After one year of using it, what are my thoughts…

The M4 iPad Pro is odd!

Of all Apple’s devices, the iPad is possibly the most divisive, and of all the iPads, the iPad Pro is the most divisive of the lot! Well, I’ve been using one for almost a year now, and I have some thoughts.

M4 iPad Pro – that display!

The one thing I will never tire of and the one thing that to this day I still enjoy the most is the display.

Boy oh boy, nothing can prepare you for how good it is. I’m lucky to work on good displays. The M1 Max MacBook Pro has a gorgeous Liquid Retina XDR Display. The 5K Studio Display is part of my everyday workflow, and then of course, there is the Super Retina OLED XDR display on my iPhone 16 Pro Max.

All stunning glass to look at, but none come close to the display on the M4 iPad Pro. Last year, Apple dazzled us at WWDC with the launch of the M4 iPad Pro and threw a new term at us as well – Tandem OLED. Being honest with you, it’s not in my wheelhouse to fully understand how it works, all I can tell you is that it spoils you. No other display comes close.

I used to think my TV was decent, but geez, does it look dated now! I use the TV only to be more sociable, but that’s all. It is so dull and flat by comparison. If I’m home alone, I will more often than not pick up the iPad to watch content on.

If you still haven’t experienced the iPad Pro’s display, do yourself a favour and go check it out. It’s honestly otherworldly!

The spec sheet will tell you that it has a max SDR brightness of 1000 nits and 1600 nits for peak HDR content, but it looks way brighter than that to me. All of my other displays are cranked to full brightness, but the M4 iPad Pro bucks that trend – it’s almost too bright!

Before moving on from the display, though, there is one gripe I have – not about the display exactly, but about its ability to support external displays.

As you probably know, the M4 iPad Pro has a 120Hz refresh rate panel but will only support one display at up to 6K at 60Hz. I can’t think why that couldn’t be sorted, and if you are a gamer, wanting to game on a larger display, you’re going to want a faster refresh rate. That needs sorting.

Other than that, though, the display is faultless.

The Nano-texture debate

Last year saw Apple heavily leaning into Nano-texture.

Whether or not the Nano-texture finish is for you or not is something I’ll go into in a moment, but the fact that you have to upgrade to the 1TB storage option, and the £1899 price tag that comes with it, is criminal.

There is no good excuse other than greed for Apple mandating that. This is the iPad Pro we are talking about. It’s expensive from the get-go, and if you want Nano-texture, it should be available across the range.

I tried it and it wasn’t for me, but it does work well. Again, it’s one of those things you need to go and look at first-hand to choose whether it’s the right choice for you or not. If you are an artist, architect or illustrator, then I think it makes sense.

But it does undeniably mute the colours and flattens everything a bit and is more temperamental to look after too, which is proven by the fact that they supply you with a special cloth to clean it with.

The other positives are that it reduces fingerprints and smears, and of course, glare and reflections. In short, I think you’ll instinctively know if Nano-texture is for you or not.

The battery let down

When I last wrote about the M4 iPad Pro, I mentioned that I was pretty disappointed by the battery life.

Nothing has changed on that score, and I’d still have expected more from Apple’s top-flight iPad. That said, I think I have a better understanding as to why it suffers, compared, say, to my iPad mini.

Firstly, that display will be hitting the battery hard, I’m sure. Those pixels will need juice from somewhere, and that somewhere is the battery, but not running the display at full brightness has helped.

Also, and the most obvious thing I overlooked before, was that the battery on the iPad Pro is also powering the keyboard & pencil. Simply taking the M4 iPad Pro out of the keyboard makes a huge difference to improve battery life.

Things may be about to get better to as rumours are floating around that Apple is about to announce an Apple Intelligence battery management tool for the iPhone at WWDC, so I can see no reason why that shouldn’t carry over to iPadOS & macOS too.

The M4 iPad Pro at 5.3mm thick is about the same thickness as the iPhone Air is going to be, which we are expecting later this year, so I think Apple will be all over battery life in general. I’d guess that we’ll also get the C1 or C2 modem in the cellular iPad models as well. It makes sense, no?

