Is the iPad finally about to come of age?

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been using the M4 iPad Pro now for around 8 months – and on the whole, it’s been a pretty decent experience.

But, as with everything iPad – there are pros and cons – and one of those negatives, in particular, was a huge surprise.

The M4 iPad Pro was my first experience of life with an iPad and I was curious to form my own opinions on what it was like to work on Apple’s tablet. I guess you could argue that I gave myself the best possible chance of loving it as I plumped for the Rolls Royce of iPads – the brand-new M4 iPad Pro.

Last year, Apple gave the M4 iPad Pro and accessories quite a makeover – and I didn’t leave too many boxes unchecked as I spec’d mine out. I chose the 13-inch iPad in silver. I went with 1TB of storage, and originally, I chose it with the Nano-texture glass. I didn’t go with the Wi-Fi/Cellular option but did add on the Apple Pencil Pro and the frighteningly expensive Magic Keyboard. All that frantic ticking of boxes meant that I spent (as near as damn it) £2500 on a tablet – all-be-it and gorgeous & powerful one.

This can only mean one of two things – that I’m either stark, raving bonkers or I was serious about seeing what an iPad could bring to my workflow and working day.

M4 iPad Pro – my first issue

When Apple released the updated M4 iPad Pro, a lot was made of the battery life.

In theory, it should be amazing – after all, it has a 10,340 mAh battery, which was a 418 mAh bump over its predecessor. Apple is always pretty crafty about giving away too many details about their batteries (and chips – but more about that later). You have to wait for the tear-downs to come out before finding out these finer details.

All you can glean from Apple’s site is that it has a built-in 38.99-watt-hour rechargeable lithium-polymer battery. Apple claims that all iPad Pro models have up to 10 hours of surfing the web on Wi-Fi – or 9 hours if your M4 iPad Pro has a data connection.

I don’t know about you, but I find that kind of information pretty hard to assimilate and digest – I want more real-world proof of what it’s like. Compared to say my iPad mini (A17) it seems to suffer on stand-by. The iPad mini can be on my desk for a few days and yet I seem to be able to pick that up and the battery has hardly shifted.

I’m not finding the same to be true on the M4 iPad Pro though – and that’s a little disappointing. For instance, I’ve been working on it today for about an hour or so – and mainly only writing. There has been a little bit of surfing going on and I’ve been listening to music via my AirPods Max – and in that time the battery has drained from 55% to 38%. No background apps are open and to be honest, I’d have expected more from the ‘big’ iPad.

I’m no technician, but it seems to hold charge better from 100% to around 50% than it does from 50% and below. Does that make any sense to you?

Don’t get me wrong – the M4 iPad battery isn’t bad – just not as stellar as I’d originally thought. If I start working on it with a full charge, I know I’ll be ok for the best part of the day of normal work. But for me at least, it’s that standby time that can catch me out. If the iPad has been on my desk for a day or so and I reach for it, the battery will have drained worse than the iPad mini or any of my MacBooks.

Part of the reason for the poorer-than-expected battery life may be connected to one of its undoubted strengths – the display.

A clear winner

The display on the M4 iPad Pro is one of the biggest draws for me that keeps tugging me to reach for the iPad ahead of any of my other devices.

Whereas the battery hasn’t lived up to my expectations, the display has way exceeded them. I’ve been lucky to work on decent displays for quite some time now. Starting with the 27-inch 5K Retina display on my 2015 iMac, the Studio Display and the Liquid Retina XDR display on my M1 Max MacBook Pro.

All of them have been lovely to work on – but nothing comes close to the Tandem OLED display on this M4 iPad Pro.

It’s so punchy, bright and detailed. At full brightness, this thing is bright – very bright, giving you 1000 nits of SDR brightness and 1600 nits peak brightness for HDR content. But running it at full brightness for too long will have a noticeable drain on the battery.

That said, it’s so bright, that I rarely have it cranked up – and that’s from somebody who loves bright displays. But I’ll forgive this display pretty much any negatives it may have because it is so amazing to work on.

I routinely now reach for the M4 iPad Pro for most of my colour-dependant image editing. I shoot all of the images for these thumbnails in RAW and always edit them in Lightroom on the iPad Pro as I can trust its display more than any other.

The very last pass I make on my videos is always made on the M4 iPad Pro as well – it’s where I’ll pick up on any colour inconsistencies or any grading I’m not happy with. If you haven’t yet experienced what this Tandem OLED display is all about – do yourself a favour and get to an Apple Store to check it out. It’s still mind-blowing – even after eight months.

As I’d gone for the 1TB iPad Pro, that meant I had the option to get Nano-texture on it. For some reason, Apple locked that option down to only the two most expensive models with either 1TB or 2TB of storage. Maybe they think it’s only something that high-end users would want – other than greed, that’s the only reason I can think of for it not being available across the entire range.

Last year saw Apple leaning heavily into Nano-texture, and it’s now an option on the M4 iMac and MacBook Pros. As I mentioned, I did initially try it, and all I can say to you is – go and see it for yourself, and you be the judge. Does it work? Hell, yes – but at a price. You’ll see what I mean…

The 2752×2064 pixel resolution is so pixel-dense that it makes looking at any content a joy. The blacks are so rich and deep and there seems to be little or no blooming.

