(bouncy music) - All right, so I've been
using the new M4 iPad Pro for like two weeks now. I've been doing a lot
of the same stuff I did with my M1 iPad Pro from three years ago: watching YouTube videos,
browsing the internet, answering emails, listening to music. And spoiler alert, it's almost
exactly the same experience. The M1 iPad Pro was
already super overpowered and very smooth and snappy
and had great battery life. And this one now, even more
so, of all of the same stuff. Not a very helpful review, I know, but I've also been thinking about some of the really
interesting decisions that Apple made with this iPad. Specifically, some stuff that wasn't like even really in the rumor mills, it kind of just came up, didn't
even show up in the keynote, but is unusual and different. So these are five of the
most interesting choices that Apple made with the iPad Pro. So first of all, the
new iPad Pro is thinner. We all knew that. It was already an interesting decision because I kind of felt
like we were done with that a few iterations ago. Like nobody was asking for thinner iPads, But maybe they saw all the gushing over Samsung's Galaxy Tab Ultra. Guilty. That thing is also
ridiculously, impossibly thin. So iPad goes from 6.4 mm, which was slightly thicker
than Samsung's flagship, to now 5.1 mm, which just barely beats Samsung's number. Now, you know, I'm not trying to start any beef that
doesn't already exist. You know, I'm sure if you
ask Apple, they'll just say, "Look, it's the thinnest
Apple product ever," which is already nuts. It's crazy thin. But I think it really feels like Apple is just looking for something
to make this different, to make it feel different from the last couple
of generations of iPad. And now there's rumors that
they may also be doing this to next year's iPhone,
just going with thinness. Honestly, it is noticeably
thinner and lighter to me, someone who's held the
previous one quite a bit. Definitely less of a difference
when you have a case on it, but this is also gonna naturally mean there's less room inside the iPad. But weirdly, somehow, the 11" iPad Pro M4 has a larger battery than the
last-generation 11" iPad Pro, and this new, bigger 13" has like a tiny bit slightly smaller battery, almost the same size battery as last year. And so what you end up with
is a really good battery life, again, awesome standby time. Really good battery when
you're actually using it. But what strikes me is
Apple could have made, if they made this the same
thickness as last year, they could have made an iPad
with an enormous battery life. With the efficiency of the M4 chip, it could have had some
insane long battery, or they could make
something strikingly thin and have the same rock-solid
battery life as always. But I would've loved to
have seen option one. But anyway, there's also
a few other things missing from this tablet as well. So they avoided saying
it 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 cutout for the LiDAR on the camera square. It still kind of looks like it's maybe a dual or triple camera setup, but nope, single camera,
LiDAR, and a flash. And I was also curious if magnet paper could reveal anything new
about the insides of this iPad. This was before JerryRigEverything,
like tore his apart. But I know instinctively if 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 magnets inside of a device, of
which there are many here, but it also shows the
iPad Pro has these new, much more circular quad speaker drivers as opposed to the more
rectangular-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 the
best speakers in any tablet and very usable, but physics. So less room inside, a little bit less bassy
with 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 shipping these two things with every iPad. If you get a Space Grey
iPad, you get a black cable, so the USB-C cable, but you also still get
a brick with every iPad. Fine, but it's this white
20-watt charging brick, which, okay, I know they stopped shipping the brick with the iPhone and they could use the same logic and stop shipping a brick with the iPad, but they're still gonna ship you a brick. And if you do with this $1,500, $2,000, $2,500 iPad, could it at least be a good brick? Could you at least give us the fastest charging the iPad can support and maybe even match the
color of the cable maybe. But anyway, maybe that's
nitpicking. Hopefully not though. But let's talk about this computer thing. So the knock on the iPad
Pro for years now has been that it's a ridiculously overpowered, amazing piece of hardware,
but it's still an iPad. Like it still does basically
the same set of things that an iPad Air does. There's a couple little things like Pencil hover and little stuff. It's basically the same. So they're not going to let this turn into
a full-fledged computer because Apple has Macs to protect. So it's kind of stuck
as an overpowered iPad. And with this generation, well, yeah, it's still kind of true. Again, this is the first time Apple is unveiling the
newest-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-generation
3-nanometer process. It has a larger and more
powerful neural engine as well. I mean this chip is great,
but as far as things that actually take advantage of that, the list is very, very short. And some of the stuff is even
like coming later this year, like the new Final Cut app
is just around the corner. So if you just do regular iPad stuff: watching Netflix, web
browsing, all the classics, like this is gonna feel exactly the same, not just as the last M1 iPad
Pro, but as an M1 iPad Air. You know, if you get this M4 version here you can play those, one
of the like three games that support the new
hardware-accelerated ray tracing on this iPad. You can use the new Stem Splitter feature in the new Logic Pro 2 app for iPad that actually looks incredible
if you use Logic on the iPad. But the most interesting
new thing to me about M4 is something that they
didn't really talk about. They kind of glossed over it. They didn't really dive
into it in the keynote and they don't show it on
their website very clearly. But okay, in the past when
you were buying an iPad, all you really pay more
