- Let Loose event LIVE — Everything announced at the Let Loose event
- OLED iPad Pro — M3 and a major display upgrade!
- iPad Air 6 — Apple's thinnest and lightest tablet gets a new processor!
- Apple Pencil 3 — Or should we say Apple Pencil Pro?
Apple’s ‘Let Loose’ event has wrapped up, and it included loads of upgrades for iPad users.
Over the course of the 35-minute event, the company announced new iPads, a new Apple Pencil, new software, and a new Apple silicon chip. The early takeaway we could gather was Apple feeling very confident about its lineup of tablets, as well as plenty of AI features that are meant to help speed up your workflow in a bunch of different ways.
If you’re just getting up to speed, we’ve got you covered below with the biggest announcements from the event.
M4 Chip
Arguably the biggest surprise of the event. The newest Apple silicon chip is the first to debut in an iPad instead of a Mac. M4 is built using a second-generation 3nm manufacturing process. It features six efficiency cores along with four performance cores, as well as a new display engine that powers the OLED display on the new iPad Pro.
During the ‘Let Loose’ event, Apple said that the M4 is 1.5x faster than the M2 chip, and features the same 10-core GPU as the M3 chip. M4 also features hardware-accelerated ray tracing for games, Dynamic Caching, and more.
iPad Pro M4 - 11 and 13-inch
The M4 chip is just the start of what these new iPad Pro M4 models feature. There’s a new OLED display that is in fact two panels stuck together — Apple calls this an Ultra Retina XDR display. As well as a nano-texture glass option, the display features a 1600-nit peak HDR brightness, deeper blacks, and more.
The thinness of the new iPad Pro models is a big feature here too — the 11-inch and 13-inch models are just 5.3mm and 5.1mm thick respectively. Apple even compared the 11-inch model to an iPod Nano, declaring it to be its thinnest product ever made.
The cameras have also seen some improvements. The front camera is now oriented in landscape, just like the ninth-generation iPad and the new iPad Air 6. The rear camera has an updated True Tone flash that adapts when scanning documents. Thanks to AI, or the Neural Engine in the M4 chip, these new tablets can tell when you’re scanning a report, for example, and will take multiple shots to get rid of any shadows.
The M4 iPad Pro comes out on May 15, starting at $999. The nano-texture glass option for the new display is available for the 1TB and above iPad Pro M4 models, and costs an extra $100.
Magic Keyboard
The brand-new Magic Keyboard is made to work with the M4 iPad Pro models only. It features the same floating design, but now has a bigger trackpad and a function row. This allows you to control brightness, volume, and more. It's also made out of aluminum, to make for a more MacBook-like experience.
It comes in two colors - Black and White, and will be available to buy from May 15, starting at $299.
iPad Air M2 - 11 and 13-inch
The new iPad Air comes in two sizes — 11-inch and 13-inch. Packed with an M2 chip, the new models also come in five colors: Purple, Blue, Starlight, and Space Gray. Apple says these tablets are roughly 50% faster than the previous models and up to 3x faster compared to even older models with an A14 Bionic chip inside. These tablets also support the new Apple Pencil Pro.
These new tablets will be available from May 15, and start at $599 for the 11-inch model, and $799 for the 13-inch model.
Cheaper 10th Gen iPad
Same tablet, lower price. With the ninth generation being removed from the lineup after the event wrapped up, the tenth-generation iPad now starts at $349 for the 64GB model. This is a huge $100 less than what it was before the event — if you were thinking about buying an iPad and you’re not interested in the latest features, you can’t do better than this model.
Apple Pencil Pro
Apple Pencil Pro comes packed with new features and even Find My, so you can look for it using the Find My app. There is a new ‘squeeze’ gesture to let you quickly switch between menus for color palettes, as well as a ‘barrel roll’ gesture that can change the orientation of strokes by just twisting the Apple Pencil.
One feature Apple didn’t mention during the event, was fake shadows. Similar to the fake eyes seen on an Apple Vision Pro, this fake shadow appears when you try to use the Pencil’s hover feature on an iPad’s display. This is so it can be easier when you’re trying to draw on a certain object.
Like the tablets, Apple Pencil Pro comes out on May 15 for $129.
Final Cut 2 and Logic Pro 2
Apple announced brand new versions of its pro apps for iPad — Final Cut 2 and Logic Pro 2. The big focus was on AI features.
In Logic Pro 2 for example, you can use AI to split up a track into multi-tracks, called Stem Splitter. Apple says users can "recover moments of inspiration from any audio file and separate nearly any mixed audio recording into four distinct parts: Drums, Bass, Vocals, and Other instruments.”
For Final Cut 2, Live Multicam was the standout feature. This can let up to four iPhones record all at once, using the Final Cut Camera app, and can be sent directly to an iPad running Final Cut 2.
Apple hasn’t confirmed a date for Final Cut 2, with only a tentative ‘Spring’ release, though pricing has been revealed for both apps. For new users, they will need to pay $4.99 / £4.99 per month or $49 / £49 per year for Final Cut Pro for iPad 2, but existing users will get the update for free.
Logic Pro 2 comes out on May 13, and will be available for $4.99 / £4.99 per month or $49 / £49 per year.
We're covering the Apple iPad event as it happens. Follow the Let Loose event LIVE here. Or check out our roundups for all the latest on the new OLED iPad Pro, iPad Air, and the new Apple Pencil.
