M1 iPad Pro VS iPad Air 4! Why Pay MORE?! By The Everyday Dad

The iPad lineup is more fleshed out than every other tablet. Lineup currently on the market. You've got your entry level, iPad standard, the basic building block iPad Air and the powerhouses in the iPad Pro, but the blessing and curse of the iPad lineup is no matter which one you buy. You get basically the same experience across all of them. I personally think that, up to now, the iPad Air 4 has been the sweet spot for powers, features price, and it almost always gets my nod as the iPad I'm most likely to recommend. However, with this new iPad Pro and its desktop level processor, maybe it's time to invest a little and get a lot more.

So between the iPad Air and the brand-new m1 iPad Pro. Should you pay significantly more for the pro model? Let's find out, what's up everyone, I'm the everyday dad, and if I can figure it out, you can figure it out if you're curious, why I have it set up like this? I only have one magic keyboard. There's only one way to really display the iPad Pro. You can see it's right here in the box, it's right here in the box. I just this is the best way I have to show them both at the same time and for clarification on the m1 iPad Pro today, we'll be using my 11-inch model.

I do very much prefer these smaller iPads because they fit better into what I need when I need something with the power of a computer, but doesn't really take up all that much space and can replace my actual, like physical paper notebook in my backpack, so on to the comparisons. Now it's been a hot minute since we've covered the iPad Air 4. So let's quickly cover these specs and ordering options of both, because I can barely remember what I had for breakfast today. So sometimes me and I assume people like me. We need that little extra reminder when you look right at them.

The iPad Air 4 and the m1 iPad Pro look almost basically identical when it comes to cost, though the iPad Air 4 comes in at 5.99 for this base model, you'll get 64 gigabytes of memory, the a14 processor, a fully laminated display, and a few other key features that we'll talk about later in the video. The m1 iPad Pro, on the other hand, comes in at 7.99 and for this base model you get 128 gigabytes of storage. The m1 processor and you'll also get a fully laminated display, but here you will get eight gigabytes of ram and there are a few other features that we'll get into more in the video and when we talk about these initial specs, that is something that I do want to mention right off the bat, the standard storage on the iPad Air 4. It's not great. It's probably the weakest aspect of the whole iPad rolled up into one shockingly small, hard drive.

You can get the option to go up to 256 gigabytes of storage, but that will bump you up to 749, which is obviously right in line with the iPad Pro 128 versus 256. Is a personal preference, but when it comes to tablets, I'd rather spend the money elsewhere.128 gigabytes is a usable amount of storage and I really wish that's where the iPad Air 4 started out. Okay, let's compare these two physically. If you looked at them right next to each other, which do you think would be the pro and which do you think would be the air. The easiest way for me to tell the difference.

Is the camera bump on the back seriously, when I pick these two up, this is always how I tell the difference, because both are sized almost identical. Both have the almost exact same display size, the iPad Air is smaller. By like 0.1 inches I mean whoopity-doo, they both have roughly the same thickness, and they look basically like the same darn tablet. There are a few key differences physically, though four connections, the iPad Air 4, is using the standard USB built into the bottom, while the m1 iPad Pro has a thunderbolt connection, sounds cool right and that's what we're going to come across a lot today. Is that hey wow, that difference really sounds cool, but from a practical standpoint today you won't see that much of a difference.

If you watch this after WWDC and that's not true anymore, just remember: we have to make videos with the information we have at the time. This video could have some misinformation in just a couple of days. The thunderbolt will be slightly faster for both charging and data transfer, but for me, it has been kind of underwhelming on the top of the air. This has a combination, lock button and touch ID sensor. So if you are somebody that wants to use your fingerprint to authenticate or unlock your tablet between the two, this is your only option.

The iPad Pro has face ID, but that's not really a physical connection. We'll talk more about face ID a little later, I don't mean to that's like the second time. I've said that I'm not trying to push everything off to later in the video. I did just want to mention the two biometric options right here, but, frankly, that's it. It's really shocking.

How close these two tablets are when you boil it right down to what you can see, the displays on both also have a few key differences, but they might not be as striking as that tech spec sheet list might have. You believe. The iPad Air 4 has a pretty standard 2360 by 1640 retina panel, that refreshes at up to 60 hertz, where the iPad Pro has a 2388 by 1668 liquid retina panel with apple's pro motion technology that can go up to 120 hertz. The iPad Pro can also go a little brighter than the iPad Air. If you're going to be using these outside, I do think 100 nits could maybe save you and let you actually see what you're doing on the tablet.

So, yes, there is a difference, but I don't think you'll be able to tell that much of a difference unless you have both tablets in front of you and are really just staring them down searching. Yes, I do think the iPad Pro's display looks better, but I have to be really nitpicking, and I have to be really pixel peeping to see it. Both of these will display colors, basically the same way as they both have the p3 color gamut and the only way the easiest and really, the only way that I can show you how this works in this video is I'm going to record both in slow motion scrolling through it. So you can see a little of a difference, but you're only going to be able to see that when the footage is played back at 25 percent, it drives me literally nuts, when I see people poo, poo, 60, hertz, refresh panels online. The only real practical reason to get a faster refresh monitor is, if you have a specific application that needs it or if you are into super competitive games, there is actually performance benefits and having faster refresh rates for twitch reaction type games, and I will agree that you need the faster option for that use case and if you personally, like a smoother looking display, that's okay, I'm not telling you that your personal opinion is invalid.

