Apple has officially announced its latest slew of iPads, including the iPad Pro (2024) and iPad Air 6.
The iPad Pro is designed to “crush” the limits of what you can do on an Apple tablet. Here’s how the premium iPad compares to Samsung’s current high-end tablet, the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra.
The iPad Pro is thinner and more lightweight
Apple called the iPad Pro its thinnest product ever during the launch event, stating that the 11-inch Pro measures only 5.3mm thick, while the 13-inch model is even slimmer at just 5.1mm thick.
The two tablets also weigh less than previous versions of the iPad Pro at 0.98 lbs (~445g) and 1.28 lbs (~581g), respectively.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra is 14.6 inches in size, has a width of 5.5mm and weighs 732g. This makes it slightly thicker and at least 25% heavier than the new iPad Pro, depending on the size you choose.
The iPad Pro has a brighter screen
The iPad Pro also features a brighter screen, making it ideal for streaming movies and editing content in bright conditions.
The new Tandem OLED display combines the light from two OLED panels to achieve a brighter screen. Apple claims the iPad Pro can reach 1000 nits of brightness when displaying both SDR and HDR content, or 1600 nits of peak brightness with HDR. The new iPad is also configurable with a nano-texture glass option to reduce glare.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra features a Dynamic AMOLED 2X display and is capable of hitting up to 930 nits of brightness.
The iPad Pro features the Apple M4
Another major update for the iPad is the Apple M4 chip. The chipset features 2nd gen 3nm technology, offering improved power efficiency, a 50% faster CPU and a 4x faster CPU compared to its predecessor, the Apple M2. The Neural Engine is also able to complete up to 38 trillion operations per second.
Of course, we haven’t had the chance to test the iPad Pro (2024) out ourselves at this stage, but if the performance overtakes its predecessor, it should have no problem beating the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy in the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra.
That isn’t to say the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra performs poorly by any means. The tablet comfortably delivered some of the best benchmark scores of any Android tablet in our tests. However, we did previously find that it fell behind the Apple M2 in the iPad Pro (2022).
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra comes with a stylus
A major advantage to the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra is that it comes with the S Pen in the box. That means you don’t need to worry about paying extra for a stylus to take notes or create digital art.
While the iPad Pro offers support for the new Apple Pencil Pro, it doesn’t come with the stylus or its predecessor, meaning you’ll need to pay upwards of $100/£100 on top of the price of the tablet to get your hands on a pen.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra has expandable storage
Finally, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra features a microSD slot, meaning you can expand the storage beyond the 1TB model.
The iPad Pro is available with up to 2TB, but there’s no SD slot for expanding the storage beyond this or for a lower price.
