-June 1, 2021 at 8:54 a.m. Pacific Time

The 2021 iPad Pro models have already come out. Although they are not much different from the previous models, they contain several eye-catching new features that attract professional users to a large extent. In this iPad Pro (2021) review, we will discuss how these new tablets are powered by the same M1 chip that powers today's Macs, thereby providing higher performance than the A12Z chip in last year's 2020 iPad Pro models.

Features such as Thunderbolt connection can achieve wider interoperability with professional I/O (such as ultra-fast Thunderbolt SSD), which is an important supplement to the 11-inch iPad Pro and the 12.9-inch iPad Pro. I always feel frustrated when I cannot connect my Thunderbolt device to my iPad, and with the 2021 update, this is no longer an obvious problem.

But the biggest difference between this year's iPad and previous models is the Liquid Retina XDR display-a feature unique to the 12.9-inch 2021 iPad Pro. To be sure, the display is aimed at professional content creators who often work on video and photo editing, but it can also be enjoyed while passively consuming media content. From a technical point of view, it is one of the most impressive displays today-this comes from people who often use Apple Pro Display XDR.

But the hardware is only part of the iPad Pro story. As in previous years, Apple is still working to improve the software that drives its tablets. It is commendable that the team behind iPadOS has done a great job in the past few years, keeping the software aspect of the equation up with the times. It is true that there is still a long way to go before the iPad can fully put its wheels on the ground and benefit from all the power under its hood. The good news is that Apple seems to be fully committed to this work, and I strongly doubt that once iPadOS 15 is released in a little over a week, we will be very happy.

Watch our hands-on video reviews as we discuss the 2021 iPad Pro, and make sure to subscribe to 9to5Mac on YouTube for more upcoming hardware discussions, tutorials, reviews, etc.

The design of the 2021 iPad Pro is far from its predecessors. In fact, it is almost indistinguishable from the 4th generation 2020 iPad Pro. The 12.9-inch model looks almost identical to the previous model, except that it is slightly thicker to fit the new Liquid Retina XDR display. The 11-inch model has the same display as last year's iPad, but it remains the same in this respect.

The design of the iPad is a design that almost everyone agrees on, and from the recent iMac update and leaked MacBook schematics, it can be seen that Apple also seems to like this design very much.

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iPad Pro is dominated by a display, with the smallest frame and no Home button. The side has a square design with flat edges, giving it an industrial appearance, reminiscent of the iPhone 4. I think it is one of the best looks in the history of Apple’s legendary design.

Unfortunately, the iPad Pro has only two colors-space gray and silver. As usual, I hope there are more color choices, but Apple likes to save its more diverse color palette for more affordable models.

Although I usually choose a space gray iPad, this year I decided to choose silver because I think it can better complement the new white magic keyboard. Once I paired the two devices together, my hypothesis was verified-when connected to the white magic keyboard, the silver iPad Pro looked absolutely stunning, and honestly, it might be the best I have ever been It's not a joke to like to cooperate with equipment accessories.

The Magic Keyboard is the same as Apple’s $349 backlit keyboard with a built-in trackpad last year, except that its size has been unknowingly updated to better suit the thickness of the iPad Pro. I don't want to rummage through my digital calipers, but in the real world, the difference between these two models seems completely irrelevant.

Having said that, this keyboard is not cheap. After a few months of daily use, it will be very interesting to see the performance of the white magic keyboard. I hope I am wrong, but I have a feeling that this keyboard will look very weathered and worn at this time next year. It may be worth considering Logitech's Combo Touch for the 12.9-inch iPad Pro. I plan to compare the two in future posts and videos.

Although it is not a perfect black OLED display, the Liquid Retina XDR display in the 12.9-inch iPad Pro is the best non-OLED display I have ever seen. Technically speaking, it is easy to understand why.

Of course, the iPad Pro display has all the standard features we expect. Therefore, True Tone, P3 wide color gamut and ProMotion 120Hz refresh rate support are coming soon, but this is just the beginning.

