At Battersea Power Station—the iconic structure of Pink Floyd's 10th album and, now, office space for Apple—journos and KOLs were gathered for product announcement at 3pm BST (10pm SGT) today. Given the nadir of any new iPad releases last year, all bets were on the disclosure of new iPads at the "Let Loose" event. At the keynote, a slew of releases were unveiled like the new 13-inch iPad Air and an Apple Pen Pro. But one of the more knock-me-down-with-a-feather news was the inclusion of the M4 chip—a leapfrog from the M2 chip in the iPad Pros (2022). Here is a run-down of what went down.
A new member to the iPad Air family is the new 13-incher. Both models are powered by the M2 chip that grants a faster CPU, GPU, and Neural Engine. With a front-facing Ultra Wide 12MP camera, faster Wi-Fi, 5G capabilities, the iPad Air has a Liquid Retina display, anti-reflective screen coating, True Tone tech and utilises, not only the Apple Pencil, but also the Apple Pencil Pro (we'll get to that later).
The 13-inch, however, gives proper real estate to its display that allows for 30 per cent more space in a Freeform app. There's even an improvement in sound quality with double the bass that's a boon for your cat videos (that's still a thing, right?)
The iPad Pro gets that glow-up that my insecure 14-year-old self wished for (said glow-up only arrived when I was 18, thanks to MY WINNING PERSONALITY 👍). It comes in two sizes—10- and 13-inches—and has the Ultra Retina XDR display with state-of-the-art tandem OLED tech. (Due to my limited understanding, to get that 1,600 nits peak for HDR, Apple stacks two OLED screens. Y'know, like a sandwich. A very hard-to-digest sandwich. I am writing this close to dinner time.)
And the iPad Pros are thin. Not just the thinnest in the iPad Pro line but also the thinnest in Apple's catalogue. Your 11-inch model measures at 5.3mm thin while the 13-inch model is a mind-boggling 5.1mm thin (the iPod Nano measures 5.4mm thin. #rip #illalwaysrememberyouipod) How can something that's bigger be lighter? Is it witchcraft? Nay, I suspect due to a larger surface area, the motherboard is spread out. But I could be wrong. Again, I'm writing this close to dinner time. Available in two colourways—silver and space black—both models are enclosed in 100 per cent recycled aluminium cases. And because of the redesign of the 10- and 13-inch iPad Pro models, there are revised Magic Keyboards to go with.
Now, this is the best bit: while the previous iPad Pro is outfitted with an M2 chip, for the latest iPad Pro, Apple introduced the M4 chip. Bear in mind that Apple's latest chipset was the M3 for the MacBook Air. Very few expected Apple would eschew the M3 and showcase an upgraded Apple silicone for the iPad Pro line-up but there you go. The M4 promises "stunning precision [in] colour and brightness. A powerful GPU with hardware-accelerated ray tracing renders game-changing graphics. And the Neural Engine in M4 makes iPad Pro an absolute powerhouse for AI."
We know all about the Apple Pencil's features but the Pro verstion has more capabilities. Now you can squeeze the pencil's body for more options, haptic feedback and a barrel roll effect with the pencil's nib that allows for different strokes. There are nuanced touches like seeing a shadow of the pencil on the screen (this isn't projected by an external light source) and hovering the Apple Pencil will show you a preview of where the pencil will contact with the display. Finally, if you misplace it, you can locate it via the Find My app.
