The iPad Pro M2 makes an extraordinary tablet feel just a little more ordinary.

When Apple CEO Tim Cook unveiled the first-generation iPad Pro in 2015, he called it, “the biggest news for the iPad since the iPad.” Over seven years later, the 2022 iPad Pro is the least newsworthy iteration of Apple’s flagship tablet to date. This model is worth the princely asking price, with a slew of new features. This iPad Pro M2 review will help you decide.

• iPad Pro (M2, 11-inch)
  • Wi-Fi only: $799-$1,899 / £899-£2,149
  • Cellular: $999-$2,099 / £1,079-£2,329
• iPad Pro (M2, 12.9-inch)
  • Wi-Fi only: $1,099-$2,099 / £1,249-£2,499
  • Cellular: $1,299-$2,399 / £1,429-£2,679

Apple’s premium tablet series In late 2022, the iPad Pro M1 hit shelves 18 months later than the iPad Pro M1. The iPad Pro M2 (4th generation) and the iPad Pro 6th generation (6th generation), are more commonly known as the 11-inch iPad Pro (4th Gen) due to their respective chipsets.

Like the iPad Air (5th generation) which also launched in 2022, the iPad Pro M2, no matter which version you opt for, is fundamentally a tock-year tablet; a slate that borrows the same design and overall feature set of the “tick” predecessor, while ratcheting up the compute power and attaching some welcome, but somewhat minor, bells and whistles.

The titular M2 is the star attraction, of course, with Apple proclaiming that it has effectively “supercharged” the iPad Pro. Inherited Apple’s MacBooksThe custom Apple Silicon M2 chips are claimed to provide a 15% faster CPU and 40% increase in GPU performance. It also boasts an upgraded Neural engine for a 40% increase in speed for machine-learning tasks.

This combined might enables one of the iPad Pro’s other headline features: the ability to capture low-compression ProRes and ProRes RAW video in 4K at 30fps, plus faster ProRes transcoding (up to three times faster than the iPad Pro M1. As with ProRes-capable iPhones, 4K recording is not available on the base 128GB model, which makes sense; it’d eat that up in seconds (storage options go up to a whopping 2TB). What makes less sense is that you’ll also need to download a ProRes-ready app, as, for some baffling reason, Apple’s default camera app doesn’t have a ProRes toggle.

The connectivity suite has also been upgraded to Wi-Fi 6 or Bluetooth 5.0. Wi-Fi 6E Bluetooth 5.3. While you’ll need appropriate networking and accessories to take advantage of both, considering iPads are often long-term purchases, this is some welcome future-proofing.

If everything we’ve listed so far seems horribly dry and uninspiring, I have some bad news for you — that’s all the new features you get on the hardware front. Otherwise, everything that was great about the M1 iPad Pro is carried over wholesale, though the same is true of some pesky legacy issues that have plagued the iPad Pro for several generations, but we’ll get to those later.

The one final truly new feature — that no other iPad is currently capable of — is a hover ability for the 2nd generation Apple Pencil, which shows you a preview of where your stylus will touch the screen. It’s unclear why this is exclusive to the 2022 iPad Pro, but Apple has hinted that the M2 chip is an essential ingredient.

The iPad Pro M2 (2022), is available for purchase at Amazon, Apple, and other major third-party retail outlets around the globe. As for colors, don’t expect any surprises here either — it’s Space Grey or Silver (pictured), just like the last three generations.

Apple has faced fair criticism over its proclivity for copy-paste products in 2022, but staying the course and iterating on success isn’t always a bad thing. The iPad Pro M2 draws inspiration from its direct predecessor’s elite design standards, which it essentially borrows from in every way. The only difference is the design. It now has the iPad Pro logo on the back. Exciting stuff.

The 12.9-inch model I tested once again comes equipped with a dazzling Liquid Retina XDR, “ProMotion,” mini-LED display, with peak brightness of 1,000 nits, or up to an eye-popping 1,600 nits for compatible HDR content. It’s an absolute stunner that outputs intense yet accurate colors that are easily viewable even in the brightest conditions, with a dynamic 120Hz refresh rate ensuring animations are smooth whether you’re doomscrolling or gliding around in Genshin Impact at 120fps.

