Three reasons business users should upgrade from M1- to M2-powered iPad Pros


New iPad Pros feature Apple’s newest M2 CPU. Here are three reasons justifying upgrading from the previous M1-powered iPad Pro models.

Hong Kong 27 March 2020: Unbox ipadpro
Image: leungchopan/Adobe Stock

Almost everyone knows Apple regularly upgrades its popular products. Less understood is how often business professionals should trade in an older model for a freshly introduced counterpart.

Updated iPhones, iPads and Macs regularly feature improved displays, faster processors and better battery life. My approach — such as with the Apple Watch and MacBook Pro — is usually to skip a generation or two. But there are three reasons business users should consider upgrading M1-equipped models to Apple’s new M2-powered iPad Pros sooner than later.

Top 3 reasons to upgrade your iPad Pro

General M2 performance improvements

The introduction of Apple’s M2 CPU to the iPad Pro lineup, shown in Figure A, makes justifying upgrading, even from a recently purchased M1-powered model, easy. The new CPU boasts eight CPU cores, 10 GPU cores, a 16-core neural engine and 100GBps of unified memory bandwidth. That’s a 50-percent improvement from the M1.

SEE: iCloud vs. OneDrive: Which is best for Mac, iPad and iPhone users? (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

The new M2-equipped iPad Pros, subsequently, feature a CPU that’s up to 15-percent faster overall compared to previous models. With 40-percent faster machine learning capability and the ability to process 15.8 trillion operations per second — a 40-percent increase versus the M1 — the new iPad Pros multitask better and permit more seamless switching between active applications, too.

Figure A

New iPad Pro models announced in October feature Apple’s M2 silicon.

Wi-Fi 6E

The new M2-equipped iPad Pros also feature Wi-Fi 6E connectivity. The M2 iPad Pros are the first to include the faster Wi-Fi standard that boasts lower latency and improved performance.

Using Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax) featuring 2×2 MIMO and simultaneous 2.4GHz and 5GHz connectivity, downloads are up to twice as fast compared to when using previous models. Backups, downloads, file access, photo and video transfer, streaming, video meetings and a host of other actions and functions are all improved as a result.

M2-powered ProRes video editing

The M2-equipped iPad Pros also include a ProRes encode and decode engine. With hardware-accelerated ProRes and ProRes RAW, the new iPad Pros improve ProRes video coding and conversion speed. The new tablets can complete ProRes tasks up to three times faster than previous models. Further, the M2’s image signal processor and the iPad Pro’s advanced cameras working together can capture ProRes video, as is featured in Figure B.

Figure B

M2-equipped iPad Pros can capture ProRes video and complete ProRes tasks up to three times faster than previous models.

Overall graphics performance is boosted, too. The new iPad Pros feature up to 35-percent faster graphics performance, thanks to the M2’s 10 core GPU, compared to the previous generation iPad Pro.

How to get a new iPad Pro

The new iPad Pros can be ordered online now. These models are available in space gray and silver. Five storage options are available: 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, 1TB and 2TB.

The 11-inch version starts at $799 for Wi-Fi models, while the 12.9-inch Wi-Fi models run $1,099 and up. The new M2-powered iPad Pro models will appear in stores beginning October 26.

As has become the trend, owners of previous M1 iPad Pro and other models can trade their existing units for a discount when purchasing the new model. The amount of the discount depends upon several factors, including the configuration and condition of the iPad being traded in.



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