Life with the M4 iPad Pro

Although I would say I’m predominantly a Mac user because of the nature of my work, the M4 iPad Pro has quickly become an essential part of my day.

Apart from watching content on it, I use the M4 iPad Pro to edit virtually all my photos in Lightroom. The Apple Pencil is way better to use than a mouse, and coupled with the display, it’s a no-brainer.

One letdown for me has been Final Cut on the iPad. I never use it, and writing this story today has finally reminded me to cancel my £4.99 monthly subscription for it. It does work fairly well, but it is still way quicker and more comfortable to edit on a Mac. Apart from proving I could use it, and trying the multi-cam feature, which is neat, I have never chosen to edit on the iPad.

I can’t even think of the last time I opened the app!

As much as Lightroom is more intuitive, Final Cut simply isn’t. It’s got better and has support now for some plugins, but it doesn’t flow as well as editing on a Mac.

I love, love, love Sidecar. I know that’s not a new feature, but the ability to use the iPad as a second display is awesome. Throw into the mix Universal Control, and it’s the perfect desk setup.

The Thunderbolt 4 port is another win. I guess if we get the M5 iPad Pro this year, that might be upgraded to Thunderbolt 5, but the port just opens up so many possibilities.

If you want to hook up a DSLR camera to it, you can. Rather than relying on AirDrop to get large files onto your iPad, you can use an external SSD, which is super quick and convenient.

And if I’m having an iPad day at the studio, inevitably, I’ll use the port to hook it up to a second display to get the best possible desktop experience.

The stereo speakers are awesome for a device so slim – an area that Apple has always managed to nail, and although the camera isn’t brilliant, it’s good enough that my M4 iPad Pro is still my go-to device for any video calls.

On the Wishlist

When it comes to multi-tasking, I’m a Split View & Slide Over boy. Stage Manager simply doesn’t feel natural or intuitive, but Split View, in particular, I use all the time.

With iPadOS 19 within sight now, I’d love to see more flexibility with Split View, though. The Apple silicon inside these iPads is more than powerful enough to allow us to have more than just two windows open at a time. I’d like to see it more Mac-like and for us to be able to scatter as many windows as we want around on our iPads.

Also on my wish list would be a better solution to the Files app. After all these years, it still feels like an iPhone solution that’s merely been ported to the iPad. The M4 iPad Pro is a hybrid working solution that finds itself being used as a mobile device equally as much as a desktop workstation.

To my way of thinking, that means we should have something more Finder-like on the iPad. We need a more powerful and easier way to search for files and folders. Now, although this has been a wish for many iPad users for years, it looks like this may be our lucky year.

Apple seems likely to be making their OS across all platforms more similar this year, with the steer coming from visionOS. Apparently, our OS is going to have a transparent and glass-like look to it, with the icons having more of a floating appearance to them.

macOS is going to be dumbed down a bit to look more friendly and less intimidating, which in turn will then bring macOS & iPadOS closer together. There’s even talk of iPad getting a menu bar this year as well. Praise be!!

The one other feature that must surely change is that we finally get given multi-user login on the iPad – certainly the iPad Pro. Again, if you can have separate users on a Mac, then why not on the iPad? It makes no sense and is a friction point that could be avoided.

However, after a year of using the M4 iPad Pro, there are very few complaints. When I bought it, I had no idea if I’d take to working on an iPad or not. I’d heard so much negativity about iPadOS that my expectations were low.

This just goes to prove, getting hands-on and experiencing things for yourself is still the way to go. Due to its bulk (and cost), I don’t travel with it much, but it’s always on my desk.

Funnily enough, now I come to think about it, the iPad is pretty much acting as a second Mac already. If iPadOS gets the tweaks that are rumoured, then using an iPad is about to get even better.

With the promise of the M5 iPad Pro coming soon, and with it, WiFi 7 and more memory, what a great time it is to be an iPad user.