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Tablets · Apple iPad Pro

Apple iPad Pro M4

35owners with an opinion
61%of verdicts positive
19/12positive/negative since 2024
10 yrslongest happy owner
1happy after 3+ years

Praised for performance and display; criticized for software and value.

What owners wrote

Likes itOwned 10 years
> iPads are just unserious computing devices for real work. Video conferencing work: iPad + Center Stage unmatched for portability, audio quality, integrated cellular modem. Writing work: iPad with hardware keyboard and single app mode for distraction-free writing, ergonomic screen mount. SSH work: iPad has unmatched HiDPI 4:3 screen real estate Video editing work: Lumafusion usability with M4 rendering speed, $30 one-time fee unlike subscription alternatives. 3D planning or design: vertical industry apps for iPad Pro Lidar sensor that is absent from competing tablets. Source: decade on iPads as primary device. Secondary device: Lenovo /w Linux sidecar VMs accessed from iPad. After Apple enables hypervisor API for Linux VMs on iPad, Lenovo sidecar budget can be redirected to iPad storage.
NeutralOwned 0.3 years
I’ve been maining an M4 iPad Pro for a few months now since frying my laptop (which ran Linux) while travelling. There’s a lot to love about it. Sadly, one discovers dozens of minor bugs and annoyances, that are mostly specific to doing productivity/dev work. For example, when I use Cmd-Tab to switch tasks, there’s a ~ 1/20 chance that the Cmd key will become ‘soft-stuck’. That is, I’ll start typing and the OS will act as if I’m holding down Cmd, often messing with my browser or active project. I have to tap Cmd again to ‘unstick’ it. It’s not a hardware issue- An Apple store has already replaced the keyboard for me, and the problem persists. I guess no one at Apple dogfoods the iPad for productivity? Which is sad, because here this thing is! It exists! Productivity features have been at least added to iOS! On the plus-side, I’m getting deep into doing sound synthesis / music production in iOS. The ecosystem is kind of exciting. I spend most of my time inside Audulus (Max/PD-like data flow/DSP) - it is criminally underrated, and so much fun. I could really go on about the pros and cons but will refrain. It’s just such a mixed bag.
Likes it
Sorry, but as someone who's owned a v1, the first 12" Pro, a Mini, and now an M4 Pro: hahahaha, no. Durable, yes. Given how many hours each of my iPads has spend in my kids' hands I can't really complain on that front. But repairable? Not in any meaningful way. When the battery gets too weak you can use it as a tethered control panel for media or smart home apps; when the screen cracks you can slap a protector on it. Aside from that, any hardware fault outside of warranty means it's DOA.
Neutral
Nano texture was the entire reason I upgraded to an iPad Pro M4. The camera on the long edge is a major regression as far as I am concerned, however. The only drawback is fingerprints are harder to remove,you really need that special microfiber cloth or one of the cheap Chinese clones.
Doesn’t like it
At some point people are going to realize how crippled iPad OS is and will start switching to other platforms. It doesn't matter how powerful the processor is, the OS has always been the limitation. My M4 iPad Pro has a desktop grade processor but fucking useless for any real task even remotely related programming. It's just a glorified $1000 YouTube machine at this point because the OS pretty much doesn't allow you to do anything with it other than media consumption or basic media editing. The "Pro" moniker is just a joke.
Doesn’t like it
Tried it on my M4 iPad Pro and was surprised that it works - to a degree. NPCs (Gman and the citizens on the train) seem to be missing eyes and have no mouth animations. FPS was pretty poor too, and it was ass to use the camera on the trackpad.
Doesn’t like it
AirPod Pro v1 seems to always work, but they favor connecting to Apple branded devices and move seamlessly between them. What doesn't work so well is that iPad Pro M4 doesn't play nice with Bose QC35 multi-point connections because it appears to "play silence" to the headphones even when there is no audio, preventing the other connected device from switching over to play audio. When I turn my iPhone on and open iMessage, it will sit at a black screen and won't open for several minutes and usually crashes. I want sync to happen on a background thread and be able to access existing content immediately. Sometimes it happens with the phone app too. There really ought to be a universal gesture or trick (that's not pull to refresh) to force iCloud sync in any app that has iCloud sync functionality. Also, Universal Clipboard works half of the time. Learn Spelling was removed from most/all non-Pages apps, which is extremely inconvenient because the Apple US English dictionary has tons of missing adverb forms. iOS/iPadOS selection of text in a web browser (Brave or Mobile Safari) doesn't work as reliably as it did in earlier OS versions. Often, text is selected but refuses to show the text selection popup. And I refuse to use iOS and macOS 26 because liquid glass is slow and unusable.
Likes it
