Compared to the previous incremental upgrades, Apple's latest release of the iPad Pro can be described as "generous." The stunning debut of the OLED display, the bold move to launch the M4 chip directly skipping the M3, and the "thinnest ever" design at 5.1mm have all captured significant attention for this new iPad Pro.
Upon its release, the product has faced disassembly, extreme testing, and even liquid nitrogen overclocking from various tech media and bloggers.
Liquid Nitrogen Cooling: M4 Breaks Geekbench 6 Scores
Following Apple's update pattern, the newly released iPad Pro was expected to feature the M3 chip. However, Apple surprised us with an even bigger reveal—skipping the M3 altogether and introducing the brand-new M4 chip.
The M4 chip utilizes TSMC's second-generation 3nm process, with a staggering 28 billion transistors. It features 4 big cores and 6 small cores, delivering a performance boost of around 50% compared to the previous M2 chip. The 10-core GPU performance is four times that of the M2, with a 16-core NPU capable of processing speeds up to 380 trillion operations per second, surpassing the A11 by 60 times.
In Geekbench tests, the iPad Pro equipped with the M4 chip showed a significant performance boost. To further explore the performance limits of the M4 chip, a Bilibili content creator even resorted to extreme cooling methods using liquid nitrogen.
With the help of liquid nitrogen, the performance of the M4 chip was further unleashed. Test results revealed that the M4 chip could even slightly exceed its maximum operating frequency under liquid nitrogen cooling, reaching 4.41GHz. In Geekbench 6 benchmarks, it successfully surpassed the 4000-point threshold for single-core performance, setting a new benchmark score and showcasing the immense potential of the M4 chip.
Bend Test: Thinnest Yet Incredibly Durable
Liquid nitrogen was just the appetizer. Following this, some YouTube influencers conducted a violent bend test on this "thinnest Apple device ever" to verify if the new iPad Pro is sturdy enough.
First up is YouTube blogger JerryRigEverything attempting to bend the new iPad Pro with just his hands. When applying lateral force, the iPad Pro showed excellent support, with some minor cracking and delamination in its glass portion, but the iPad itself did not sustain significant damage.
However, when JerryRigEverything applied force to the iPad Pro from a vertical direction, the product quickly broke at the charging port, which is evidently a major weakness of the iPad Pro.
It is worth noting that during the process of breaking the iPad Pro, the host used a considerable amount of force. This indicates that as long as you do not deliberately apply force to bend it, the iPad Pro is not easily bent or broken.
Another blogger, AppleTrack, has compared the bending of the old and new generations of iPad Pro in a video. In the video, we see that although the older iPad Pro is thicker, it is actually easier to bend compared to the new thinnest iPad Pro in history.
More significantly, after experiencing external force, the older iPad Pro showed significant deformation, while the newer iPad Pro performed better.
Subsequently, AppleTrack also applied longitudinal force to the iPad Pro. Both old and new iPad Pros began to bend near the charging port area, eventually leading to permanent fractures.
It's quite an expensive tablet, but I believe in daily use, no one would actually try to bend their iPad Pro like this, especially since we would also put a case on it. However, from this test, it can be seen that Apple is still very strong, the body has become thinner, yet it has added strength.
JerryRigEverything stated in his video on violent bending tests and teardowns that Apple has added a special component inside the new iPad Pro to enhance its durability. This design works significantly well in landscape mode. Even under extreme conditions attempting to bend the iPad, there were no instances of any components breaking.
Full teardown: The base model only comes with single flash storage, affecting read and write performance.
The well-known teardown community, iFixit, has torn down nearly all iPads, and this naturally includes the lightest one in history.
▲ New iPad Pro under X-ray
The disassembly process of the new iPad Pro is similar to previous generations. By heating and tapping along the edges to break the adhesive holding the screen, the new iPad Pro can be opened up.
According to iFixit, the new iPad Pro shows significant improvements in repairability. Through teardown analysis, it was found that the battery of the new iPad Pro can be replaced without removing other major components, which is crucial for extending the device's lifespan and reducing electronic waste. Additionally, the internal structural design of the new iPad Pro is more rational, making it easier for repairs and upgrades.
After further disassembly, the Apple M4 chip finally reveals its true form. The 13-inch iPad Pro dissected by iFixit this time is the 256GB version, equipped with the M4 chip with a 9-core CPU and 8GB of memory. It is reported that the M4 chip in the 256GB/512GB versions is a cut-down version, featuring a 9-core CPU (3 performance cores + 6 efficiency cores), missing one large core, while the 1TB and 2TB versions have the full-fledged M4 chip with a 10-core CPU (4 performance cores + 6 efficiency cores).
In addition, the budget 256GB 13-inch iPad Pro is equipped with just one NAND flash chip. Similar to the situation with the M2 chip MacBook Air, this configuration does have some impact on read and write speeds. Evidence suggests that the 1TB version outperforms the base 256GB version in terms of performance. Nevertheless, as a tablet, the iPad Pro is not significantly affected by these minor performance losses in everyday tablet usage scenarios.
In terms of battery configuration, the 13-inch new iPad Pro features two batteries with a capacity of 19.91Wh each, totaling 38.99Wh, slightly lower than the 40.33Wh of the 6th generation. Additionally, the new iPad Pro has transitioned from the 6th generation's four-cell battery design to a configuration with two batteries.
In addition to its powerful performance, the new iPad Pro also adopts a brand-new Tandem OLED panel manufactured by Samsung and LG, offering up to 1000 nits of SDR brightness, a significant improvement from the 600 nits SDR brightness of the 6th generation iPad Pro. Furthermore, its contrast has doubled, meaning brighter whites and deeper blacks.
Tandem OLED is not formed by stacking two OLED panels together, but by changing the traditional OLED stacking (i.e., the individual diode itself) to increase the number of electroluminescent layers in each diode's vertical stack.
This design enhances the amount of light and colors that each diode can emit, similar to stacking two OLEDs together, but in reality, it is still just a single OLED panel, not one entire OLED panel stacked on top of another. Additionally, Tandem OLED also has a longer lifespan.