for in a single iPad lineup is storage, right? That's just, you start
with, it'll be 128 gigs, kind of a joke, but
then you go up in price and you just pay for more storage and you can get different colors. And then a few years ago, very sneakily, we started realizing, okay,
you actually also get more RAM in the highest-end models. So if you buy more storage,
you'll also get more RAM. So 8 gigs of RAM on the base ones and 16 gigs of RAM on the one
and 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 Pro is 256 gigs now, thankfully. And you go from an eight-core CPU to a nine-core CPU with the M4, but that's just with
the base two versions. The top two versions get
another performance core. So those are 10-core CPUs instead of 9. And then there's also the
nano-texture display option. And this is that matte finish one that I briefly got hands-on
time with at the event. I haven't gotten to see it since, but it does look pretty impressive even though I do have my
durability concerns with it. But that anti-reflective finish
is only available, again, on the top two options, the
one and two-terabyte iPad Pros, the expensive ones. So now if you're buying a
more expensive iPad Pro, you're getting different
amounts of RAM, different CPU, different storage options and
different display options. Very computer-like if you ask me. Now, the Tandem OLED display, to me, is the most interesting thing about this new iPad Pro under the hood. But in practice, it's actually honestly just a bit of a brighter,
more-contrasty version of the same thing we've
been looking at for years. A perfect example of the iPad's hardware outpacing the software is, obviously, a new OLED
display would be great if you had like an all-black background and maybe showed just the time, maybe fed an always-on display,
it could look super cool, but the iPad doesn't have
an always-on display. I don't wanna bet money, but I wouldn't be shocked if
the next version of iPadOS did support an always-on
display with just the Pros 'cause they have the
OLEDs now, but it doesn't. We gotta wait till WWDC and
then maybe we'll see it there. But I mean, aside from that,
it still has less blooming for just like the perfect HDR content with pitch-black blacks. I love to see that. If you're just watching
regular SDR content though, or just doing any number of regular tasks, watching Netflix, browsing
emails, or web stuff, I mean, you won't notice
much of a difference unless you're in direct
sun, max brightness. That's a testament to how
good iPad Pro displays have 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 does
not act as an eraser, as much as I wish they would do that. But the rest of this
thing is better than ever. It supports Find My now, it has a new squeeze sensor inside for selecting different tools. Super intuitive. I started
using it immediately. It also has a new haptic motor inside, so you can feel this little
click as you squeeze, which is a nice little confirmation. Kind of surprised they
didn't add this earlier. And then it supports barrel
rotation for a few tools that specifically change
when you rotate the point. And look, it even has this fake shadow. So this is not a real
shadow of the Apple Pencil. This is a fake, totally unnecessary
computer-generated shadow that's shown on the iPad's display, and it actually matches the
type of tool you're using in real time, with rotation. That's just ridiculous. And instead of just calling
it the updated Apple Pencil, they're continuing to
sell the old Apple Pencil at the same price and they're calling this
one the new Pencil Pro. And look, I am not an artist. I am squarely outside of the target demographic for this thing, but what I do know is if this and its features are tempting to you, then you will need to buy a whole new iPad to take advantage of it. (dramatic suspicious music) And that was on purpose. See, they moved the camera to the landscape side of the
iPad now, which is great. That's where we wanted
it to be the whole time. That's where the Face ID
array is now. It's awesome. It's an ultra-wide camera
for FaceTime and all that, but that's also where the Pencil has always magnetized and charged. So they actually had to
rearrange the components inside to be slightly different to 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 the
Pencil on the top of the iPad or even maybe offset it so
that the Pencil's on one side and the camera's on the other side, but no, they've got it just in the middle where it always is. And I put some magnet paper up to the back so I can see that they did in fact change the magnet layout inside. Like I tried pairing
the new Apple Pencil Pro to my old iPad Pro and it
kind of stuck on, sort of, but didn't pair or do anything. All right, convenient. Look, I'm still personally not going to be buying one of these new M4 iPad Pros because of what I do on the iPad Pro and I already have a
relatively new M1 iPad, so I don't need one. But if you don't have a
relatively recent iPad, then yeah, this thing is great. It's better than ever. But I think we're all on the same page that we're waiting WWDC later this year to see what's new with the
latest version of iPadOS to see if there's anything
actually interesting that this will be capable of that we don't already know about. Because other than that,
it's kind of the same story as the last few generations
of the iPad Pro. Speaking of things that are thin, though, dbrand iPad skins. Fun fact, you'd have to stack
up 22 of dbrand's iPad skins to make it the same
thickness as the iPad itself. Trust me, I've tried. It's exactly 22. Anyway, dbrand has been making the best leather skins in
the business for a while now, which is great because Apple actually isn't really making
anything leather anymore. And this is good quality soft leather, like it's not some sanded-down
and stamped fake texture. It's actually all-natural,
full-grain leather. It's plush and it'll actually develop a nice patina over time since you can literally
own these iPads for years. So if you wanna check out
premium leather accessories for your iPad, check out
channel 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)
