iPad Pro and iPad Air (2024) – Review – Video

Speaker 1: I’ve got the 2024 iPad Air and iPad Pro and Apple Pencil Pro. Can these crush the MacBook? Let’s find out.

Speaker 1: Scott, what are you doing? I’m crushing the iPads into a MacBook Air. The 2024 iPad Pro is here and the 2024 iPad Air, and they have a lot of new features, but they’re still different than the MacBook. Apple has two different lineups and making that decision is no easier in many ways than it [00:00:30] was back in 2022, but there are a whole bunch of features on the new iPad Pro that I like. It’s got a really nice display. It’s got a brand new processor and a bunch more, and I would like to use that as my everyday computer. If Apple let me by putting Mac OS on it, the thinner design of the iPad Pro means it’s a little better in a bag. I wouldn’t say it’s shockingly different, but it’s definitely the thinnest device that Apple’s ever made and it looks it, especially when you hold it on its own outside of [00:01:00] the case, when you hold it in your hand, it feels light and it feels like half a laptop, like the lid of a laptop just kind of suspended in my hand, but everything’s in here.

Speaker 1: It may not be a big deal for a lot of people, but also you’d want to make sure you want to coddle it because it feels like it could be pretty delicate and you’d be putting it at a case, particularly maybe Apple’s magic keyboard case, in which case it does get thicker, but the overall weight now feels similar to a MacBook Air. The processor inside the iPad Pro is totally new. An M four [00:01:30] processor that looks like it’s a step ahead of where the Macs are right now. We’re checking out the speeds on this right now, but it looks super fast. Apple is upgrading some of its core apps including Logic Pro Two and Final Cut Pro two. We got to play with Logic Pro two, which has some AI generated session players that gave a little taste of the type of performance that you can get on M Series chips.

Speaker 1: Let me add a keyboard and then we’re going to be ready to release this to the world [00:02:00] in 2024. The display is also new and right now it’s really, really nice. It’s a tandem OLED display. Apple calls it an ultra retina XDR. This uses the power of two ole displays to provide an extra boost in brightness and HDR contrast levels. Apple hasn’t made an ole display on an iPad before, so this is a welcome addition to the iPad Pro lineup. Samsung’s done this for years, but on the iPad it looks great. You’re going to have to pay up to [00:02:30] get it. It is the type of display that I’d want to see across Apple’s entire computer lineup. Of course, that would probably also mean spending more money for it. I won’t say it’s necessary for all people because Apple’s existing iPad displays, those LCD liquid retina displays still look really good for most uses.

Speaker 1: I mean, if you’re doing HDR and you want a faster refresh rate or you’re doing graphics work, you’ll notice the difference though. The other thing that is different on these iPads is the camera position. There’s a front [00:03:00] facing camera now on the landscape edge. Finally, that took a long time for this to happen. The 10th gen iPad has this too, so does the iPad air, but the camera quality is better than my MacBooks, so now this feels like my go-to camera that I’d want to use for media hits or zooms or anything else. Hey, Bridget. Hi.

Speaker 2: This is from my phone. You look sharp. This isn’t the best camera I’ve seen on an iPad.

Speaker 1: There is one thing that’s missing though. There’s no second camera on the back of the iPad pronoun. There have been two cameras before. Now [00:03:30] it’s down to one rear camera plus lidar, which does depth scanning for AR and things like that. I don’t really miss it because I’m not shooting video on my iPad, but some people might’ve been and they might feel frustrated by not having that extra lens in there. Two other important things to keep in mind if you’re shopping for an iPad Pro, the 12.9 inch model might seem like the best version for watching movies, but the aspect ratio is different. It’s more square, so you’re going to get more letter boxing. Just keep that in mind. It doesn’t mean that you’re going to get all more movie screen in there. Another thing to keep in mind is that depending [00:04:00] on how much you spend, you get different processing power.

Speaker 1: Apple sent me for review the higher end versions of the iPad Pro and iPad Air 13 inch, which have extra ram extra processing cores. I don’t know what the entry level models feel like performance wise in comparison, but keep that in mind because that same thing also happens with Apple’s, MacBook lineup. The iPad Air feels really familiar. That’s because again, apple takes the iPad Pro models from the past and basically redesigns them a little bit into what becomes [00:04:30] the airline later on, and so I’m getting a lot of deja vu with the 2022 iPad Pro. When I look at the air, there’s never been a 13 inch iPad air model before, so if somebody wanted a really large canvas to work on, it’s nice that that’s now available at a lower price. But keep in mind, you can often get older model iPads all over the place and iPad Pros for sale prices, so you have to compare against which one might actually be the better deal.