If you were being ultra picky, you might argue that the 4:3 aspect ratio isn’t great when it comes to watching movies, and I know some prefer the Samsung Galaxy S10 Ultra display in that respect, but it’s never been a problem for me. The display is so immersive that everything else falls by the wayside.

The M4 iPad Pro’s display is, as you’d expect a ProMotion panel that drops down to 10Hz and goes all the way up to 120Hz when required. Not being a gamer, I’m not in the best position to make the most of the ProMotion display. I guess when I’m flicking through YouTube or Apple TV for content it feels smooth – but it’s not something I can get hugely excited by.

But the display is a huge win.

Does I/O make a pro device

On the face of it, the I/O on this pricey M4 iPad Pro is kind of the same as any other iPad. Forgetting the connector on the Magic Keyboard for a moment means all you have is the single port – in this case a USB 4 Thunderbolt port.

Although I’ve recently been spoiled by the stupidly fast speeds of the Thunderbolt 5 ports on my M4 Pro Mac mini – the Thunderbolt 4 speeds on this M4 iPad Pro aren’t exactly sloppy. With speeds of up to 40Gb/s, you can hook up an SSD enclosure to the iPad and work on pretty chunky files.

Although as I mentioned my iPad has 1TB of storage on it, if I’m working in Final Cut on the iPad – which I do from time to time, I would normally leave the files and session on the external SSD as I know at some point I’ll be finishing the edits off on a Mac. The Thunderbolt port is also a great way to transfer large files onto the iPad if you need to rather than relying on cloud syncing.

But the point is – assuming you’re not too fussed about having 16GB memory and are happy with only 8GB on the 256GB and 512GB models, you can save money on buying Apple storage. I’d say that if 8GB of memory will do – and honestly, it is enough for virtually everyone, then choose the 512GB model and use cheaper external, expandable SSDs to top it up.

I’ve written a lot recently about how external SSD enclosures have changed my views on how I’ll buy Macs & iPads in the future. They are quick, quiet, efficient and can save you a fortune. You can even re-format hard drives and SSDs from the iPad now – which moves it another stage closer to making it even more complete.

Although the Thunderbolt port is quick and opens up endless possibilities, the fact remains that there is still only that one port. Sure I can connect a hub to it to give me more options, but a second port – even a standard USB-C connector would have been a lovely and handy addition.

The winning extras

I’m going to compare the cost of a similar spec’d M4 MacBook Pro to this M4 iPad Pro in a moment – as they are both pro devices, that seems a fair enough comparison to make, but one area the iPad wins out is in the camera department.

The iPad has two for starters – and more is always better, right? Although no one hardly ever uses the 12MP ƒ1.8 aperture camera on the back, it’s pretty reasonable. Of course, it’s no match to the iPhones, but it gives decent enough results.

The ƒ2.0 12MP TrueDepth camera on the front was finally moved to top and centre which means that the M4 iPad Pro is my go-to now for any video calls. It’s a Centre Stage camera and gives you all the bokeh and Portrait Lighting effects that you have on your Mac.

I’m not a fan of those effects – but the iPad is a brilliant device for FaceTime and video calls.

And if the M4 iPad Pro is the only device you are taking out for the day, it’s got you covered for video too. It’ll record in 4K 24/25/30 or 60 fps. It’ll even record in ProRes up to 4K at 30 fps or 1080p at 30 fps on iPads with only 256GB of storage.

The mics on the M4 iPad Pro make for good quality calls as well and the four-speaker audio set-up is typical Apple – they have mastered making small speakers in small spaces sound good – and the ones on here don’t disappoint.

The elephant in the room

In this instance, that elephant is multi-tasking – oh, and iPadOS.

Looking first at multitasking – I don’t get what the beef with it is. As you probably know, the iPad gives you two multitasking options – Stage Manager or Slide Over & Split View.

For the way I work, I find the latter to work better for me. Splitting the screen in two and being able to write and have Safari, for instance, open on the other side of the screen works just fine for me. Occasionally I’ll use Slide Over, but more often than not I stick with Split View.

Stage Manager looks at multitasking in a different way – a way that I find more confusing. But if you want up to four windows open and on view at once, then Stage Manager would be for you. But you see what I mean – there are enough options for multitasking to not still be a thing!

And whilst talking about multitasking – if you hook up the M4 iPad Pro to an external display, then you can drag windows around between the two and you have even more options available to you. The iPad will only support one external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz – but that’s enough I’d have thought.

One limitation I’ve come across though is I can’t seem to find a way to control the brightness of the studio display from the iPad – which seems a bit of an oversight.

And Sidecar – I’m a huge fan of it. I know it’s been around for a while now, but I don’t see many people using it – and I don’t know why. Not only does it instantly give you another display but it doubles up your workspace. I use it all the time and was one of the hidden gems that I came across when I started using the M4 iPad Pro. The size of this 13-inch iPad Pro makes for a fantastic second display.