It's just that fast refresh for me is a nice to have not a need to have, and certainly not a need to spend a lot more money to get to have kind of people that seem to love fast. Refresh rates always just seem to be just so mean about the slower refresh rate, and I don't think that it's that big of a deal, so we've talked about the outside. What about? What's? Under the hood, like we said in the intro, the iPad Air is rocking the apple flagship phone processor, the a14 and the iPad Pro is using the current Apple computer flagship processor. The m1 sounds like that could be a pretty significant difference right I mean a phone processor versus a computer processor, but they're both siblings in the processor, lineup, and they're, not all that far apart performance wise, especially because we are talking about tablets. The a14 is a six core processor, with two high performance cores and six high efficiency cores where the m1 is an eight core processor, with four high performance and four high efficiencies.

They are both built out of a five nanometer chipset fabrication process and both have a pretty similar clock speed. I don't think benchmarking tablet. Processors are very useful, but here are a few that I found online, showing what I would have guessed. The m1 is slightly faster in single core performance and significantly faster in multi-core. I mean it has more cores, so it should do better in multi-core performance.

That makes sense right practically speaking. Both are so fast that if you are using standard apps to play, games watch movies browse the internet. I'm not sure that you'll really be able to see a difference between the two. Where you might see. The m1 really start to pull ahead is if you plan on using this for content creation or other big power tasks that will take advantage of those extra cores.

Things like video editing will be a little faster on the m1, but that's not to say that they would be slow on the iPad Air 4. I think the iPad Air is a very fast video editor and when we did our video editing video, I had zero issues. Both of these are just so good. Performance on a tablet is really hard to quantify, especially on iPads, because the way the operating system is so hyper-specialized around executing its applications, every iPad that apple has released in the last few years is so crazy fast. We haven't really come close to taxing any of them.

So personally- and I know I'm probably going to catch some heat for this- I think performance between the two is a wash even though technically the m1 is faster. A few quick other key hardware differences when it comes to cameras. The iPad Pro has a two lens wide and ultra-wide setup where the iPad Air 4 has only the one wide option on the back the front facing camera on the iPad. Air is a seven megapixel, wide angle where the front facing pro camera is an ultra-wide that has access to apple's new center stage technology, letting the camera follow you around and, like I said earlier, the iPad Pro has face ID authentication where the iPad Air 4 is using touch ID. The battery life on both is going to be pretty similar, where they are consistently getting roughly nine hours.

Okay, so that's all the hardware differences. How long we haven't been talking all that long. It's not that different right. But how do these two operate like what kind of software background will we get choosing one over the other? Well, besides those specific camera difference, I talked about both are going to run the exact same version of iPadOS so long as you keep them updated when apple asks you to, I disregard my updates quite a bit, so don't be like me again. This is before WWDC, so maybe there is some new software ecosystem for the pro level iPads, but as of today, you'll get the same operating system on both tablets, which I just love this absolutely.

This is one of the things that apple does best. It doesn't matter where you buy in inside their ecosystem. You'll get 90 of the functionality, no matter what you pay, it happens in phones, laptops tablets, etc. Like other brands, Apple could hold back software features and options for only their highest end devices, but they don't. If a product can physically complete a task apple will let that happen, and I, for one, think that's awesome, and I think it goes a long way towards disproving the old apple tax adage they're, not charging you more to have the same features you get.

You get the same features, no matter what you pay, but at the end of the day. So what right we've talked about the differences so which of these would I recommend for you. Well, there are really two questions that you have to ask yourself before buying one of these iPads one. How much storage do I need and two am I buying just the iPad or am I buying the iPad, and then I'm going to kit it out with accessories? If you need more storage, we'll then obviously go with the iPad Pro. This starts off at 128 gigabytes and can go to a staggering two terabytes of storage.

I don't actually know how someone would fill two terabytes of storage on a tablet, but it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest to see somebody actually do it. I never actually get all that surprised by what I see on the internet, anymore, storage on the iPad Air 4, just kind of sucks, 64 gigabytes is really too low to recommend. Unless you only watch movies and 256 gigabytes isn't enough for a power user. I wish this was 120 gigabytes and one terabyte personally, and hopefully the iPad Air 5 will move more in the correct direction for storage. The second question about accessories would have me recommend the iPad Air 4, though, for the cost of the iPad Pro.

You could essentially get the iPad and the magic keyboard combined and that magic keyboard is so good. It basically transforms any iPad into a wholly new and wholly unique kind of machine if you get the magic keyboard and the iPad Pro you're in MacBook territory. Now, and that opens up a whole other can of worms that has its own video. Both of these tablets are great, really, they are, and it's hard to pick wrong either would be fantastic as either a little portable life manager or movie watcher or digital notebook, but I think there are some different recommendations based on your specific requirements for your technology, wow Gary, where to go with that very common sense paragraph. Why don't you just tell us how the sky is blue and if you like this video and are now a little more curious about the m1 iPad Pro here's my whole playlist, where you can see all the cool stuff about the 11 and the 12-inch options, and you can find it by clicking right here? Click.

Click, click, click, click, click, click, thanks for watching.

Source : The Everyday Dad