Speaker 1: It’s not mini LED this time, so unlike the 2022 [00:05:00] iPad Pro, which did have mini LED providing better contrast and black levels, this is just a standard liquid retina display. Luckily, Apple’s liquid retina displays already look really good for most purposes. Maybe if you are doing HDR work, you might not find it as up to task as you’d like. There are a couple of things that are left out of the iPad Air versus the iPad Pro. There’s no lidar on the back. A lot of people are not going to miss that. There’s no face ID on the front. Instead, there’s touch. [00:05:30] There’s a fingerprint sensor right over here, touch id, same as the 10th generation iPad and the iPad Mini. Some people might prefer that, but a lot of the other things feel pretty similar. The iPad Air is compatible with most of the iPad Pro older keyboard accessories, although the thickness of this is slightly different, so your mileage might vary there.

Speaker 1: Again, though, it doesn’t work with the pencil too, you’re going to need the Pencil Pro or the USBC pencil. There are a lot of pencils out there. We’re going to take [00:06:00] a look at what the new Pencil Pro can do. The Pencil Pro looks exactly like the pencil too. It’s the same design, same nib, everything else. We don’t have a lot of apps that are compatible with the iPad Pencil Pro at the moment, but right now we’re looking at it on freeform. There are two new tricks it can do. One has to do with the brush. You can see here that there’s a hover feature, but if you lift it up off the edge, you can rotate the brush and with the gyroscope, that [00:06:30] little trick. I think it’s useful for art where you can basically pick an angle for the brush or rotate the brush.

Speaker 1: The other thing you can do with this is there’s a squeeze gesture with haptics. When you end up squeezing the barrel, it brings up a new little curvy menu that you can pick tools from and you can hover over them and pick them, and there’s a little bit of a feedback, like a little tap feedback when you squeeze the barrel that wasn’t there before, but it’s not giving haptics when you draw and it’s not doing [00:07:00] any other things. It’s really just that one little bit of feedback. Double tap is still there, but then it’s additionally the squeeze, which is a little weird. You cannot pair the pencil pro to a previous one, which maybe is not surprising. But what is a little more surprising is you cannot put a pencil two on the iPad Pro or air either. There’s no connection message. You basically have to get a whole new pencil.

Speaker 1: If you do get one of these models, the iPad Air and the iPad Pro prices can start high and go [00:07:30] even higher. The iPad error starts at either $600 or $800 with 128 gigabytes of storage. The iPad Pro starts at a thousand or $1,300 for the 11 and 13 inch with 256 gigabytes of storage. But the configurations that Apple sent me along with the accessories are like this. For the iPad Air, you’re talking for a 512 gigabyte of storage model, 1,099, $150 extra [00:08:00] for cellular, $129 for the Pencil Pro and $349 for the magic keyboard. That’s $1,727. Meanwhile, the iPad Pro, you’ve got an $1,899 one terabyte configuration, $200 extra for the cellular, $129 for Pencil Pro and 3 49 for the magic keyboard. That is $2,577. That is an expensive [00:08:30] iPad. My mom called me the other day after Apple’s iPad reveal and asked me which iPad should she buy because she’s way overdue, and I decided to her get the 10th generation iPad with 256 gigabytes of storage.

Speaker 1: I’d even bring up these new models. Why? Because a lot of people just want a basic iPad that works. That basic model iPad is kind of like the MacBook Air in that. It’s the everyday device that I still think does most of the things that we’re talking about here. Perfectly fine. Apple actually has two step up lines though after that. [00:09:00] Unlike the MacBook Air, which then goes to the MacBook Pro, you’ve got the iPad Air, which is kind of like a pro model because it has a better chip and extra features and nicer specs. And then you’ve got the iPad Pro, which is almost like a iPad Ultra or a Pro Pro, which has the OLED display and even better chip and a few nicer extra tweaks, and they both work with new pencils and neither one of these is a Mac. Now, these also ran Mac Os.

Speaker 1: Maybe that could be a everyday [00:09:30] computer. Apple’s so close to that. These things feel like Macs, but with touchscreens and pencils, maybe Apple will announce this at WW DC, although I say that every year, but it feels like it’s getting so close. I mean, I can cross my eyes and look at the MacBook Air and iPad Pro and see kind of the same computer in two different forms. Apple is still keeping them separate, but I think they need to converge. I think we’re getting there and it would make the decision to get an iPad Pro at this price a lot more palatable. So there [00:10:00] we go. iPads 2024, though this may only be step one. There could be a more affordable iPad and an iPad mini later on in the year. If you have questions or comments, leave ’em below. And as always, thanks for watching.