M4 iPad Pro reviews praise what it looks like but not what it does

Just a week after Apple’s Let Loose event, the first reviews of Apple’s new flagship tablets have arrived. And as with all iPad Pros that came before, two things are true: The hardware is incredible, but the software is lacking.

Design

Writing at The Verge, David Pierce calls the M4 iPad Pro “a genuine achievement in tablet design” in the very first sentence. He remarks how the device “feels like a piece of glass in your hand” and it’s so thin that “the USB-C plug I use to charge the 13-inch Pro I’ve been testing is already thicker than the iPad itself.”

Samuel Axon at Ars Technica writes that the iPad Pro is “a prime example of Apple flexing its engineering and design muscles … with one of the best screens I’ve ever seen, performance that few other machines can touch, and a new, thinner design that no one expected.”

Engadget’s Nathan Ingraham calls the iPad Pro “an undeniable feat of engineering” with a thin design that “radically” changes the experience and makes the 13-inch iPad Pro easier to handle. Jason Snell at Six Colors agrees, saying the 13-inch model is “less awkward to hold in one hand now.”

Display

All reviewers praised the OLED screen, with CNET’s Scott Stein saying it is “the display I want in every Pro-level Apple computer, or just every Apple device period.” Blacks and HDR content were particularly praised, with Pierce pointing out that “the letterboxes above and below a video just disappear into the bezel, and photos look much more dynamic.”

Snell writes that watching movies on the M4 iPad Pro is “uniformly great” and “a huge leap from a more traditionally backlit display.” Words like “gorgeous,” “delightful,” and “vibrant” peppered nearly every review and it’s clear that the display is the best reason to upgrade.

Processor and battery life

The M4 processor brings a big boost over the previous model’s M2 and the current M3 in the latest MacBook Airs, but reviewers agree that it’s overkill in an iPad. Stein sums it up best: “It’s hard for me to figure out how to push the M4 in meaningful ways, and that’s because a lot of apps optimized for it aren’t here yet.”

Nevertheless, benchmarks show the chip to be extremely fast, with Geekbench 6 multicore scores of nearly 15,000. That’s better than all but the highest-end M3 Macs on the market, a fact that several reviewers pointed out as somewhat strange, especially since iPadOS is optimized for older chips and doesn’t have many apps to take advantage of such high-end silicon.

Even with extra efficiency cores and an OLED display, battery life for the new iPad Pro is still roughly the same as the M2 model, enough to last all day but less than a MacBook Air. According to YouTuber Dave2D, it actually lasts slightly less than the M2 model, but not enough where anyone would notice.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the biggest drawbacks to the new iPad Pros are the same as with every previous model: the high price, and the underpowered software. The new iPads cost $200 more than the M2 models across the board, which Axon and others call “overkill” when other iPads run the same software as every other model which, as Pierce writes, “has let its hardware down for years.” Our colleagues at Macworld Sweden were more succinct, calling iPadOS “lame” and challenging Apple to add features and capabilities to the operating system.

In the end, reviewers agree that the M4 iPad Pro is a stunning piece of technology with cutting-edge hardware that probably won’t be matched for years. But unless money is no object, you’re probably better off with an iPad Air.