In April 2021, Apple updated its popular iPad Pro lineup, introducing the M1 chip, a Liquid Retina XDR display, a Thunderbolt port, and more. Since the iPad Air saw a major update in September last year, both the iPad Air and the iPad Pro now share similar designs and an increasingly close feature set. The iPad Air and iPad Pro share a number of key features, such as design, rear Wide camera, and a USB-C port: Liquid Retina display with 264 ppi, full lamination, oleophobic and anti-reflective coating, P3 Wide Color, and True Tone
ƒ/1.8 12MP Wide rear camera, with digital zoom up to 5x and Smart HDR 3 for photos Apple’s specification breakdown shows that the two iPads share a number of important features. Even so, there are an even larger number of meaningful differences between the iPad Air and iPad Pro that are worth highlighting, including their displays, authentication technologies, processors, and camera setups. Available in Silver, Space Gray, Rose Gold, Green, and Sky Blue Both the iPad Air and the iPad Pro use Apple’s most recent product design language, also seen on the iPhone 12 and the iMac, featuring industrial squared-off edges. Unlocking is something that may be used dozens of times every day, so it is important to choose your preferred method of authentication if you feel particularly strongly about it. That being said, both Touch ID and Face ID are now extremely refined technologies that work well, and most users will likely be happy with whichever they have. These models are around half a pound lighter than the 12.9-inch iPad Pro and will be best for users focused on portability and easy handheld use.
Both the iPad Air and the 11-inch iPad Pro feature Liquid Retina LED displays with 264 ppi, full lamination, an oleophobic and anti-reflective coating, P3 Wide Color, and True Tone. Apple calls the 12.9-inch iPad Pro’s mini-LED screen a “Liquid Retina XDR display.”
The display can reflect what can be seen in the real world by capturing the brightest highlights and subtle details in even the darkest images, allowing users to view and edit true-to-life HDR and Dolby Vision content, which is especially important to creative professionals, including photographers, videographers, and filmmakers. The iPad Air’s Liquid Retina display will be sufficient for the vast majority of users, but some may prefer the responsiveness of ProMotion of the iPad Pro for tasks such as gaming.
Both chips are fabricated using a 5nm process and contain Apple’s most advanced 16-core Neural Engine for machine learning. Only users with an intensely demanding workflow will need the extra power the M1 in the iPad Pro offers over the A14 in the iPad Air. For example, photographers working with large images, graphic designers, and video editors may be able to take advantage of the M1’s extra power. 4GB in the iPad Air will be adequate for casual users, but 8GB will be defter at handling multiple windows of the same application and a range of intense background tasks.
The iPad Pro has extended dynamic range when recording video up to 30 fps, and also features a True Tone flash. LiDAR allows the iPad Pro to measure the distance to surrounding objects up to five meters away, operating at the photon level at nano-second speed. This makes the iPad Pro capable of a “new class” of improved AR experiences with better motion capture, understanding of the environment, and people occlusion. If you use your iPad for consuming lots of music and videos with the built-in speakers, the iPad Pro will deliver a slightly better experience.
As well as being considerably faster, Thunderbolt opens up the potential for compatibility with a much broader range of Thunderbolt-only accessories such as external hard drives and monitors. Since they both support the same accessories, there is no reason to buy one model over the other when it comes to the likes of keyboards or trackpads. Nevertheless, it should be considered that accessories such as the Apple Pencil and Magic Keyboard have to be purchased separately from the iPad, so will push up the overall price. While it lacks the all-screen design of the iPad Air, USB-C, and 4K video recording, the eighth-generation iPad is an excellent low-cost alternative to the mid to high-end iPads.
Moreover, if you are looking for the smallest, most portable iPad, you should consider the iPad mini, which features a smaller 7.9-inch display and the A12 chip, for $399. For most people, the additional $200+ needed to buy the iPad Pro will not be justified to get a better camera system, more memory, and a 120Hz display.
