The ULTIMATE M1 iPad Pro GAMING Test! By Byte Review

The m1 iPad Pro is apple's latest and greatest iPad. I've been using it for a while now, and I know firsthand that for all of my productivity workflows, it's been an absolute joy to use, but I've yet to really kick back and use it for some gaming so to combat that and to test the power of the m1 chip inside, I thought I'd throw a full on decked out iPad Pro 12.9 inch with the 16 gigabytes of ram into some of iPadOS's best looking games before we do that, though I will say I would never suggest you should pick up an iPad over a console or PC for gaming. This video isn't here to make that statement. It's merely here to prove that an iPad can and does gain very well. If you want it to don't buy one just for gaming, though so, if you do like iPad and aesthetic tech content, be sure to join the 12 of others out there and subscribe to the channel, it helps me out a bunch anyway, let's get straight into it. Okay, so, first off I wanted to try out cozy grove.

Cozy grove is as close as you can get probably to animal crossing on iOS, it's a collect-a-thon style of game where you craft things, decorate your island and help ghosts with all sorts of tasks. This has more of a story than animal crossing kind of ever has, but it reads very much from the same rule book as you can see. Despite the awesome art direction of this game, it certainly isn't an overly taxing game for the iPad to run and run well. It does. The iPad has zero issues running cozy grove.

In fact, I actually think this could run better if the publisher allowed it. As far as I can tell, this is capped to 30 frames per second, but it really doesn't need to be. The iPad definitely has headroom and power to push this further. I do hope they update this in the future to allow it because pretty much every game looks better running at that smooth 60 frames per second cozy grove is an interesting title in the fact that it came out for pretty much everything it's here for iPad, iPhone and mac through Apple Arcade, and it's out on switch Xbox, PlayStation and PC. So you can pretty much play it anywhere.

I ended up really liking the relaxed pace of cozy grove and after a while of playing you'll just be told there is n't loading more. You can do today and be encouraged to pop back tomorrow. If you've got Apple Arcade and enjoyed a slower pace of games like animal crossing, then I reckon it's worth a try, and it looks absolutely stunning too. The next game I've been playing recently is the pathless. This is another title that also came out on console and PC, and it's again another really beautiful game, I'm a sucker for distinct art, styles and direction, and I really like the cel-shaded effect that the pathless has going on and on the iPad Pro 2.

It runs like an absolute dream: the pathless is technically an action-adventure title, but there's a clear focus on smooth fluid movement to make traversal fun, and it really nails that experience just moving around the map on here and using your bow and arrow to hit targets to maintain momentum is really, really fun. The m1 chip inside the new iPad Pro has no problems running this title at all. While there's no indicator, this is clearly running at a higher frame rate than 30, and I would suggest it's probably aiming for 60 fps, and it seems to hold on to that pretty much all the time. That frame rate really helps with a game like this, which leans so heavily on fluid movement too. Sadly, there isn't a graphics option screen anywhere I can find, so I can only make assumptions on the frame rate.

However, this is another title which is well worth a look in okay. So the last title I wanted to try out before going on to the higher powered games is an old favorite sky children of the light. Unlike the last two games, this does have a setting for graphics, albeit a really simple one: there are three settings a power saver, a performance mode and a detail mode as standard the iPad Pro defaults to the 30 frames per second detail mode, which does look fantastic, and it has very little issue running on this setting at all. However, the 60fps performance mode is easily the nicest one to play on. I think this is going to be a recurring theme within this video, but lowering the graphics ever so slightly to hit that sweet, 60 frames per second is always worth it.

It will come as no surprise at all that the m1 iPad Pro runs sky at no problem at all on all the graphics settings, and again it's nice to just dive back into this game, a little it's a relaxing title that doesn't feel too filled with microtransactions, even though it's free, okay, so moving over now to the more graphically demanding games. I wanted to start with Genshin Impact, as it now finally has controller support. I know this is a super popular game, so I'm not going to try and explain in any detail what Genshin Impact is other than it's an action. RPG game with some MMO tendencies thrown in that's clearly taken a heavy inspiration from the Legend of Zelda breath of the wild. That's a game! I love to pieces, so it will take a lot longer to convince me that this is a worthwhile play, but there's some really nice elements that do set it apart.

On a graphical level, though, gentian impact is a real stunner and there's a good array of graphic settings too, which is great to see as standard the m1 iPad Pro defaults to the highest setting, which has everything cranked to the maximum, but the frame rate is limited to 30 fps. You can change this to 60, but the game warns you that it might become unstable, and it might overheat the device at the default high settings, though the iPad runs, gen shin really nicely. Generally speaking, it's totally playable, however, when things start to heat up in combat, and especially if there's fire particle effects going on, it does very much slow down. It's never unplayable because of it, but it's certainly noticeable as ever. Bringing the graphics down slightly and bringing the frame rate up to the smooth 60fps is definitely the way to go.

If you pixel peeped, you could see the graphical difference for sure. However, it's totally worth the trade-off for the 60 frames per second, it just makes the whole experience a lot more fun. It's not perfect, though. Even the graphics turn down a notch. With this higher frame rate, it does still slow down in areas of chaos, but again it's never been a detriment to the game.

