Hands-on with Apple’s new iPad Pro: it’s thin, light, and OLED

Apple just announced a new iPad Pro, and at a watch party in New York City, a few reporters got to take a look at Apple’s new tablet firsthand. After holding and playing with the device for a few minutes, I can say pretty confidently that Apple’s not kidding about how much more svelte the new model is. At 5.3mm thick for the 11-inch model and 5.1mm for the 13-inch tablet, this new iPad is noticeably thinner and lighter than anything the company has made before. It’s such a big difference that the larger model, which I’ve always felt was kind of preposterously huge, feels much more comfortable to hold and use.

The new Pro’s most notable new spec, other than its waif dimensions, is the new OLED screen. It’s a little tough to make too much of exactly how it looks based on a quick glance in a crowded room, but even from a distance, it’s clear how much crisper the display really is. The “Tandem OLED,” as Apple calls it, appears to be plenty bright, and the viewing angles are excellent in the way they typically are on an iPad. The screen didn’t wow me immediately the way the redesign did, but it does look great.

As for the M4 chip powering the whole thing? Well, we’ll have to see. For most uses, the iPad has had more than enough horsepower for a long time — the M4 is clearly meant to power extremely intense use cases, like the new multicam setup in Final Cut Pro or some of the more advanced artistic features in apps like Procreate. In a short demo, it was super fast. The iPad is pretty much always super fast.

Key to the new Pro’s appeal are its two new accessories — the new Apple Pencil Pro and the upgraded Magic Keyboard. The Magic Keyboard looks and feels really nice. Its aluminum body and enlarged trackpad are much higher-end than what we’ve seen from previous versions. Typing on it felt a lot like typing on my MacBook Air, which was pretty clearly the goal. The Pencil… well, it feels like the Pencil. Most of the coolest stuff is software, so I’ll have to report back on that.

At $999 for the 11-inch model and $1,299 for the 13-incher, the iPad Pro is very much not the iPad for casual consumption — that would be the new iPad Air or even the now-cheaper 10th-generation iPad. But Apple likes to do its best hardware work on its highest-end devices, and this Pro looks like it holds up the tradition nicely.

Photography by David Pierce / The Verge