Some iPad Pro features, such as LiDAR, the Ultra-Wide camera, large storage configurations, and Thunderbolt, will only be practically useful to a small niche of iPad users. Professionals who have a clear use case for needing larger amounts of RAM and storage, Thunderbolt, mini-LED for HDR content, and the added performance of the M1 chip will benefit from buying the iPad Pro.
Prosumers will also enjoy features such as 120Hz ProMotion for smoother scrolling and gaming, deeper blacks and more vivid colors with the mini-LED display, Center Stage, and LiDAR for AR experiences, even if they are not necessary, and those who want a larger 12.9-inch display will need to go with the higher-end iPad Pro model. Prosumers and professionals who want the iPad to replace their laptop or computer should likely choose the 12.9-inch iPad Pro if they are pairing it with the Magic Keyboard due to the added screen space for multiple applications.
iPad Pro (2022) vs. iPad Air (2022): Which Apple tablet is right for you?
A few months later, the company introduced the sixth-generation iPad Pro, which stands as the most powerful and responsive tablet in Apple’s current lineup. On top of that, the iPad Pro includes Apple’s ProMotion high-refresh-rate display for a silky smooth experience when navigating and working on the tablet.
iPad Pro 2020 vs 2021 – What’s The Difference?
The 2020 model of the iPad Pro sports a 12.9-inch Liquid Retina LED that features 120Hz ProMotion, full lamination, and anti-reflective coating, P3 wide colour, and True Tone. One big benefit of the 2021 model’s display is that creative professionals and editors can view and edit HDR content on the 2021 iPad Pro. While the 2021 iPad Pro no doubt offers better performance than the 2020 model, for most casual users this extra boost won’t be needed. For most users, this difference won’t matter much, since 6GB is plenty for casual tasks like web browsing and streaming.
However, if you intend to put your iPad through its paces with intensive tasks like editing and coding, then the extra choice of RAM offered in the 2021 model might come in handy. The rear camera of both the 2020 and 2021 models of the iPad Pro are exactly the same in terms of hardware, with both tablets sporting ƒ/1.8 12MP Wide and ƒ/2.4 12MP Ultra Wide rear cameras, though the 2021 model adds Smart HDR 2 and an extended dynamic range for videos. The 2021 model also offers a Thunderbolt USB-C port, which allows for faster charging and enhanced compatibility with peripherals including external hard drives and monitors. The biggest differences between the two models are in the details: enhanced 5G connectivity, a better front-facing camera, and a faster processor might be big draws for some users with data plans and intensive needs, but for most casual iPad users the 2020 iPad Pro is still a fantastic choice of tablet with many years of use ahead of it.
iPad Air (2020) vs. iPad Pro (2021): Which tablet should you buy?
If you want the pinnacle of tablets, the iPad Pro is the best choice thanks to its speedy performance, gorgeous mini-LED display and 5G wireless support. The iPad Pro may be the best tablet for crafting and consuming content, but Apple’s most advanced features don’t come cheap.
The sticker shock alone is enough to make prospective buyers flee into the arms of a Surface Pro tablet or Chromebook. Surface Laptop 4, Acer Nitro 5 vs. Asus TUF Dash F15 and Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon vs MacBook Pro.
If you can’t store in the cloud or work with gigantic files, the 2TB model with 16GB of RAM costs $2,199. Both have sharply rounded corners, a centered chrome Apple logo and a comfortable flat-edge design.
Where the Pro is available in bland silver and boring Space Gray, the iPad Air comes in rose gold, green, sky blue and the aforementioned traditional shades. They also share a similar magnetic holder on the top edge for charging and securing the Apple Pencil accessory. New this year to the 12.9-inch iPad Pro is a Liquid Retina XDR display using mini-LED technology. Instead of a uniformly backlit LED screen, the iPad Pro uses 2,500 local dimming zones that can illuminate during bright scenes or turn off completely during dark ones.
That is, until you play high-res HDR content, which lets the XDR display fan its feathers like a peacock in courtship. Moving on to the benchmarks, we tested the 12.9-inch iPad Pro screen twice: once with HDR and once playing non-HDR content.