The rest is equally high-end. The glass/recycled aluminium construction is flawless, with perfectly curved corners and squared-off edges. There’s just enough space to keep your finger from touching the screen when you hold it. It’s certainly not a small or light tablet, especially if you opt for the larger model, but the careful weight distribution means it’s perfectly possible to use like any other traditional tablet, either in landscape or in portrait. The booming quad speakers and fast and accurate Face ID biometrics are also retained from the iPad Pro M1, as is the USB-C 3.1 “Gen 2” port for docking accessories or outputting to a monitor.

But let’s get to the star attraction. What does Apple’s marketing line of “supercharged by M2” really mean for the iPad Pro (6th generation)? A significant jump in benchmarks is a start. When compared against its predecessor, the iPad Pro M2 is ahead in all metrics for CPU testing. The GPU didn’t quite reach Apple’s 40% increase claim in our tests, but a ~37% bump is close enough, especially when it also topped the MacBook Air M2’s top score in our testing (~6,250).

3DMark’s GPU stress test (below) did reveal a few more interesting details, however, as the M2’s score drops by 20% after a single run. Even at this point, it’s still higher than the maximum offered by the M1, but that peak GPU performance is seemingly only available in short bursts. The M2 iPad Pro is able to maintain a very close second run throughout the remainder of the test. There are less than 300 points between the first and second runs.

The M1, by comparison, doesn’t have as dramatic of a fall-off, but the true level of sustained performance doesn’t really kick in until it hits the 4,100-3,900 range. This should make the M2 capable of handling GPU-heavy tasks such as media editing and gaming with a higher rate than the M1 iPad Pro. Of course, it’s worth remembering that even the lowest scores here are over double the peak of an equivalent Android tablet like the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1-powered Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra, which caps at around 1,800-2,000. It’s a similar story for the Surface Pro 9 (SQ3) which sits just below 3,000 after a single run.

The iPad Pro M2 runs like a dream, despite the fact that it is not based on benchmarks. Navigation around the UI is astonishingly smooth and even with multiple apps running at once, I couldn’t get the tablet to buckle under the strain. Are you curious about gaming? The notoriously powerful Genshin Impact ran at 120fps without any noticeable hiccups. The only place you’ll notice any dips at all is if you’re extensively transcoding ProRes RAW video, but essentially everything else the iPad Pro is actually capable of won’t even come close to maxing out the M2’s potential.

Thankfully, there’s no significant knock-on to battery efficiency. The 12.9-inch iPad Pro M2 I tested matched the M1 iPad Pro I’ve been using since the latter’s launch, with only a few minutes of variance here or there. When measured to the minute, the M2 model does come in under the M1 model, which isn’t a surprise considering the M2 MacBooks have also fared fractionally worse than their M1 counterparts. However, in real-world use, you won’t notice such a minor change.

Your mileage will vary wildly due to the extreme screen brightness the iPad Pro is capable of, and whether or not you’re running 5G on the cellular model. For basic web browsing or watching movies, the iPad Pro M2’s 40.88-watt-hour cell typically gets 10-10.5 hours on a single charge. That’s well within the ballpark for any modern iPad, even with the raw power of the M2 chip. Again, this was for the 12.9-inch model, and historically the 11-inch version has surpassed these figures by adding an hour or more to the slate’s endurance stats by virtue of its less power-hungry display.

The iPad Pro M2 ships with iPadOS 16. With it come a handful of new software features — some hits, some fairly significant misses. iPadOS has many useful tweaks, which is a positive thing. we saw in iOS 16, including improved Focus modes, edit or delete in Messages, and some added polish to stock apps — most notably the underserved Home app for smart home controls and management.

Speaking of apps, there’s also now a default Weather app which finally brings the iPad’s meteorological chops up to the same standard as iPhones and Macs. iPad-specific tweaks have been made to Files, Contacts, Notes, and Notes. However, the sixth-generation iPad Pro gets some additional features, such as virtual memory swapping Display Zoom resolution scaling for more apps and objects on one screen, and Reference mode for adapting the screen for professional color grading. While many of these features are already available for iPad Pro models older than iPad Pro, the M2 version will be able to offer them all. You’ll notice I haven’t mentioned the big new software feature yet, Stage Manager — we’ll get to that later.

Like the hardware, none of the software changes are seismic enough to rock the foundations of the iPad Pro experience, though it’s worth remembering that the app availability and compatibility, long-term software support, and Apple’s product ecosystem interoperability are all second to none in the tablet world. The latter is the most important. multi-screen Universal ControlParticularly, if positioned next to a Mac,,, is an absolute joy.