Look I'm not here to judge the game, but if you can get past the slap in the face to breath of the wild and the somewhat cringe anime cutscenes, characters and story, I actually think there's a really nice game in gen chin impact. I really like switching to different characters on the fly and using their unique abilities to overcome situations and, honestly, there's no denying that this is one of the best, if not the best, looking game on iPad. It's really stunning and the range of graphical options gives it plenty of room to play on any device you own, and I think that's definitely worth shouting about. Lastly, I wanted to try Call of Duty mobile, a game riddled with microtransactions, but it's pretty much console level in terms of graphics and the amount of things going on. I was actually kind of surprised to see that Call of Duty mobile has a graphic setting screen, which is really great again.

The m1 iPad defaults really highly going on very high for both graphics and frame rate. However, there is a testing to push the frame rate even higher, but it won't allow the highest graphics and frame rates together. I'm not sure why, but I ended up going with the maxed out frame rate and the high graphics settings for this test, and you'll be delighted to know that the m1 iPad Pro had absolutely zero issues playing on these settings. The frame rate, whatever that high one is held up perfectly well, and I saw no graphical glitches while playing, I would admit it doesn't look as good as gentian impact, but with the fast-paced gameplay of it. I was still impressed with how well it held up.

The experience was nice and smooth. I won't lie to you, while I do think this is a console level game, although maybe Xbox, 360 or PS3 level Call of Duty mobile is a microtransaction, riddled nightmare of a game, at least in its menus, but as ever, I'm not here to rate these games and once you're playing, it feels good, and you can certainly forget you're playing a mobile version of it when you're in the middle of a gun, fight in fairness to Call of Duty mobile, though it's always run well in my previous test for the iPad Air 4 and the iPad Pro from 2018. So I had a good inkling that the m1 iPad Pro would handle it really well. So those are all the games running solely on the iPad, but as ever in these tests, I like to push the iPad that bit further and connect it up to my 4k 48-inch TV to see how well it can handle the games on there too. So without any surprises, cozy grove ran exactly the same while hooked up to a TV as it did when it was being played alone on the iPad.

I did keep an eye out for any differences, but there was absolutely none to speak of it still ran exactly the same sky. Children of delight was a very similar story running in performance mode. There were either incredibly little differences or none at all that I could even spot, but wow. This game does look amazing on the big screen and, finally, I did actually notice some differences with the pathless. It took me a while to notice and this video might not shirt off too well, but there are some frame rate dips on here for sure it's not game breaking by any means at all, and I had to play it for a little while longer to confirm they are happening.

But I did see some here, which surprised me a little. I was also pleasantly surprised to see Call of Duty run just as well on the big screen as it did on the iPad with the same graphics and frame rate settings. There were no noticeable dips in frame rates at all, even when the action got full on which was really great to see the only game. I did see a bigger difference with was Genshin Impact on the balance 60 frames per second mode I had been using. I saw quite a few dips in frame rates, nothing that made it unplayable and nothing that dipped below maybe 20 frames per second I'd say.

However, it was noticeable in most fights and also notable again when there was a lot of particle effects like fire and ice going on. I think for most people you could easily shrug over this, but for us out there who know how we like to play games. It was a little jarring to see, so you could either bump the graphics down to make this totally playable on a bigger screen or just keep playing it on the iPad itself for the best experience. While the iPad was connected to the TV as well, I couldn't help but test my favorite game, which is Canada wild hearts and the m1 iPad Pro obviously held that game up incredibly well. I had quite a lot of frame rate dips when I tried it with the iPad Air, but this iPad handled it no problem at all.

It's such a fantastic game. I'd really recommend you check out if you can, but yeah couldn't help myself on that one to round up this form of test. I think it's really fair to say that pretty much every game you want to play on the m1 iPad is going to run wonderfully none of the games I tested had a poor experience at all, and they all really do show off. The power apple has been putting into these devices recently. I also think a lot of these games probably haven't updated yet to fully utilize the m1 processor.

So that's also worth keeping in mind too what I did notice with this new m1 iPad. More than anything, though, is how cool it stayed while testing out all of these games on previous iPads. After a test like this, it would either be hot to the touch, or at least quite warm, but the m1 stayed really cool throughout. I could barely feel any heat coming off the back of it, which was fantastic overall. I'm generally pretty impressed, however, and I've said this in the past- I can't help but feel like if the iPad could push all of its power to an external display while playing these games, then it would fare much better as it's essentially pushing up the same game twice rather than just once, and while we're wishing for things, I really do wish more developers would support a full 16x9 aspect ratio.

When you plug games into an external, monitor or TV, it really would make the experience so much better, but for now we're still stuck with those black bars either side anyway, that pretty much runs off this test. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope it was useful for you. If there's any other games, you think I should check out on m1, then let me know in the comments below and leave a like on the way up too. That would be massive, and I will see you all in the next one. You.

Source : Byte Review