For most people, the performance gap between the Pro and Air won’t matter — both slates can run demanding tasks like CPU-intensive apps or workloads containing multiple browser instances and background processes. What the iPad Pro grants is extra juice for prosumer apps made for video and photo editors, 3D graphics designers, architects, AR enthusiasts and the like.
Some apps are taking advantage of the extra oomph; Zoom, for example, lets you see 48 people in Gallery View versus 25 on other iPad models. Final Cut Pro and Tableau are absent while Photoshop is a “lite” version of the desktop program.
When we ran the Adobe Premiere Rush test, the M1-equipped iPad Pro took 22 seconds to add a color filter and transition to a 4K video before exporting it to 1080p resolution. The iPad Pro gained 5G connectivity, giving it the faster wireless speeds available from the major US carriers (AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon).
Instead, it maintained about the same endurance as the previous model, lasting for 10 hours and 48 minutes on the Laptop Mag battery test. The iPad Pro has a slight edge, but the 19-minute gulf between these two slates shouldn’t factor into your buying decision.
The iPad Pro has a dual-camera setup consisting of a 12-megapixel, f/1.8 wide-angle lens and the secondary 10MP, f/2.4 ultra-wide-angle camera. The cameras on both tablets are better than they have any right to be, but if you take lots of photos on your slate, the iPad Pro gets you the versatility of an ultra-wide lens for landscape photography. If I were determining the most capable tablet, the iPad Pro would be the obvious choice, but you already knew that because of the price gap between these models. If you’re on a strict budget and need a tablet for content consumption, browsing the web and using popular apps, the 64GB iPad Air for $599 is the best option.
For $50 more, you get the M1 chip, quad speakers (versus deal), better front and rear cameras, and Face ID. If physical storage space and price are more important to you than those perks, the 256GB iPad Air is the best choice.
iPad Pro 11-inch (2021) vs. iPad Air (2020)
It also brings in 5G support (if you buy the cellular model) for the very first time in an iPad, and it improves the selfie camera with a 12-megapixel ultrawide lens. It carries its own powerful chip, the A14 Bionic, and offers the same great software as well as a similarly vivid Liquid Retina display, all starting at only $599. iPad Pro 11-inch (2021) iPad Air Size 247.6 x 178.5 x 5.9mm (9.75 x 7.03 x 0.23 inches) 247.6 x 178.5 x 6.1mm (9.75 x 7.03 x 0.24 inches) Weight 466 grams (Wi-Fi), 470 grams (5G) (1.03 pounds) 458 grams (Wi-Fi), 460 grams (3G/LTE) (1.01 pounds) Screen 11-inch Liquid Retina IPS 10.9-inch Liquid Retina IPS LCD Screen resolution 1668 x 2388 pixels (265 pixels per inch) 1640 x 2360 pixels (264 pixels per inch) Operating system iPadOS 14 iPadOS 14 Storage 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, 2TB 64GB, 256GB MicroSD card slot No No Processor Apple M1 Apple A14 Bionic RAM 8GB, 16GB 4GB Camera Dual 12MP and 10MP ultrawide, lidar, 12MP ultrawide front 12MP rear, 7MP front Video 4K at 60fps, 1080p at 240fps 4K at 60fps, 1080p at 240fps Bluetooth version Bluetooth 5.0 Bluetooth 5.0 Ports USB-C USB-C Fingerprint sensor No, Face ID instead Yes Water resistance No No Battery 28.65Wh Fast charging (18W) 28.93 Wh App marketplace Apple App Store Apple App Store Network support AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon (cellular models only) AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon (cellular models only) Colors Silver, Space Gray Silver, Space Gray, Rose Gold, Green, Sky Blue Price $799+ $599+ Buy from Apple Apple Review score News 4.5 stars out of 5
Both feature edge-to-edge displays that eschew the Home button of earlier models, and both sport flat, angular sides.
You’ll therefore experience very comparable image quality with both tablets, not least because the 11-inch iPad Pro doesn’t boast the mini-LEDs of the 12.9-inch version. One small difference is that the iPad Pro 11-inch is a little brighter (600 nits maximum versus 500 for the Air), and it supports ProMotion technology, meaning it can deliver refresh rates of up to 120Hz.
