Apple showed a new iPad Pro alongside an avalanche of other hardware and software announcements at its virtual event on Tuesday. The successor of the 2020 iPad Pro adds Apple’s M1 chip, the same as the innermost one Recent MacBook Air—With Mini-LED display technology.
The tablet comes in 11- or 12.9-inch sizes and was announced alongside a new iMac, AirTags, Apple TV 4K, and more, which you can read here.
M1 and mini-LED
Apple’s biggest news in 2020 was its abandonment of Intel processors inside his Macs in favor of company-specific silicon, based on the ARM architecture. Now the same processor that debuted in the MacBook Air, Pro, and Mac Mini–the M1– powers the iPad Pro.
What does this mean to you? Apple says it expects up to 50% faster processor performance and up to 40% faster graphics than the previous iPad Pro.
The other big update is for the screen, especially for the 12.9-inch model. It now uses what Apple calls Liquid Retina XDR, the same name as the display tech in its $ 5,000. Pro Display XDR. Except that the underlying technology is not the same. The 12.9-inch iPad Pro LCD screen uses Mini-LED backlight technology, which was popping up in a few televisions for some time.
Mini-LED technology, as the name suggests, uses thousands of tiny LEDs to create light for an LCD screen. Rather than a single linked panel (or a panel with multiple zones) lighting up a screen, this much more focused approach results in improved contrast ratios, better blacks, and higher brightness (1000 nits, up to 1600 brightness). peak). Apple claims the iPad Pro has over 10,000 LEDs, a surprising jump from last year’s model, which had 72.
This technology allows the iPad Pro’s screen to have 2,596 local dimming zones, allowing the screen to more precisely adjust brightness where needed. You also won’t experience as much backlight bleeding, a common problem on traditional LCD backlit displays where light bleeds through the edges of the screen. WIRED’s Lauren Goode noticed this issue last year ipad air. The 11-inch iPad Pro’s Liquid Retina display does not use Mini-LED technology.
Apple has been using LCD screens for its iPads since the very first model, and that doesn’t change. The mini-LED is just an evolution of existing LCD backlight technology. You might be wondering why it didn’t go for OLED, the display technology used in the latest iPhones. The answer is not clear. It could be a price or availability issue, but OLED is also more likely to suffer from screen burn-in, where screen content leaves a ghost image on the panel if left idle for too long. He also can’t be that bright.
5G, Thunderbolt and central stage
