Macworld - USA (2021-08)

86 MACWORLD AUGUST 2021

FEATURE REVIEW: 12.9-INCH i PAD PRO (2021)

SPEED TO SPARE, LITERALLY
The other upgrade Apple brought to this
year’s iPad Pro is an M1 processor just like
the one in the Apple silicon Macs. And just
like the one in the Apple silicon Macs, it’s
crazy fast.
If you’ve seen benchmarks for the
24-inch iMac (fave.co/3AvIV7y) or 13-inch
MacBook Pro (fave.co/2PXzhbw), you’ll
know exactly what the iPad Pro brings.
Compared to the A14 in the iPad Air (fave.
co/3xSSsUM), it’s even faster than a
hypothetical A14X, with a tremendous
all-around speed, especially in
Geekbench’s Compute tests. And the M1
completely blew away the previous iPad
Pro when it comes to graphics.
Despite the new chip, however, you’re
not getting much better battery life. Apple
has rated every iPad it’s ever made by the

GEEKBENCH 5

CPU performance

Multi

iPad Pro (2021)

HIGHER SCORES ARE BETTER

7, 285

21,257

Single Compute

iPad Pro (2020)

4,684

12,257

iPad Air (2020)

4,197

12,728

1,718

1,588

3DMARK WILD LIFE

Graphics performance

Wild Life Extreme (Unlimited)

iPad Pro (2021)

HIGHER SCORES ARE BETTER

17, 2 1 5

18,280

18,267

Wild Life Extreme Wild Life Unlimited

iPad Pro (2020) 3,567

3,441

13,434

iPad Air (2020)

8,986

2,469

2,321

same 10 hours of battery life, give or take

an hour or so, and the iPad Pro falls firmly

within that range in my testing. That’s to

say you won’t need to worry about

plugging it in unless you use it for hours on

end or leave it unplugged for days.

Speaking of plugging it in, you’ll get the

same 18W fast charging as you did on the

2020 model—sadly there’s no wireless

charging or MagSafe yet—but the port

now supports Thunderbolt devices for

faster data transfers and higher-resolution

monitors. The only problem is Apple still

hasn’t upgraded iPadOS to match,

particularly when it comes to external

displays. The only option is to mirror the

iPad Pro’s display to a second monitor,

which is a less-than-ideal experience that

falls woefully short of a dual-screen

workstation.

1,324