The best iPad for 2024: How to pick the best Apple tablet for you

Learn our full Apple iPad Professional (M4) evaluation

The newest iPad Professional is extra pill than most individuals want, full cease. However when you've got money to burn, are decided to make use of an iPad as your predominant cell laptop or simply need probably the most technically spectacular iPad potential, that is it.

We gave the brand new iPad Professional a rating of 84 in our evaluation. Just like the iPad Air, it is available in 11- and 13-inch fashions: The previous begins at $999, whereas the latter begins at $1,299. That’s prohibitively costly for most individuals, however for the cash you get various premium, if inessential, upgrades over Apple’s different tablets.

Essentially the most important of those is the Professional’s “tandem OLED” panel. In comparison with the LCD display screen on the iPad Air, this produces richer colours and deeper, extra uniform black tones. Gaming and scrolling internet pages look extra fluid due to its quicker 120Hz refresh charge. It may possibly additionally get considerably brighter, reaching as much as 1,000 nits in SDR and as much as 1,600 nits with HDR highlights.

That is the place the “tandem” half is available in. Primarily, Apple is stacking two OLED panels on prime of each other to enhance peak brightness, which is commonly a (relative) weak spot of conventional OLED shows. It’s a breakthrough, however all you really want to know is that this display screen is an absolute delight — probably the greatest we’ve seen on any client gadget, not to mention a pill. For watching films or modifying media, you actually can’t do higher. This identical show tech is used on each the 11- and 13-inch iPad Professional, in contrast to earlier fashions, so which one is finest merely comes down to non-public choice.

The Professional’s design is broadly much like that of the iPad Air, however barely thinner and lighter. The distinction isn’t enormous on paper, however the Professional’s slimmed-down frames make them simply that little bit simpler to carry. That is significantly significant with the 13-inch mannequin.

The opposite headline improve is Apple’s new M4 SoC, which is barely obtainable with the brand new Professionals in the mean time. If the M2 is overkill for the overwhelming majority of informal and pro-level iPad duties, then the M4 is mega-kill; it simply chewed by means of absolutely anything we threw at it. Nevertheless it ought to be much more futureproof, and it could save just a few seconds right here and there in case your work entails high-res media modifying, heavy use of machine studying and the like.

Past that, the bottom iPad Professional has 256GB of storage, which is twice as a lot because the iPad Air. It additionally helps extra superior options like hardware-accelerated ray tracing on its GPU, which may help lighting in future video games, and a quicker neural engine, which ought to assist with the AI options Apple has deliberate for the months and years forward.

In the event you actually wish to max issues out, notice that the 1TB and 2TB configurations have twice as a lot RAM (16GB) and use a technically extra highly effective model of the M4 with an additional efficiency core unlocked. Leaping to a kind of SKUs prices a minimal of $1,599, although — and that’s earlier than you add any equipment. These wanting to make use of the iPad Professional as a (very costly) media consumption gadget don’t want this; in the event you work with memory-hungry apps or want the best possible, simply notice it’ll price you.

The iPad Professional is the one iPad with Face ID, which stays a bit extra handy than reaching for a fingerprint scanner. It’s the one one with a Thunderbolt USB-C port, which is technically quicker for transferring massive recordsdata. It sounds extra sturdy than the Air, with 4 built-in audio system as an alternative of two. Its digicam system is not that completely different, however it features a flash for extra simply scanning paperwork, and it could actually file video in Apple's ProRes format. Its entrance digicam is on the lengthy edge, too. As for equipment, the Professional alone can use Apple’s newest Magic Keyboard, which itself is wildly costly however has a extra premium aluminum end, a extra spacious trackpad and a row of perform keys. It additionally helps the Pencil Professional stylus (however not the second-gen Pencil).

If most of those options sound area of interest to you, effectively, yeah, that’s the concept. Until you are prepared to pay for that terrific OLED display screen, the iPad Air will get shut sufficient for a way more palatable worth. And although the iPad Professional is a class-leading pill, it's in the end nonetheless an iPad. Sure inventive professionals can use it simply wonderful as a laptop computer substitute, however for many, iPadOS nonetheless makes multitasking and different computer-y duties extra convoluted than they’d be on a MacBook. Judging by the options Apple added in iPadOS 18, that’s not altering anytime quickly. (The buzziest, non-AI addition there? A brand new calculator app.) That stated, the Professional is an excellent iPad — quick, slim and opulent. And costly.