This year's 12.9-inch display has a contrast ratio of 1,000,000:1 similar to OLED, which makes the iPad the first choice for viewing and grading HDR photos and videos. This contrast is achieved through mini-LED technology, which contains more than 10,000 mini-LEDs. These custom-designed light sources are 120 times smaller than last year's model LEDs, and feature custom diffusers and optical films to produce stunning images.

The Liquid Retina XDR display in the 12.9-inch iPad Pro can produce 1,000 nits of continuous full-screen brightness, and HDR content has a peak brightness of 1,600 nits. When the rest of the image is black or the brightness level is as high as 600 nits, the highlights of up to 40% of the screen area may reach peak brightness. In other words, the display cannot achieve 1,600 nits of brightness on the entire display, but this is not necessary in the real world.

More than 10,000 mini-LEDs are grouped together in groups of four, and each LED forms more than 2,500 local dimming areas, providing precise brightness control for each area. This allows a small part of the screen to provide brighter highlights, and small details can be discerned even in the darkest areas. This additional control of light output also helps reduce the halo effect you see when the light source is surrounded by dark areas.

When you consider that the $5,000 Pro Display XDR is equipped with only 576 individually controlled LEDs on a 32-inch display, you will truly understand the amazingness of the 12.9-inch iPad Pro. Admittedly, it doesn't have all the bells and whistles like Pro Display XDR, and it's obviously a much smaller display with a lower resolution, but it's still impressive.

Leaving aside technical clumsiness, the final result is a display that can be used not only to consume HDR content, but also to edit and grade HDR videos and photos. Although the differences are usually subtle, they are definitely obvious to the picky person. Compared to the same movie on an iPad Pro with a standard Liquid Retina display, movies that take full advantage of HDR (such as the Pacific Rim) look absolutely stunning.

HDR video can now be graded on the iPad for the first time, whether in the stock photo app or through third-party apps such as LumaFusion. HDR content can be edited on older iPads, but due to the lack of brightness and contrast features, you cannot accurately grade the material.

At 9to5Mac, most of our videos are shot with HDR, so editing videos on the iPad has not really become an option until now. With the Liquid Retina XDR display, I can now edit and grade HDR footage taken with Sony FX3 and Alpha 7S III without any problems. LumaFusion is a wonderful and powerful way to edit videos on iPad Pro, and the experience has never been better.

For many years, the characteristic chip of the iPad seems to have nothing to do with the tablet computer restricted by its software. Considering that the 2021 iPad Pro is equipped with the same M1 chip as the 2021 iMac and 13-inch MacBook Pro, the difference seems to be more serious this time.

The result is a performance of killing ants with a sledgehammer. Such a powerful force that I can't imagine Apple will let another WWDC come and go without announcing some game-changing software features and applications.

As usual, the benchmark test illustrates part of the situation. A quick run of Geekbench 5 showed a significant improvement in performance between the A12Z and A14 bionic chips in the iPad Pro and iPad Air last year.

Benchmark tests show that compared to the A14 bionic chip in the 2020 iPad Air, single-core performance is slightly improved, but compared to all other iPads in this list, multi-core performance is greatly improved. Undoubtedly, the multi-core performance of the iPad Pro this year is a complete beast, which will make a significant difference for applications that effectively utilize multi-core.

For example, I exported an 8-minute VanMoof S3 video review in LumaFusion as an HLG H.265 video file, and the results are as follows:

When exporting nearly 9 minutes of 10-bit H.265 video, the iPad Pro with M1 saved me about 21 seconds. Scale up and you will notice significant gains, especially if you export videos regularly. Please also keep in mind that LumaFusion has not been updated since the launch of the new iPad. It is entirely possible that LumaTouch will release an update to make better use of all the additional resources behind the scenes.

Thanks to the upgraded neural engine, machine learning performance has been greatly improved on the 2021 iPad Pro. In this test, I ran Pixelmator Photo's ML Super Resolution on a 4032 x 3024 photo taken on the iPhone 12.

The compression and decompression in the file application shows the significant gain of the Apple M1 chip.

