Apple isn’t making any design changes, but rather upping the performance of it’s flagship tablets.
Apple’s M2 chip is now longer exclusive to the MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro. It’s now powering the 6th Generation of the iPad Pro. Yes, alongside a new Apple TV 4K and a 10th Gen iPad, Apple announced the new 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pros.
Both of which are powered by the M2 Chip and keep the same starting prices as the fifth-generation, $700 and $1,099 respectively. And alongside the performance boost, there’s also a new Apple Pencil trick and better connectivity.
Read on as we unpack all that’s new, but Apple has opened orders for the duo of flagship tablets and they’ll officially launch on Oct. 26.
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iPad Pro 6th Gen: What You Need to Know
Now this next-generation iPad Pro isn’t a massive change, but rather a performance boost with some new capabilities. For instance, those familiar with iPad Pro will notice the same sizes and the same display types.
The 11-inch iPad Pro features a standard Liquid Retina Display with support for True Tone and ProMotion which scales the refresh-rate up to 120Hz. The 12.9-inch offers a more immersive experience thanks to a Liquid Retina XDR display which uses Mini LED technology. It’s still one of the best screen we’ve tested and offers a vibrant viewing experience. Baked into the top of either display, still set in a vertical orientation, is the 12-megapixel lens for photos and video calls, along with powering Face ID.
Both remained house in aluminum build that comes in either Space Gray or silver. The rear features an apple logo and a camera module containing a 12-megapixel wide and a 12-megapixel ultra wide camera along with a LiDAR sensor. There’s also a smart connector still on the bottom for connecting this to an accessory like the Magic Keyboard.
The big change though is the M2 Chip, which is the same processor that impressed us this summer in the 13-inch MacBook Pro and new MacBook Air. Here it’s an 8-core CPU, 10-Core GPU, and a 16-Core Neural Engine. Apple says that it’s up to 15-percent faster than M1 and that it up to 35% faster in the graphic departments. An even bigger leap, of up to 40%, is expected with machine learning tasks.
And like on the Macs, for those who edit video on the fly the M2 can work with ProRes footage at a faster rate. This means you can edit content faster in an app like LumaFusion, but also take advantage of the improved graphics for more everyday tasks like gaming or streaming.
The other change is what Apple calls the “Apple Pencil Hover” experience, which essentially allows for the iPad to detect the Pencil from as far as 12-millimeters above the display. In turn, you can preview what you’re about about to sketch or write, without making it permanent necessarily. This will be baked into most first-party experiences like Scribble, and is will be available for third-party apps to adopt. We’re eager to see how this works in person and how it comp[ares to a similar feature that was found on Samsung’s Galaxy Note family.
Lastly, the new 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pros will support Wi-Fi 6E, alongside 5G Sub-6 and mmWave. The other half of the story here is that iPadOS 16 will be running on it out of the box. Apple will also rollout iPadOS 16 on Oct. 26. For the iPad Pros, as well as any device with an M1 chip, you’ll get the new Stage Manager multitasking experience which allows you operate apps as individual windows. You can see our full preview on iPadOS 16 here.
Let’s Recap the new iPad Pros
All-in-all this isn’t a gigantic update to the flagship iPad. Rather it’s a boost to performance and an excellent option if you’ve been holding onto an older mode, or if you’ve been waiting to get an iPad Pro.
As soon as we can, we’ll be putting the M2 Chip, as well as the new Apple Pencil experience, to the test to see how much of a difference it makes. If you’re sold though, Apple has opened up orders for the 6th Gen 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pros and they’ll ship on Oct. 26.
Prices are accurate and items in stock at time of publishing.
