Apple announces new iPad Pros with OLED displays and thinnest design ever

At its “Let Loose” virtual event this morning, Apple introduced its long-awaited iPad Pro updates. The new 13-inch and 11-inch tablets have a fresh design, more powerful internals, and a thinner profile than ever before, and they come with a major display upgrade. As rumored, Apple has switched to OLED screens on both sizes, bringing perfect blacks, richer color saturation, and enhanced contrast to its flagship iPads. Oh, and the front-facing camera is now in the correct (landscape) position for video calls.

The iPad Pros use a tandem OLED structure that allows the display to reach 1,000 nits of peak brightness and 1,600 nits for HDR content. The 13-inch model measures just 5.1 millimeters thick, which Apple says is its thinnest device ever. (The 11-inch is 5.3 millimeters thick.) For those who prefer a matte display finish, a nano-texture coating will be available for the first time with these iPad Pros.

As rumored, Apple has skipped the M3 chip altogether and is equipping the iPad Pro with its very latest silicon, the M4 chip. Apple says the CPU is 50 percent faster than the M2 chip found in the previous-gen iPad Pro.

Apple’s decision to switch from LCD to OLED brings numerous benefits. The iPad Pro will now be capable of much greater contrast, allowing for perfect black levels and greater immersion when watching videos. And creative professionals / artists will no longer need to deal with blooming — when bright content bleeds into surrounding dark areas on-screen — since OLED provides per-pixel brightness precision.

The move to OLED also means that both sizes of the iPad Pro will now offer the same level of display quality. Starting in 2021, the larger 12.9-inch model featured a Mini LED display that outperformed the smaller iPad Pro and its more traditional screen on many fronts. This mismatch continued with the M2 revision.

But now, you’ll get a similar experience even if you prefer the handling of the less cumbersome tablet. In my experience, the big iPad Pro can often feel like a laptop replacement when paired with a keyboard, whereas the smaller size always preserves its tablet origins and can be more comfortable for reading. It’s just more pleasant to hold over longer stretches of time — but you’ve got less screen real estate to work with. I’ve grown accustomed to the larger size and would probably still lean that way between the two.