As for iPadOS – I know this one will rumble on and on and probably cause more comments than any other part of this story, but here’s my take…

Most of the limitations I’ve come across so far are more often down to app developers not investing in and optimising their iPad apps properly. A lot of apps – YouTube Studio, for example, don’t support Split View – but that is no fault of the iPad or iPadOS come to that. That problem is entirely down to the dev teams of those companies.

Although I’m not an Office user many readers have told me how compromised that is on an iPad. And for apps like that which are so popular, it’s a shame that they cause such grief on the iPad. The more pain points that are placed in your way, the more reasons and excuses you’ll find not to work on the iPad.

Another example is Grammarly – I write all of my stories in Ulysses, but to get Grammarly to do its job properly, I have to disconnect it from the Magic Keyboard and then re-attach it for Grammarly to work. It may just be me, but I can’t find a way to get it to work properly any easier.

One simple improvement that Apple could help make to iPadOS though is for separate user logins. It’s not something that is an issue to me, but if the tablet is being used in a household, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth that Apple expects you to buy a different iPad for every user rather than just being able to log in and out.

That’s been a long-held gripe, and Apple ought to listen. Yes, I know that it would shave a few dollars from their bottom line – but hey, sometimes a little good grace goes a long way.

I’d love for the Files App could be refined a bit. It works and once you have sussed out how to use it, it’s fine but if the Apple boffins could find a way to make it more Finder-like, that would make it even better. For the time being though, with the Files app being so central to iPad life I’ve just added it to the dock for quicker access.

Added extras

I briefly mentioned the two accessories that I ordered with the M4 iPad Pro – the Pencil Pro and the Magic Keyboard.

Although technically extras, in reality, to think of buying this iPad without them would be folly – in particular, the Magic Keyboard. Like the iPad, it too received a bit of a makeover, and is all the better for it.

The aluminium palm rests add a touch of class and helps to give it a very MacBook’esque feel. Enough has been written about the function keys that I don’t need to cover it again other than to say they are a welcome addition. And the trackpad is as perfectly balanced as the one you’ll find on MacBooks. Because it sits so flush to the desk, it’s so easy to type on.

The keyboard is backlit and the keys have just the right amount of travel to them. Other than the £350 price tag, there is only one other concern I’ve come across with the Magic Keyboard, and that’s lag or latency. Sometimes I find a delay in moving the cursor to where I want it to be when I’m writing – but again, it’s more of an issue in third-party apps. Other than that though, the keyboard is pretty perfect.

Inevitably, it does add a lot of bulk to the iPad making it less portable. The M4 iPad Pro itself is now pretty much only the thickness of the display on a MacBook Pro and only weighs 582 grams. The kicker is that the Magic Keyboard, with no battery or display, weighs more than the iPad coming in at 660 grams. That to one side though – you couldn’t honestly think of using the iPad without the keyboard. Sure, there are cheaper alternatives, but I doubt they would come close to the quality of this one.

The £129 Apple Pencil Pro is not as essential but comes in handy. Again, like ProMotion, I’m not the target market for it and certainly don’t make the most of it, but it’s worth having – particularly as I can switch to using it on the iPad mini.

Cheaper, non-Apple pencils will work on the M4 iPad Pro and once paired via a cable work well enough – me though – I’ll always go with Apple Original gear as in the end, you always get what you pay for.

Is it a Mac alternative

In many ways, yes, it is. It’s surprised me just how quickly I’ve taken to using it and finding ways to use it!

No, it’ll never replace my Mac as so much of my work involves video and audio editing. Whilst they are both do-able on the iPad there is no way they are as proficient on it. But, if my work was solely writing and admin – then possibly I could switch to the iPad full time along with the Studio Display.

A while back, I mentioned that I was going to compare the price of an M4 MacBook Pro to my M4 iPad Pro to see how they stack up – and it seems that is where Apple is making things harder for us to make the switch.

A 14-inch M4 MacBook Pro with 16GB of memory and 512GB of storage costs £1599. A 13-inch M4 iPad with only 8GB of memory & 512GB of storage costs £1499 – but by the time you add on the Magic Keyboard & Pencil Pro, it’ll cost you £1977, which means it costs nearly £400 more than the equivalent MacBook Pro.

Here’s s thought, as they have made the Nano-texture only available on the 1TB and 2TB models – how about if you buy those configs they offer a massive reduction on the pencil and keyboard….it’s just an idea…

The iPad was the first Apple device to have the M4 chip in it and it just oozes speed and power. The M4 chip in mine has a 10-core CPU and a 10-core GPU, the same 16-core Neural Engine as on the MacBooks and has 120GB/s memory bandwidth – which goes someways to explaining why it feels so damned fast.

As I said, if my workflow were slightly different, I reckon there is a good chance I would have considered making the switch to working full-time on the M4 iPad – but for now, I just find all the excuses I can to reach for it.

As Apple silicon continues to develop, I think the iPad Pro will start to finally blossom and become the computer we’ve always wanted it to be.

A Mac replacement – no, but sometimes different is better.