iPad Pro M4 Review: A Laptop Replacement (If You Let It)

The iPad Pro M4 is simultaneously the most impressive piece of hardware Apple makes and the most frustrating. That contradiction has defined the iPad Pro for years, and somehow, with the M4 generation, both sides of it have gotten more extreme.

The hardware is genuinely jaw-dropping. The software still can’t fully use it. And yet, we’ve been using this thing as our primary work device for weeks, and we’re not going back to a laptop. Let us explain.

The Tandem OLED Display

This is the iPad Pro’s killer feature. Apple’s Ultra Retina XDR display uses tandem OLED technology — two OLED layers stacked on top of each other — to achieve 1,000 nits of sustained full-screen brightness and 1,600 nits peak HDR. The result is stunning.

Colors are more vivid than any LCD iPad before it. Blacks are perfect. Contrast is essentially infinite. Watching HDR content on this display is a transformative experience. Editing photos in Lightroom reveals details and color nuances that were invisible on previous iPads.

The 11-inch model we’re reviewing is compact enough for comfortable handheld use but large enough for productive work. If you want more screen real estate, the 13-inch model is identical in every way except size and price.

Thin Is In

At 5.3mm, the iPad Pro M4 is thinner than an iPod nano. Thinner than most phones. When you pick it up, the thinness is immediately noticeable — it feels like holding a sheet of technology rather than a device. Combined with a weight of just 444 grams for the 11-inch, it’s effortlessly portable.

This matters for how you use an iPad. It’s the kind of device you grab without thinking. Reading on the couch. Sketching at a coffee shop. Reviewing documents in bed. The reduction in weight and thickness removes friction from every interaction.

M4 Performance: Overkill in a Good Way

The M4 chip is comically overpowered for an iPad. Single-core performance matches the MacBook Pro. Multi-core keeps up with most laptop workloads. The 10-core GPU handles 3D modeling, video editing, and gaming with ease.

We edited a 20-minute 4K video in LumaFusion from import to export entirely on the iPad Pro. The timeline was responsive, scrubbing was smooth, and the export completed faster than on our M2 MacBook Air. For content creators, this is a serious production tool.

Running Logic Pro on iPad with 40+ tracks and multiple plugins? No lag. Illustrating in Procreate with massive canvases and dozens of layers? Instant response. Playing Resident Evil Village with the M4’s ray tracing capabilities? Smooth and stunning.

Apple Pencil Pro

The Apple Pencil Pro adds barrel roll (rotation detection), squeeze gesture, and haptic feedback. In practice, barrel roll is mostly useful for calligraphy and brush tools — you can rotate the pencil and watch the stroke angle change in real time. The squeeze gesture opens a tool picker, which streamlines creative workflows noticeably.

Haptic feedback is subtle but effective. You feel a gentle tap when snapping to guides, switching tools, or performing specific gestures. It makes the digital drawing experience feel more physical.

If you don’t draw or take handwritten notes, the Apple Pencil Pro isn’t essential. But if you do, it’s a meaningful upgrade over the second-generation Pencil.

Magic Keyboard: The Laptop Experience

The Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro M4 is the best keyboard case Apple has ever made. The keys feel closer to a MacBook keyboard than any previous iPad accessory. The trackpad is responsive. The hinge is sturdy.

With the Magic Keyboard attached, the iPad Pro genuinely functions like a laptop. Stage Manager gives you overlapping, resizable windows. Split View lets you run two apps side by side. The experience is… almost there.

The iPadOS Problem

And here’s where frustration enters. iPadOS is better than ever, but it still can’t match macOS for professional workflows. File management remains clunky. App support for pro features varies wildly. Some apps are full-featured iPad natives; others are afterthoughts.

The inability to run Xcode on iPad Pro is almost insulting. This device has laptop-class silicon, laptop-class RAM, and a laptop-class display. It should be able to run laptop-class development tools. That Apple keeps this arbitrary boundary in place feels less like a technical limitation and more like product-line protectionism.

Stage Manager has improved significantly since its rocky launch, but window management still isn’t as intuitive as macOS. External display support works but feels like a second-class experience compared to connecting a MacBook to a monitor.

Who Should Buy This

Artists and illustrators who want the best digital canvas available. Students who want one device for notes, textbooks, and entertainment. Content creators who work primarily in video, photo, or music. Anyone whose workflow fits within iPadOS’s capabilities and who values the tablet form factor.

If you need full desktop-class applications — Xcode, Final Cut Pro (the desktop version), multiple coding environments with terminal access — get a MacBook instead. We compare the two directly in our iPad Pro M4 vs MacBook Air M4 guide. The iPad Pro has the hardware to handle these tasks. It just isn’t allowed to.

iPad Pro M4 on Amazon (paid link) (paid link)

The Verdict

The iPad Pro M4 is the most impressive piece of hardware in Apple’s entire lineup. The tandem OLED display is best-in-class. The M4 chip is obscenely powerful. The form factor is unmatched. It’s held back only by software limitations that feel increasingly arbitrary. If iPadOS ever catches up to this hardware, the iPad Pro won’t just replace laptops — it’ll make them obsolete. For now, if you don’t need the OLED display and ProMotion, the iPad Air M3 delivers 85% of the experience at a much lower price — see our iPad Pro vs iPad Air comparison.

OnVerdict Score: 8/10 — Incredible hardware waiting for software to catch up.