Having 1 TB of flash memory on the iPad is nothing new, but the ability to configure 2 TB is. The iPad Pro can now have the same maximum memory and storage configuration as a Mac computer equipped with an M1 chip. With 2 TB of available storage space, the iPad Pro becomes a legitimate workstation for creative professionals who handle large amounts of data.

Storage and memory on the iPad Pro go hand in hand, because the highest storage tier has twice as much memory as the smaller models. Therefore, if you choose the 1 TB or 2 TB version, you will get 16 GB of RAM instead of 8 GB.

To be sure, the 8 GB RAM on the iPad is already a benchmark, because no other iPad has more than 6 GB of memory so far. But 16 GB of memory? This is a huge luxury, and it will bring dividends through multitasking, processing large photo and video projects, etc. Even crazier is that Apple directly disclosed the amount of memory of its new iPad in the technical specifications, which is what it has only done on Mac computers up to now.

The significant increase in RAM leads me to believe that iPadOS 15 will have significantly improved multitasking capabilities that can take advantage of the large amount of available memory. But even now, you can benefit from the extra memory and be able to quickly restore more applications.

For example, if I run only four games-NBA 2K1 Arcade Edition, Sonic Racing, Hot Lava, and Sneaky Sasquatch on the 2020 iPad Pro with 6 GB RAM, it will run out of memory and start to force the game to restart. On the 2021 iPad Pro with 16 GB RAM, I can easily run all these games, as well as many other apps, such as Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer, Slack, Pixelmator Pro, and Procreate, and still switch back to these games and resume immediately afterwards Cycle through all these applications. This actually helps speed up the iPad Pro workflow and provide a more seamless experience.

Since the 2018 update, the iPad Pro has been equipped with a USB-C port, but the 2021 model is the first iPad bundled with a Thunderbolt port. As mentioned at the beginning, when moving peripherals between Mac and iPad, it is frustrating to not have Thunderbolt on the iPad. I usually use an external Thundebrolt 3 SSD to edit videos on my Mac. This external storage device cannot be used with the iPad until now.

But Thunderbolt is more than just being able to connect to Thunderbolt peripherals. It also greatly increases the available bandwidth between the iPad and external devices. This means that I can transfer huge video files between iPad Pro and external SSD in a reasonable time, which was impossible before.

Thunderbolt connection also opens up the possibility of using iPad Pro with more complex Thunderbolt devices (such as audio interfaces from companies such as Universal Audio). Although there are still many shortcomings in multitasking on the iPad, users can already connect to Thunderbolt 3 displays at full resolution through certain applications such as iMovie and LumaFusion, such as Pro Display XDR.

Cellular connection is something I discuss repeatedly on the iPad. The built-in cellular network is indeed very convenient. Although 5G growth has a long way to go, it is improving rapidly.

The biggest issue with the cellular connection on my iPad Pro this year is cost. The cellular iPad Pro model is now at a premium of $200, and when my 5G-capable iPhone 12 works perfectly as a mobile hotspot, this is a hard pill to swallow. Unless your iPad Pro is always far away from Wi-Fi, I suggest you use a mobile hotspot connection instead. This not only saves you upfront costs, but also reduces one device in your monthly wireless bill.

iPad Pro is the third iPad with Wi-Fi 6 compatibility after the iPad Pro and iPad Air updates last year. In terms of adoption, Wi-Fi 6, aka 802.11ax, is still in its early stages, because most people have not yet replaced their existing routers with Wi-Fi 6 routers.

This is a classic scenario where the chicken or the egg comes first, so something must be done first. It is a good thing that Apple includes Wi-Fi 6 in its latest hardware. 802.11ax is expected to work better in environments with a large number of connected devices, and it also provides higher energy efficiency, higher data rates, and greater capacity.

I will be the first to admit that the new Center Stage camera feature of the iPad Pro is not high in my list of exciting new enhancements. However, after trying Center Stage, I was very impressed with this technology.

Center Stage utilizes the 122-degree field of view of the new ultra-wide TrueDepth front camera. This new camera has a wider field of view and is slightly slower than last year's TrueDepth camera (f/2.4 vs f/2.2). The new camera has a higher resolution, from 7MP to 12MP of its predecessor.