While you could argue that the inclusion of ProMotion gives the iPad Pro a better screen overall, this difference is so slight that we’re calling this round a tie. This new processor made its first appearance with the MacBook Air in October, and it really does offer a marked improvement over the chip used in previous iPad Pros.
It also offers a distinct improvement over the A14 Bionic chip you’ll find in the iPad Air, which, despite being fast enough, can’t quite handle the same workload as the M1. Another palpable difference is that the base iPad Air model houses only 64GB of internal memory, which is pretty paltry for a tablet released in 2020. Our review of the iPad Air found that it has great staying power, retaining plenty of life even after you’ve used it for five or six hours. Despite having a great battery, the smaller storage space and the slightly weaker processor in the Air make this a win for the iPad Pro.
As our review of the 2020 model found, these lenses offer a surprisingly versatile camera experience for a tablet, letting users take very usable photos in most conditions. to ensure your face remains in the middle of the shot, making sure a great scene isn’t spoiled by a misaligned head. The iPad Pro also offers the aforementioned lidar sensor, although the range of AR apps you can use it with still remains pretty limited, so it’s hardly groundbreaking.
One thing that the iPad Pro offers that’s also provided by the Air is compatibility with the Magic Keyboard accessory, just in case you want to use either of them for work.
iPad Pro 2021 vs MacBook Air M1: What should you buy?
The new M1 MacBook Air now has enough power and battery life to compete with (and in many cases, beat) the best PCs on the market, making it one of our top picks for the best laptop you can buy. In our M1 MacBook Air review we gushed over the laptop’s 2,560 x 1600-pixel Retina display, and with good reason: it makes watching movies a pleasure, showcasing vibrant colors and sharp details at a respectable brightness level. However, as good as this panel is, it’s not the best screen we’ve ever seen on a laptop (that honor rests with the Dell XPS 15), and it’s likely to be outclassed by the mini-LED display on Apple’s upcoming 12.9-inch iPad Pro. The mini-LED panel on the iPad Pro should also be brighter with 1,000 nits of average brightness while offering a whopping 1 million-to-1 contrast ratio.
So if screen quality is a high priority for you, you can’t go wrong with the M1 MacBook Air, but you may feel better about investing in a new iPad Pro. You’ll probably have more opportunities to push the MacBook Air to its limits since there’s more room in the design to dissipate heat, but both devices should give you top-tier performance for the price.
Apple claims the efficiency of the M1 chip significantly boosts battery life, and sure enough in our battery tests the new M1 MacBook Air lasted an impressive 14 hours and 41 minutes — handily beating out competing laptops like the ZenBook 13 (13:47) and XPS 13 (11:07), not to mention the 10 hours and 16 minutes we got out of our 2020 12.9-inch iPad Pro review unit. However, the iPad Pro 2021’s port now supports Thunderbolt 4 / USB 4, which means you can hook it up a variety of high-performance external storage devices and displays. The 720p webcam crowning the M1 MacBook Air’s display delivers decent image quality that will make you look just fine on a Zoom call with your relatives, but you won’t be using it for anything else.
By comparison, the 12MP cameras on the front and back of the new 2021 iPad Pro seem more than good enough for snapping photos while you’re out and about, though some people might look at you funny while you’re waving your expensive tablet around. This new feature kicks in during video calls, causing the sensor to automatically track whoever is speaking and keep them centered in the frame (within reason; the iPad presumably won’t rotate to follow you). Apple claims it can also recognize new speakers who enter the frame and zoom out to capture them as well, a neat feature we’re eager to test out under real-world conditions.