And yet it is the best tablet you can buy on the planet top to bottom software and hardware, is it perfect no, what is this phantom alternative to an iPad M4 Pro? Note I already have a desktop computer. I don’t need two of the same thing in short I don’t need Mac OS on two devices.
Likes it
I use my 13” iPad Pro M4 almost as much as my MacBook Pro. I’m typing this on it right now. It is by far more comfortable for consuming any kind of media than a laptop. If I’m researching something and I need to read any significant amount of text I’m going to grab my iPad and find a comfortable spot instead of sitting at my desk. Even though I have 2 big monitors. I also have a Magic Keyboard that I can simply pop on if I need to write any significant amount, like this, and pop it off again for pure consumption. It’s an amazing device for watching video (the tandem OLED looks incredible) and I often use the pencil to sketch out ideas.
Neutral
Mac hardware has so significantly outpaced software needs I think there are diminishing returns. I'm a software developer who uses all sorts of advanced stuff and I only bought an M4 Pro, not a Max, because it wasn't worth the extra money. There are so few applications that max out a CPU for any meaningful amount of time these days like rendering videos or 3D. My M4 iPad Pro is amazing but feels totally overpowered for what it's capable of. I guess what I'm saying is.......I don't need faster CPUs. I want longer battery life, 5G connectivity, WiFI 7, lighter weight, a better screen, a better keyboard, etc.. I guess it's odd that Apple spends so much time making faster computers when that is practically an already solved problem.
Likes it
Neither does developing software given we've all been doing it for ages despite the M5 not existing, still nice to have though. Plus you get more longevity, I'll keep my M4 iPad Pro until doesn't get OS updates anymore. I still feel no impetus to update my M1 laptop despite it being 4 years old.
Doesn’t like it
I bought iPad Pro M4 and I am yet to find a use case for it. Combined with non-secure cloud backup in the UK, I see it as a toy device. Watch YouTube, casually browse web (I am yet to install VPN). So far the most use I had with it was recording meetings, so that later I can relisten. If I was able to run Ubuntu on it or even macOs - that would have been a different story...
Likes it
Yes, I got the 13" M4 Pro mostly because of the display. I use the iPad Pro as my photo album and its just fantastic for that. The M4 flies of course. Thanks to more and more multi-windowed support on iPad OS it gets more useful for light tasks.
Likes it
1. I do know what to do with it. I take notes, a lot, in my work as a doctor. That's been the case since I owned an iPad Air from 2020, which I replaced with an 11 inch M1 iPad Pro (which broke), and I finally caved and bought a 13" iPad Pro to replace it. I ended up getting the M4 model because there just didn't seem to be older ones reasonably available. Even the M1 was more than fast enough for the overwhelming majority of iPadOS applicantions. Why an iPad? Android tablets have been... not great for a long time. The pencil is very handy, and the ecosystem has the best apps. Also, I know a few rather handy tricks Safari can do, such as exporting entire webpages as PDF after a full-screen screenshot, that are very useful to my workflow. 2. I already own multiple general purpose computers. They're not as convenient as an iPad. My ridiculously powerful PC or even my decent laptop doesn't allow the same workflow. However, that's not an intentional software limitation, it's a consequence of their form factor, so I can't hold Microsoft to blame. On the other hand,Apple could easily make an iPad equivalent to a MacBook by getting out of the way. 3. The inability/difficulty of side-loading apps, the restriction to a locked down store. Refusing to make an interface that would allow for laptop-equivalent usage with an external/Bluetooth m+k. You can use an external monitor, but a 13" screen should already be perfectly good if window management and M+K usage wasn't subpar. Macs and
Doesn’t like it
I own an M4 iPad Pro and can't figure out what to do with even a fraction of the horsepower, given iPadOS's limitations. The rumors about an upcoming touchscreen Mac are interesting, perhaps Apple will deign to make their ridiculously overpowered SOCs usable for general purpose computing. A man can dream..
Doesn’t like it
I bought an M4 iPad Pro and ended up returning it because I just don't like the magic keyboard. My current iPad is from 2018 and I use the Smart Keyboard Folio and (for me) it's just about perfect. Small, lightweight, not too expensive, easy to clean, and works great. I've been hoping there were enough people like me that a third party would make a replacement but that never happened. I know my current iPad Pro won't last forever so I suppose I'll end up with a Magic Keyboard setup eventually.
Doesn’t like it
