© Lemon squeezer
The success of the iPad continues, even if the pace of new launches is sometimes a little slower than that of the iPhone. Apple tablets remain renowned for their general manufacturing quality and their premium feel. However, their enormous advantage over their competitors in the Android ecosystem lies elsewhere: their interface, considered more ergonomic and practical by many users.
Despite everything, the competition has been making enormous progress for some time, and Apple must therefore react to retain its customer base… so far very faithful to the product. Two new iterations of iPad are therefore coming to the market in 2024: two new 7th generation iPad Pro and one two new iPad Air 6th generation. We invite you to take an overview of these tablets.
The iPad Pro M4 11″ and 13″, as well as the latest iPad Air, also available in versions 11″ and 13″ are available now on the official Apple website. The first deliveries and their arrival in alternative stores is scheduled for May 15, 2024.
The price of iPad Pros has been significantly increased given the major new features expected on these products. We indeed find an OLED screen without equal on the market, an M4 chip offering unparalleled performance and autonomy, all in a very thin and durable product, now available in a version with nano-textured glass.
The iPad Pro M4 are available from €1 219 for version 11″ and €1 569 for variant 13″. A detailed list of prices is available in our where to buy article dedicated to the 2024 iPad Pro M4.
As a reminder, the current price of previous iPad Pros was 1  ;069€ for version 11″ and 1 489 € for the 12.9″ with Liquid Retina HDR display when released.
On the side ofiPad Air 2024, the price starts from €719 for the 11″ and €969 for model 13″.
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In 2024, customers in the category can expect major new features, in particular on the Pro variant. Here's what we currently know:
The 2024 iPad Pros offer an OLED screen and the M4 chip four times more powerful than the M2 generation
With the 6th generation, Apple introduced a new Liquid Retina XDR screen, allowing both impeccable color rendering and contrasts close to those seen on OLED screens. This sleight of hand is enabled by a combination of LCD technology screens with a fairly fine matrix of LEDs to control the backlighting.
The approach is not new and works very well – particularly for color rendering, particularly good on the firm's LCD panels. However, the transition to OLED technology, which is now rather mature, should allow for better image quality, particularly when a photo or video shows a multitude of small bright areas on a dark background.< /p>
The iPad Pro M4 (2024) are the first from the firm to offer an OLED screen – the industry now makes it possible to implement intermediate sizes at a lower cost, whereas until now manufacturers had mainly specialized in small sizes for smartphones and giant panels like those of the best premium televisions.
© Apple
These OLED panels are manufactured exclusively by LG Display. Our colleagues at PhoneArena suggest that the component costs the company quite a lot per unit: $290 for variant 11″, and $390 for variant 13″. Which largely explains the increase.
Other info: the arrival of the M4 chip, completely new. The previous iPad Pro range offers an already very efficient M2 chip. Very concretely this gives performance multiplied by 4, all without forcing. The NPU dedicated to AI surpasses itself with 38 billion operations per second. This allows video editing, for example, without the slightest wait.
The M4 chip contains a particularly fast GPU (graphics card) with Ray Tracing and Mesh Shading. Among the other new features, a new Pencil Pro with eraser.
But also a new Magic Keyboard for the device. Still a little expensive (€349), even if it erases more lines with the Mac, in particular thanks to its trackpad with haptic feedback.
The iPad Air 6 has an M2 chip, and a new size 13″
© Apple
The iPad Air 6 has some aspects of the previous Pro model, notably in terms of performance and available sizes. This generation will benefit from an M2 chip, 50% more powerful, like the iPad Pro 6.
The screen technology remains LCD unlike the Pro range. But Apple is giving the range a 13” screen size, which would contribute to a general simplification of the iPad range around these two formats ’ ;#8211; with the exception of iPad mini, of course.
iPad Pro M4 and iPad Air 6 will benefit from the new features of iPadOS 18< /h3>
While the next tablets will likely be launched under iPadOS 17, the following version iPadOS 18 announced this summer should provide them with interesting new features, including a more efficient Siri assistant, and many features boosted with AI. With the iPadOS 17 version, we already find some great application updates, notably Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro, which benefit from quite a few new features linked to local AI execution.
© Apple
A priori, the next round of announcements only concerns the 7th generation iPad Pro and the 6th generation iPad Air, even if surprises are always possible.
However, after 2023 without any hardware updates, we expect Apple to make further announcements later in the year. This includes a new standard iPad and a new iPad mini, both with an A16 chip.
According to this scenario, the ;#8217;iPad 9 would be stored outside the Apple Store to be replaced by the iPad 10, following the release of the iPad 11. The schedule of these announcements remains for ;#8217;hour, alas, quite evasive.
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