“Hands-on with Apple’s new iPad Pro: it’s thin, light, and OLED”

David Pierce, writing at The Verge

“At 5.3mm thick for the 11-inch model and 5.1mm for the 13-inch tablet, this new iPad is noticeably thinner and lighter than anything the company has made before.”

This looks great! Aside from iPadOS issues, “thinner and lighter” would have been my #1 request for the new iPad Pro, and it looks like they’ve knocked it out of the park. I usually carry my current iPad Pro wrapped in the Magic Keyboard, and that combo is pretty thick and heavy, and this looks to have dramatically reduced that. The improved screen would have been #2 on my list, and it sounds like this new screen is going to be better than the outgoing Pro’s screen, so that’s a solid win as well. The M4 is just icing on the cake as far as I’m concerned.

I do wish they’d come up with a way for the Magic Keyboard to also work with a Vision Pro. If I’m carrying a perfectly good keyboard and trackpad with my iPad, it sure would be nice if it connected to my Vision Pro as well. I know that would have required Bluetooth and power, so it was always unlikely, but it was on my wish list.

The pricing is certainly high enough to give pause. I ordered the 13" Pro with 1TB and cellular, and with the new Magic Keyboard, Pencil Pro, and AppleCare+, it was ~$2600. That’s MacBook Pro territory. That said, I use this as my main portable computer; I have a Mac Studio for my main personal machine. As I’ve said before, having an always-on cellular connection is awesome for a mobile machine—I’m not interested in tethering except under exceptional circumstances. Now that this appears to be in MacBook Air territory in terms of size and weight, but with a significantly better screen, I’m happy.

Now we just need Apple to show some signs of taking iPadOS improvements seriously at WWDC next month.