With no exaggeration, iPadOS 26 is the worst piece of software I've had the displeasure of using in a very long time (and I work day-to-day with 'Enterprise' GIS software). It has me seriously considering selling my 11" M4 iPad Pro and eyeing up a Samsung Tab S11. This is despite the fact that the latter will lack the "magic" interplay with my Mac, which I use frequently. But I'm beginning to think slowly transitioning out of "the ecosystem" might be what's best for me. When you pay the eye-watering premium for an Apple product you do not expect to be subject to workflow-obliterating bugs and UX degradations. But here we are. The removal of Spilt View and Slide Over from the non-windowed mode in iPadOS was completely unnecessary and represents a massive middle finger to touch-based users.[1] To achieve the former's functionality now requires a bunch of fiddly and undiscoverable swipes, taps, and flicks to emulate what was previously a simple hold-and-drag procedure. It's also completely unpredictable - every time a guess as to whether a 'flicked' window will fill up the whole left/right side of my iPad's display, or whether it will just fill the space above the dock (why would I want that on an 11" display?), in the latter case requiring further attempts to actually get it to fill up the entire space. I'm aware there is the alternate route of holding the traffic lights and waiting for the pop-up menu, but this touch target is so small that I frequently miss it, and waiting fo…
Doesn’t like it
You will probably be very happy with the Air. I'd recommend the big one. I use a 2018 13" iPad Pro and I love that size because it's basically the same size as a sheet of 8.5x11 (or A4) paper. It's the perfect size for reading and marking up PDFs too. Last year I bought and returned the M4 iPad Pro because they didn't make a Smart Keyboard Folio for it which I prefer to the more heavy duty Magic Keyboard. So I'm still using my 7 year old iPad worrying about what I'm going to do when it dies. I thought for sure somebody would make a knock off, but nobody has made anything that I think is as good as the Apple product. For me, Procreate and GoodNotes are a killer combination that justify owning the device.
Doesn’t like it
From the title, I hoped so much that this was about using UTM on Apple Silicon iPads – don’t really want the person who always complains about Apple, but it’s really a pity that the iPad has such a strong CPU inside (I own an M4 iPad Pro) and can’t do any realistic development on it. Last time I checked, there really isn’t any way to virtualize ARM machines on the iPad with UTM (unless you’re on a lower iOS version), and emulating x86_64 machines were slow enough (even on M4 iPads) and not really usable. I’m on an environment where iPads are fine but equivalent MacBooks aren’t (stupid rules), and got this machine for hope that I might tinker development with iPads, but I gave up running stuff locally and just boot up an EC2 instance whenever I really want to do something. It’s a pity. (BTW, from the article, why would anyone really emulate a Linux machine with UTM on Apple Silicon? From my experience ARM64 Linux images are really good at compatibility…)
Doesn’t like it
I bought the iPad Pro 11 (M4) on its release day and did the same thing you did: throwing out what I knew to adjust to new paradigms. I regret its purchase. It is still fundamentally a device that cannot handle code-based workflows, although it's OK for some media creation. For software development, the canonical advice consists of excuses that rely on a "Pro" device to be a thin client. Remoting out to a workstation somewhere else defeats the purpose of having an M4 in the tablet itself. I can't even run a VM with native virtualization. A Chromebook with Crostini offers more functionality in this regard. You are also a consumer in another way: iOS revenue models are optimized for rent-seeking, whereas that is only partially true for macOS - even for Apple itself. As an example, I use Logic on the Mac and I pay for it once - Logic for iPad is subscription based. I don't hate the idea of the iPad overall - I have an iPad mini I use to read and mark up papers, and it's great for that.
Doesn’t like it
I bought an 13" M4 iPad Pro when it was released and returned it a week later because I didn't like the magic keyboard. I went back to my 2018 iPad Pro with the Smart Keyboard Folio. I've been waiting and hoping for some third party to come along and clone the Smart Keyboard Folio. If they did, I'd repurchase an M4 iPad because other than the keyboard it was great. I was just looking at the apple website to see if the Smart Keyboard Folio is available for the new iPads and it looks like that product line is gone for all iPads. Such a shame because it was a great product. I suspect it didn’t feel premium-enough for Apple management.
Likes it
iPad Pro M4 with magic keyboard, main/only work laptop. Have felt satisfied with iPads for a few years despite some annoyances in the evolving UI. Topo Design 30L travel backpack. I travel constantly and live out of this pack. Timbuk2 small messenger bag. Good for carrying iPad and other necessities for working remote, and as a "personal item" if an airline forces me to check my backpack. Icebreaker merino wool clothes. I pay for some software. Blink Shell (ssh/mosh client for iPad), Working Copy (git client for iPad), Control-D custom DNS/VPN replacement. I also use TurboTax, and resent paying for it every year, but it does handle everything I need as a freelancer living outside the USA.