At that price you could also get the top-line M1 MacBook Air with extra RAM or storage, and you’d have yourself one of the best laptops on the market, with a built-in keyboard and a battery that can outlast the iPad Pro by up to three or four hours. If you just need a great laptop and don’t care about being able to tap the screen, access the iOS app store, or take pictures, a new M1 MacBook Air would be a wise investment.
iPad Air (5th generation) vs iPad Pro 11‑in. (3rd generation)
Up to 10 hours of surfing the web on Wi‑Fi, watching video, or listening to music Up to 10 hours of surfing the web on Wi‑Fi, watching video, or listening to music Up to 10 hours of surfing the web on Wi‑Fi, watching video, or listening to music Up to 10 hours of surfing the web on Wi‑Fi, watching video, or listening to music Up to 10 hours of surfing the web on Wi‑Fi, watching video, or listening to music
Apple iPad Pro (2021) vs iPad Air (2020): which should you buy?
This means if you’re already an existing Apple customer, you can access all of your apps, settings, purchases and downloads via iCloud on whichever iPad model you choose All three models ditch the Lightning connector for a USB-C port, with the 12.9-inch iPad Pro support the superfast Thunderbolt 4 protocol Apple’s iPad Air is available in silver, grey, rose gold, green, and sky blue.
There is only one screen size to choose from, measuring 10.9 inches, and this display has an LED Liquid Retina panel with a resolution of 2360 x 1640, which gives it a PPI of 264.
These include Music, Apple TV, Podcasts, Books, GarageBand, News, Clips, iMovie, Fitness, Health, Voice Memos, Reminders, Notes, Pages, Keynote, Numbers, Files, and a university app called iTunes U. Security-wise, the iPad Air has a Touch ID sensor embedded into the Power button on the side, which can be used alongside a PIN or passcode. Cameras on tablets tend to fall down the ranks of importance when we discuss specs and features in reviews because, aside from video calls, they’re not used all that much. With the improvements made to phone cameras in recent years, fewer of us now use large tablets to take photos or film videos.
To make sure they cover both casual and these pro users, Apple remains committed to offering great camera technology across its tablet range. This measures how long it takes light to reflect back from objects to make AR experiences more accurate and lifelike.
This feature, seen only on the iPad Pro, works akin to the moving cameras seen on the Facebook Portal or Echo Show devices by always keeping you in the shot and in focus during video calls. This means the iPad Pro can follow you around a room, even if you’re writing on a whiteboard, moving around the kitchen, or are switching between sitting and standing.
To power all of these various hardware and software features, the iPad Air runs on the 64-bit A14 Bionic chip with Apple’s neural engine. The second-generation Pencil comes with some standout features, including gesture controls as well as the ability to handwrite in any type box, known as Scribble to iPad. Another small but useful feature of the Apple Pencil is that it can be stored magnetically on the tablet’s side (or top), depending on whether it’s in portrait or landscape mode. Bear in mind that if you opt for a cellular model, you’ll also need to pay separately for a mobile data contract.
In the battle of the batteries, the iPad Pro snatched the crown, lasting for four hours longer than what Apple promises. Retina is an Apple display technology that works to cram a greater number of pixels into a smaller frame compared to regular ISP/OLED panels.
It offers true-to-life detail, great for viewing and editing HDR photos and videos or watching movies and TV shows, and colour and contrast are superb. It’s not until you place them side-by-side and then open HDR photos on Photoshop, for instance, that the differences really make themselves clear.
The only screen we’ve ever seen that marginally surpasses the quality of Apple’s flagship model is the one on the Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 Plus. Yet Apple gets credit for the fact its displays are anti-glare, and they don’t pick up smudges and fingerprints in the way Samsungs’ do. TrueTone adjusts the on-screen colours and brightness based on ambient light, and this adds to make content look true-to-life. We saw either zero or minimal lags when making Zoom calls, sharing screens, attaching external monitors, switching between apps and collaborating on Google Docs across the devices.
For more power-hungry tasks, however, such as rendering Full HD videos or editing large photos on Photoshop, the iPad Air did tend to slow down ever so slightly in comparison to the 12.9-inch Pro. We’d imagine that the Air may start to lag a little among creatives who carry out much more intense activities that require large amounts of power, but we have no doubt the iPad Pro would handle these with ease.