Although the wider field of view itself looks very distorted and has a fisheye-like effect, combined with the miracle of machine learning, Apple is able to eliminate most of the wide-angle distortion while automatically adjusting the frame to keep all objects in the field of view.

The end result is an effect that makes you feel as if you have your own front camera and the villain moves the camera when one or more subjects are moving in the frame. Since the wide-angle camera has such a wide field of view compared to the standard wide-angle camera, as long as you are within the range of the ultra-wide-angle camera, Center Stage can perform its machine learning-assisted magic.

Center Stage will automatically crop, pan and correct distortion in real time. It provides an effect that can pan smoothly and convincingly to follow anyone in the frame. It is true that the resolution will be affected because Center Stage will automatically crop the view frame, but considering the actual situation, this is to be expected. With the enhancement of Apple's machine learning capabilities, and the front TrueDepth camera gaining higher resolution sensors and more light capturing capabilities, I can only see this feature becoming more impressive. However, for now, it is very impressive, and I hope it can be used on a Mac.

The Center Stage can handle FaceTime calls, but the API allows third parties to join them. In fact, the most popular video conferencing application, Zoom, already supports the Center Stage function.

This is the part of the comments that many people like to criticize the iPad, but after sitting down and considering some of the major leaps we have made in functionality over the past few years, I think it’s a bit unfair to play such a role if Apple hasn’t improved the iPad from a software perspective.

The biggest move is to create iPad's own iOS branch, aptly named iPadOS. This allows the iPad to get its own version of the software, which adds more flexibility and allows the iPad to develop in ways that may not have been possible before.

In summary, does the iPad have room for software development? Clearly. Does iPadOS need to be improved to fairly deal with the overly powerful hardware in the 2020 iPad Pro? no doubt. But I doubt that we will see iPad Pro make great progress in software features, maybe we will even see professional applications like Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro debut on the iPad. Before this day arrives, here are some areas I hope iPadOS will improve:

First, multitasking needs an overhaul. Multitasking is good, but it might be better. I hope to see a new window application that can provide users with greater flexibility. Especially on the large screen of the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, the application should have the option of not being forced to enter the full-screen view. I hope Apple has a modern solution to solve this problem, one that does not necessarily copy the window experience on macOS, but provides a more friendly interface for multitasking.

App Switcher can also benefit from rethinking because it only allows you to force close one application or switch to another application. App Switcher can do a lot of cool things, such as quickly merging two windows, dragging a window into a split view or sliding view, and so on.

External display support is expected to get some much-needed attention in iPadOS 15. In addition to mirroring the iPad's display, you should also be able to display the extended desktop in full resolution. Not only that, but Apple should go a step further and enable clamshell mode on the iPad Pro so that it can be used as a desktop computer.

The file application has made some necessary improvements in iPadOS 14, and I hope to see Apple take the next step and provide more informative file transfer status updates. I also like the ability to use the trackpad to select multiple items by dragging gestures.

In terms of hardware, this is a complete software package. The 2021 iPad is basically a Mac computer without macOS.

Features shared between Mac and iPad:

But it's not just a Mac, this is why the iPad is such a compelling product. The iPad has a better display than any MacBook, can connect to the Internet independently of Wi-Fi, has a better speaker system, has a simple face ID authentication function, can be used with Apple Pencil, and so on. I mean, look at all the features unique to the iPad:

If Apple can provide significant improvements in areas such as multitasking, external display support, and file management, I think the iPad will eventually be able to compete with the Mac and become the laptop replacement that many people want it to be.

What is your opinion on my iPad Pro (2021) review? Provide your feedback in the comments below.

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The new iPad Pro is equipped with an A12Z processor and a new camera setting on the back. Apple also introduced a new Magic Keyboard with trackpad for iPad Pro.

Jeff makes videos, walkthroughs, how-tos, written tutorials, and reviews. He prides himself on being able to explain things in a simple, clear and concise way.

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