The one M2-only feature that might convince dedicated digital artists to open their wallets is the Apple Pencil “hover.” While not a truly novel feature (remember Samsung’s Air Actions?), Apple’s implementation is genuinely impressive. The ability to instantly see where the stylus tip will land improves drawing accuracy. Additionally, the ability to preview color combinations while sketching saves time. The true potential will depend on third-party developer buy-in, but we’ve already seen updates to the likes of Pixelmator, Luna, and Astropad Studio to enable unique hover capabilities.

Despite my praise for the iPad Pro M2’s display, it should again be noted that I tested the 12.9-inch model. Although the 11-inch model still features a decent Liquid Retina panel, it does not have the 2,500+ local dimming zones and crazy-high brightness. This allows for deeper blacks and contrast. The $300 price difference between the models plays a factor, of course, but the 11-inch model’s display is similarly found lacking when compared to several of Samsung’s Super AMOLED-equipped Galaxy S8 tablets that fall in the same price category. It’s not bad, but it’s not exactly “Pro,” either.

The camera setup is also identical. In terms of hardware, the rear 12MP standard and 10MP ultrawide cameras are identical to the iPad Pro M1’s shooters. These cameras are proven and tested and are well-suited for taking photos with a square device measuring 11-13 inches. The addition ProRes capture This is a boon for the M2 iPad Pro. However, when the Pro-tier iPhones are rocking dedicated zoom lenses and 48MP main sensors, it wouldn’t be unfair to have expected at least a minor spec bump.

The problem with the camera is the portrait-oriented selfie shooter. We now live in a time where the only iPad with a sensible landscape camera is the iPad (10th generation) — which is itself a confusing mish-mash of a tablet. It could be the Apple Pencil magnetic charging, or Face ID hardware. Whatever the reason, the result is that it’ll look like you’re rudely staring into space on a video call — a scenario that will very likely occur for the professional crowd the iPad Pro M2 is actively courting. Center Stage is still a great tool for keeping the subject in frame using its face-tracking techniques. However, that frame will always be awkward until Apple realizes the value of this technique.

For a premium-tier tablet, the iPad Pro M2 lags behind in the charging stakes in a similar fashion to Apple’s smartphones. The 20W brick included with the iPad Pro M2 charges the 12.9-inch model’s whopper battery in roughly two and a half hours from zero to 100%. That’s equivalent to previous generations and respectable enough in isolation, but we have to keep in mind that the monster Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra’s equally enormous 11,200mAh cell can be refilled in under one and a half hours (though you will need to buy a compatible charger). Technically, the iPad Pro M2 can draw 30W from compatible chargers Power Delivery charger, but that’s an extra expense, and you’re still looking at a two-hour wait for a full recharge.

The iPad Pro M2’s real kicker, though, is the state of Apple’s tablet software. Yes, iPadOS has arrived. getting better with every iteration, but it’s still an awkward, glorified take on iOS that isn’t as lean as its originator, nor as feature-rich as full-blown macOS. Like the iPad itself, it’s stuck somewhere between a mobile and a desktop experience, and it doesn’t fully satisfy as either.

This is evident in the smallest of details. Sure, there’s a dedicated Weather app now, but still no stock calculator? Multi-user support is possible? Even true extended display support — a long-requested feature — isn’t there out of the box, having been pushed back to iPadOS 16.2 (due in late 2022). The culprit? Stage Manager. Oh, Stage Manager…

Ostensibly Apple’s solution to running multiple apps at the same time on an iPad with a dock-like UI, Stage Manager has sadly flopped on arrival Because of the nonsensical choices made about how it actually functions. It’d take far too long to explain every confounding foible, but the “Stage” and “Pile” setup, where you drag apps from a stacked pile onto the main workspace, doesn’t operate with any consistency and is a far cry from genuine multi-tasking. Meanwhile, some apps scale according to their position, others don’t. It’s almost like trying to decode Matrix to figure out which order of inputs might cause an application to disappear from a pile or how to get it to return without Stage Manager throwing all its toys out of the pram.

The promise is there, and those wondrous moments where you’ve got three apps running harmoniously at once on the Pro’s screen can occasionally feel like a revelation, but Stage Manager too often operates like a pre-beta feature that should’ve been kept under wraps until iPadOS 17.