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By moving the TouchID sensor to the power button, the latest generations of iPad Air take full advantage of the screen real-estate, even if the bezels are a little on the large side. This means it’s easier to hold the iPad Air without knocking the screen, but it detracts a little from the overall elegance of the device.
In our iPad Air review, we commented on the fact it only really starts to feel overly heavy when it’s in a keyboard folio case. To get a tablet with this level of power, performance, battery life and display quality, it needs to contain a vast number of components, and this is bound to add weight.
This also plays into the fact the iPad Pro is made for more professional tasks and use cases than for casual use or on-the-go streaming. The main difference in the USB-C port on the Pro versus the Air is that it supports Thunderbolt 4 and USB 4. This makes the iPad Pro’s USB-C connector “the fastest, most versatile port ever on an iPad,” capable of supporting four times more bandwidth for wired connections, faster external storage, and means the tablet can support higher resolution external displays, up to 6K. Apple is selling the iPad Air in five colours – silver, space grey, rose gold, green, and sky blue.
Of all the tablet reviews and head-to-head comparison guides we’ve written over the years, this is the hardest to call. Its power, aesthetic, capabilities, and incredible camera setup (and all the benefits that come from this, including Centre Stage) elevate the Pro to a different plane.
The iPad Pro supports 5G, whereas the Air doesn’t, which means if you’re looking for a cellular model, you’re futureproofing your device. The reason it’s difficult to call a clear winner is that the Pro is so expensive and, if you’re not in a creative or professional industry, it’s hard to justify buying it when the iPad Air performs so admirably.
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iPad Pro 11 (2021) vs iPad Air 4 (2020): which is the right Apple tablet for you?
It was announced in September 2020, around seven months before the latest iPad Pro arrived in April 2021. It’s fairer then to compare the 256GB specs of both versions (as you can’t get the Air with 128GB), which show the real cost difference is slightly less at $150 / £120 / AU$220. This lets the drivers act a bit like a tweeter/woofer team, one taking responsibility for the lower frequencies. The 2021 iPad Pro brings a generational shift in display tech, but you don’t get it in the 11-inch version. Resolution is slightly different too, at 2388 x 1668 to the iPad Air 4’s 2360 x 1640, which allows for the extra 0.1 inches of screen space without trading away pixel density. You won’t sacrifice much on the screen front if you opt for the iPad Air 4 (Image credit: TechRadar)
They both also have a layer that helps prevent fingers greasing up the display glass and minimizes reflections. This is still a type of LCD, but it uses far smaller backlight LEDs and, in this case, allows for something we’ve never seen in an iPad before.
This is a common feature in higher-end TVs, used to make the image look punchier and more contrasty in dimly lit rooms.
The 2021 iPad Pro 12.9 has around 10,000 local dimming zones, and these are particularly important for HDR video playback.
Apple calls this screen tech Liquid Retina XDR, named after its $5000 monitor. The iPad Pro 11 has an additional 10MP ultra-wide camera, the kind now so common in phones.
Center Stage on the iPad Pro 11 keeps the focus on you (Image credit: Apple) A feature called Center Stage automatically crops into the image to frame people involved in the chat. We’ve tried a similar feature while testing the Insta360 One R action camera, and found it pretty neat.
The 2021 iPad Pro tablets use the same Apple M1 processors as the higher-spec version of the MacBook Air.
The cellular iPad Pro 11 (2021) has 5G, although the upgrade comes with a big price bump. It’s probably worth the extra spend for digital artists who can write a new iPad off as a business expense.
Will we suddenly get a load of AAA console ports that you can play on-the-go, without an internet connection, because the Apple M1 is now used on iPads as well as MacBooks? We know Divinity: Original Sin 2 is coming, but that’s not enough to fuel an iPad gaming revolution.
These are the iPad Pro 11’s superior quad-driver speakers and the clever front cam that will zoom and pan the view to keep you (and other FaceTimers) on-screen. But at $200 / £150 / AU$250 more than the Wi-Fi version this upgrade makes us feel a little queasy, particularly as 5G phones at that price are probably not too far away.
iPad Pro 2021 vs. iPad Air 4: Which should you buy?
