2024-05-10 10:53:49
Faster, bigger, thinner: Apple showed the new generation of iPads in London. The top model iPad Pro comes with many innovations. t-online tried it out.
Faster than most laptops and now thinner than an iPod, Apple doesn’t skimp on superlatives when it comes to its new tablets. The company invited journalists from all over the world to its newly opened European headquarters in London for the presentation – and t-online was there.
The group occupies six floors and around 46,000 square meters in the Battersea Powerstation. The building is a former coal-fired power station directly on the Thames, opened in 2022 after a long renovation. There is a shopping mall on the lower floors and penthouse apartments on the top floors. Incidentally, 170 square meters cost 3.7 million pounds (the equivalent of around 4.3 million euros).
A glass elevator takes you to the Apple Office. Old brick, lots of light and a huge atrium welcome us. Every corner of this office is thoroughly designed. It is the first keynote that Apple celebrates in the new office.
The highlight of the product show is the iPad Pro. It now has an OLED screen and the new M4 chip. This makes it more powerful than many Macs from Apple: The new chip is currently only in the iPad.
iPad Pro: Super thin and super fast
The iPad is only 5.1 millimeters thin. When taking photos hands-on, it’s difficult to even get the tablet into the picture from the side. It feels like you’re just holding a large display in your hand.
Biggest innovation in the iPad Pro: It now has an OLED screen. This brings more contrast and higher image quality. Anyone who has a current iPhone knows the quality of the displays. However, at 13 inches, an OLED screen in your hand looks even more impressive.
However, OLED also has the disadvantage that the displays are not as bright. To get around this, Apple has developed a new technology called “Tandem OLED”. The iPad Pro has two OLEDs that are on top of each other. They should achieve a brightness of up to 1,000 nits and a peak brightness of 1,600 nits.
What are Nits?
Nits describes how bright a display can get. Laptops typically have 300 to 400 nits. This information is important when it comes to using the tablet outside in the sunshine.
New M4 processor for artificial intelligence
In addition to the display, the M4 chip is also included. It is up to 50 percent faster than its predecessor. In several demonstrations, Apple shows what is possible: With artificial intelligence, the musician program Logic, for example, integrates drum rhythms and piano chords into a song with just a few clicks. The AI becomes a musician. Designers and artists benefit from the new Apple Pencil Pro, which now has more sensors and detects how it is being held.
And the flash on the back, combined with the new chip and eight small LEDs, can remove shadows when photographing documents. According to Apple, many customers also use the iPad to digitize documents.
iPad Air: New colors and new size
Compared to the iPad Pro, the innovations in the iPad Air are slightly smaller. It now has the M2 processor (like the previous generation iPad Pro) and also comes in two sizes. So if you want a large iPad, you no longer need to choose the Pro model. There is no OLED screen here, but there are new colors and support for the new Apple Pencil Pro.
Conclusion: A convincing result at first impression
When you first touch it in Apple’s glossy office, the iPad Pro makes a good first impression – there haven’t been so many innovations in a long time. The OLED screen is impressive, the extremely thin design and the powerful processor make it a successful update. Our detailed test will show how the new iPads perform in everyday life with the battery and the new processor.