Stage Manager is now only available on M1 and 2 iPads, which may be a good thing. This is not the only way Apple is leveraging all of its untapped power. The App Store is home to countless delicately-optimized apps, but that’s true of any iPad — a pro needs to up the ante. Yet with no Final Cut Pro, Xcode, Blender, or numerous other pro-grade apps — not even modified ones to fit the iPad’s form factor — the iPad Pro still only truly comes into its own as a professional product when used in conjunction with a Mac or MacBook. Even then, the iPad Pro’s latent potential feels even less realized with Universal Control activated and all the software advances that come with macOS just a few screens away.

There’s even less incentive to pick up an M2 model for non-professionals, too. The most demanding games already ran at maxed-out settings on the M1 version — what else are you going to do with all this power? The tablet will keep ticking at rapid speeds for the many years that Apple will support it with software updates, but that was also true of the 2021 version, which itself was already barely scratching the surface of the M1’s capabilities.

And if you do want to take full advantage of the iPad Pro M2’s full feature set, you’ll need Apple’s first-party accessories. Now, those accessories are beautifully made and effortlessly functional, but they’re all optional and they cost a fortune. For anyone not willing to pay $129 for the second generation Apple Pencil, the hover feature may as well be removed.$128.99 at Amazon). Another Apple favorite is the Magic Keyboard. It is essential to transform the iPad Pro (M2) in to a laptop-tablet hybrid. The iPad Pro (M2)’s limited viewing angles and lack a function row make it difficult to use. $299-$349 asking price Depending on the size, it can be more difficult to stomach. It’s also bizarre that an iPad (10th generation)-exclusive folio case exists with a detachable keyboard, kickstand, and a function row. Where’s the iPad Pro version, Apple?

The iPad Pro M2 (2022), is the most powerful and objectively impressive iPad ever made. The benchmark scores for the iPad Pro M2 (2022) continue to rise. However, the iPad Pro product line will not be able to harness all that power until its core platform and toolset can hold with its stunning spec sheet. This has been true for several years, yet it’s felt more keenly with the M2-toting iPad Pro, as its meager shortlist of new features fails to distract from iPadOS’ continued deficiencies.

The iPad Pro M2 remains one of the top premium tablets, if not the best, in the market. Digital artists will find the M2 model appealing, especially with the new hover feature. If you have an aging iPad Pro — or are looking to upgrade from a lower-tier iPad to the fanciest one money can buy — you can’t really go wrong here, either, as long as you’re not put off by the hefty asking price.

However, the unrefined day-to-day experience does invite wayward glances at the competition — many of which seem to have a clearer overriding vision. The Microsoft Surface Pro 9 (#9) is the best-selling tablet.$1,099), or at least the Intel version; the Arm-based SQ3 variant makes a few too many performance trade-offs to be a genuine rival. For the former, you’re getting a full-fat Windows 2-in-1 This is a bit more in the laptop half of its hybrid nature. It is expensive, however, just like the iPad Pro.

Then there’s Android’s Big boy, and I mean big. The Samsung Galaxy S8 Ultra ($1269.99 at AmazonThe ) is a massive tablet with a 14.6-inch display and an S Pen stylus. Android’s tablet software is even less sophisticated (for now), and its Snapdragon chip can’t push anywhere near as many frames per second as Apple’s silicon, but the Ultra’s sheer size and stretched 16:10 aspect ratio makes it a dream machine for media. The Android tablet software is still in its infancy. While the Snapdragon chip can’t push as many frames per second as Apple’s silicon, the Ultra’s sheer size and stretched 16:10 aspect ratio make it a dream machine for media. Galaxy Tab S8 Plus ($899.99 at Amazon) is more manageable, but lacks the Ultra’s wow factor.

Apple’s own stable offers up two compelling alternatives, too. The iPad Air (5th generation) is the iPad Pro M2’s best alternative.$559 at AmazonAlthough it is more modest, the ) tablet packs a lot of punch for its price and can be paired up with the same accessories that the iPad Pro. Of course, those same accessories for the iPad Pro also take Apple’s top tablet into MacBook territory. In particular, if you’re considering the 12.9-inch iPad Pro M2 as a laptop stand-in (and don’t care about stylus compatibility), keep in mind that by the time you’ve added the Magic Keyboard, you’ll be well over the base price of the MacBook Air M2 ($1099 at Amazon).

With very few exceptions, much of Apple’s product portfolio for 2022 has been stuck in a holding pattern. The iPad Pro M2 arguably got hit the hardest in this regard — improved in only a handful of niche ways and, as such, fittingly launched with little to no fanfare. The result is a truly extraordinary tablet that can sometimes feel very ordinary, even though it lacks pro-grade software.