But now there’s a new iPad Pro on the market, and it’s packing Apple’s powerful M1 chip, a very promising new Liquid Retina XDR display, better cameras and support for 5G. Swipe to scroll horizontally Row 0 – Cell 0 iPad Air 4 (2020) 11-inch iPad Pro 2021 12.9-inch iPad Pro 2021 Starting price $599 $799 $1,099 Display 10.9 inches (2360 x 1640) 11 inches (2388 x 1668 pixels) 12.9 inches (2732 x 2048 pixels) mini-LED Processor A14 Bionic M1 (16-core) M1 (16-core) Storage 64GB, 256GB 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, 2TB 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, 2TB Rear Cameras 12MP wide (f/1.8) 12MP wide (f/1.8), 10-MP ultra-wide (f/2.4) 12MP wide (f/1.8), 10-MP ultra-wide (f/2.4) Front Cameras 7MP TrueDepth 12MP TrueDepth 12MP TrueDepth Dimensions 9.7 x 7 x 0.24 inches 9.74 x 7.02 x 0.23 inches 11.04 x 8.46 x 0.25 inches Weight 1 pound 1.04 pounds 1.51 pounds Port USB-C USB-C with Thunderbolt, USB-4 USB-C with Thunderbolt, USB-4 Accessories Magic Keyboard, Apple Pencil (gen 2) Magic Keyboard, Apple Pencil (gen 1 & 2) Magic Keyboard, Apple Pencil (gen 1 & 2) Connectivity Wi-Fi 6, optional 4G Wi-Fi 6, optional 5G Wi-Fi 6, optional 5G
The cheapest iPad Pro 2021 ($799) comes with 128GB of storage, which is a much more reasonable amount of space for a modern tablet. Pre-orders for the new iPad Pro opened April 30, and that tablet started arriving in stores in the second half of May. The iPad Air 4’s 10.9-inch (2360 x 1640 pixels) Liquid Retina display is plenty bright and beautiful enough to let you enjoy watching your favorite shows and movies on the go. It has a respectable pixel density of 264ppi, the nice thin bezels of the iPad Pro, and good color reproduction.
One of the big selling points of the new iPad Pro 2021 is the inclusion of Apple’s new M1 chip, which first debuted last year. Apple also claims we’ll see as much as a 2x improvement in storage access speed over the iPad Pro 2020, which was already plenty fast. The new iPad Pro 2021 supports USB-4 and Thunderbolt 4, which means better-than-ever bandwidth for for external devices and displays.
Specifically, the iPad Air 4 packs an A14 Bionic chip with a hexa-core CPU and a quad-core GPU that makes it speedier than most tablets on the market.
Dimensions-wise, it’s basically identical to the 11-inch iPad Pro, with similarly thin bezels that make the screen pop. Both offer great performance in a thin, light package, though the added weight and size of the 12.9-inch iPad Pro 2021 may make that tablet a little more unwieldy to use, especially if you have small hands.
The iPad Pro 2021 will come with an improved 12MP TrueDepth sensor on the front which supports Apple’s Center Stage, a new feature that uses the iPad Pro’s ultra-wide camera during video calls to automatically track and zoom in on someone as they move around the frame. Thanks to the new M1 chip the new iPad Pro 2021 is shaping up to be one of the most powerful and capable tablets of the year, and we’re eager to check out how good that gorgeous-looking mini-LED screen on the 12.9-inch model looks in person. It’s also looking like the iPad Pro 2021 be one of the most expensive tablets you can buy, especially if you need more storage than the base models or want to splurge for that larger screen size.
Apple iPad (2021) vs Apple iPad Air (2020): What is the difference?
has Mail Privacy Protection ✔ Apple iPad (2021) ( iOS 15 ✖ Apple iPad Air (2020) Mail Privacy Protection is a feature built into the default email app that blocks senders from using “tracking pixels” to see when you’ve read an email. Competing services upload the photos and perform this on their servers, which requires the sharing of personal data.
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