iPad Pro M4 Review (2024): More Power Than You'll Need, Less Than You Want

There are certain machines that need to be experienced firsthand to realize their potential and real-life efficacy. In 2024, no device is more deserving of that honor than the M4 iPad Pro. The hardware is dreamy, the firepower underneath is a notch higher than in its predecessor, and the display is dazzling. This is an altogether splendid piece of hardware, to be sure.

Apple has left no stone unturned to make its latest slate, and then extended the same treatment to the accompanying keyboard accessory as well as the stylus. Every piece feels like a complete reimagination, a kit that is unabashedly aimed at destroying the tablet competition. Or making its user base forget the competition exists.

But this is an Apple machine, and some caveats come with it. The stakes are even higher this year, all thanks to the sweet price hike. Here's my experience of pushing this machine and how it fared on Apple's tall claims.

One of the biggest draws is the new Ultra Retina XDR display is the underlying tandem OLED tech. I'll start with the bad part first. It's amazingly glossy and loves to attract smudges. If you can't live that visual woe, Apple would kindly take your $200 for a nano-etched textured glass coat. It solves the reflective glare problem, but seen side by side, this one looks less appealing in terms of color saturation and is therefore arguably not an ideal choice for color-obsessed creative folks.

On the bright side, this time around, the OLED love is shared across both sizes, unlike the mini-LED generation, which was exclusive only to the bigger 12.9-inch model. This is one of the nicest screens you will come across, and it's due to a combination of both hardware and OS-level optimizations. The screen delivers excellent colors married to great viewing angles and terrific sharpness.

Shifting my workflow between an M3 MacBook Air, an assembly of two ultrawide monitors on my desk, and the iPad Pro, I actually found myself gravitating towards the new Apple slate more than any other machine. Now, I am not sure if creative folks would really use the iPad Pro as a reference screen, despite Apple's best intentions to market it as such. I asked an award-winning video journalist about it, and they simply laughed off the idea. "Dude, that 13-inch size is too small," they told me.

The peak brightness of 1,000 nits for SDR content, and 1,600 nits in HDR mode, beats the best smartphone OLEDs on the market today. That's nearly double that of the Asus ZenBook S13 OLED. But thanks to Apple's tight rules around animation and scaling at the OS-level, the 120Hz ProMotion panel on the iPad Pro makes every interaction feel smoother than any other device I've used. Using the EIZO monitor quality test, I analyzed the gray-scale uniformity at three linear gray tone levels and the RGB gradient test. The iPad Pro excelled in these tests and provided excellent results at the monotone gradient and viewing angle stability parameters.

I worked with the iPad Pro as my primary workflow driver for about a week in a variety of scenarios: from a sofa in a pitch-dark room to a well-lit coffee shop and an open-sky college canteen. Save for the reflection issue, especially for eyes that have grown to love the dark mode, I would give the OLED panel a perfect score for visual fidelity and legibility. It is a joy to power it on and prop it atop the Magic Keyboard. The slimmer profile of the slate definitely helps the iPad towards its candidacy as the best portable screen available today, and a feature-packed stylus lends a helping hand, as well.

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I have worked for about two years on an 11-inch M1 iPad Pro, pushing it to its limits, and I can confidently say that the 13-inch screen is definitely the saner choice for getting serious work done. Thanks to the tight pixel-level control of an OLED panel, the blacks and contrast are outstanding. Indoors, the black bezels almost merge with the black background in certain apps.

All that talk of a nigh-peerless processor inside the iPad Pro is seriously undermined, as one of the worst parts of configuring a Mac makes the leap over to Apple's tablet. Remember how Apple will give you a less powerful version of its computing M-series silicon with fewer GPU cores if you buy one of the entry-level Mac configurations? Well, that undesirable situation has made its way to the iPad Pro, as well. For the first time in the iPad's history, Apple is offering two versions of the M4 silicon. The entry-tier version serves a 9-core CPU, while the higher-end version gives you 10 processing cores.

That extra (or missing) CPU core matters because it's one of the bigger hardware-accelerated cores that handle demanding workflows and not a low-power efficiency core. If you are looking to push the iPad Pro at demanding workflows, especially pro-grade video editing, that additional performance will definitely make a visible difference, and for reasons more than one. 

You see, that extra performance core is not just a question of a few extra bucks. Instead, Apple has tied access to it behind the memory configuration. You will only get it if you pay for the 1TB storage version.

That means if you are eyeing the 256GB storage version, but want those 10 CPU cores, your bill goes up by $400, at the very least. I can't imagine a customer would be happy paying as much as $1,499 on an iPad Pro, only to be told that it contains a less-powerful M4 trim and just 8GB of RAM. Oh, the RAM situation. You will only get 16GB RAM if you pay for the 1TB storage variant of the iPad Pro, as usual.

There's something curious going on here. The M4 iPad Pro is 22% thinner and about 16% lighter than its M2 counterpart. And yet, despite fitting in a smaller battery, Apple still touts a 10-hour battery for the latest iPad Pro. Now, those longevity figures are based on web surfing and watching video. But to my surprise, the tablet held pretty well even with far more demanding workflows.

I had Chrome (with 42 tabs) open in split-view mode with Google Docs and Apple Notes, while having 21 apps in the background. There were four other multitasking app clusters in the background with Stage Manager enabled. The slate was connected to a pair of wireless earbuds and the brightness level was set to a comfortable 75% mark. In two hours, the net battery draw was exactly 23%, which is terrific and significantly better than what I usually get on an M1 iPad Pro.

Nadeem Sarwar/SlashGear

This was when an Apple Pencil was also magnetically drawing some juice from the tablet, and the Magic Keyboard was consistently doing the same. The mileage might vary depending on the app you are running, particularly if they happen to be of the same caliber as Final Cut Pro or Adobe Illustrator. But for anything lighter, you can comfortably get about seven hours of battery juice with a fairly intensive workflow on a single charge.

Overall, if you have the whole iPad Pro setup with a stylus and keyboard, it will very likely deliver the best battery longevity figure you will get on any other slate out there. Compared to my midrange OnePlus Pad and the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8, the M4 iPad Pro is miles ahead in the battery department.

The M4 iPad Pro has its merit, and it's undeniably in a league of its own. The looks and feel are a definite standout. The OLED display is a stunner, and so is the Magic Keyboard, both aesthetically as well as functionally. Performance is blistering, as expected, and the battery life is surprisingly good, especially for a slate with a 13-inch OLED panel. From a hardware perspective, there is almost nothing meaningful to complain about Apple's latest flagship slate.

Interestingly, the biggest undoing of this beautiful kit is Apple itself. The iPadOS experience is still frustratingly limiting and the sluggish pace at which it is evolving further shrinks any scope of bright hopes. The iPad's getting closer to a Mac all the time — unfortunate for power users, that also goes for configuration pricing and top-tier M4 action. And unless your workflow doesn't involve stylus-based work, the Magic Keyboard is an expensive must-have to extract any iota of computing needs from this slate.

Is this the best tablet out there? Without a doubt. But you should only buy it if your workflow needs an app that runs in its full-fledged avatar on this tablet. Or, you can live with a limited OS on a machine with power and aesthetics that far outpace its potential. There is no middle ground on this one — but if you happen to fall in that sweet spot of the M4 iPad Pro's target audience, go ahead and splurge.