyboard accessory for the new iPad Pro devices, which costs $299. This one helps the tablets look more like actual laptops, scoring a slightly larger MacBook-like trackpad, which should make interface navigation a bit easier. There's also a function row. The new Magic Keyboard is available in two complementing colors, Silver and Space Black. 

Apple has also unveiled a new, third generation of the Apple Pencil, dubbed the Apple Pencil Pro, which starts at $129. The multi-functional stylus now supports haptic feedback and can be purchased separately as a rather essential sidekick to both new iPad Pro tablets.

The iPad Pro 11-inch and 13-inch will arrive with iPadOS 17 out of the box, but both tablets will get updated to iPadOS 18 later this year, probably in September. As far as how long the new iPad Pro devices will receive software support for, we expect at least five years of software updates and security patches, though we are certainly eager for longer support.