Why iPad Pro with OLED is a massive upgrade

Avid Apple fans know that while the Cupertino company may not always be the first in the market to introduce a feature or technology, it often executes it best. The new lineup of iPad Pros with stunning new “Tandem OLED” displays promises to be a continuation of that trend. These tablets aren’t the first to launch with an OLED screen, but Apple promises that this newest iPad Pro will be a cut above the rest.

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“Tandem OLED” on the new iPad Pro

Contrast, brightness, and efficiency

Apple heard customers liked OLED, so they put an OLED on your OLED. Joking aside, Samsung, LG, and others have been developing a dual-stack OLED panel since at least 2022. By layering two sets of pixels on top of each other, a dual-stack OLED display achieves a much higher peak brightness while still achieving the same fantastic OLED contrast, without a sharp increase in energy consumption.

Additionally, videos and images on the newest iPad Pro line will benefit from what Apple is calling “Tandem OLED,” as it hopes to avoid the common issue with HDR — sacrificing brightness for contrast.

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The potential of an OLED iPad Pro

OLED displays create much deeper contrasts than more traditional LCD or LED displays

With an OLED display, individual pixels can be turned on and off to create the truest blacks without having to dim the screen around the darker parts of an image.

Since Apple often bills the iPad Pro as a tool for artists, it’s easy to see how these new “Tandem” OLED displays could prove to be yet another selling point for the creatively inclined. OLED’s ability to exert a granular level of control over brightness across an entire image should help improve things like color accuracy and shading, while making detail work even easier when sketching, drawing, or painting with the Apple Pencil.

The new display should also make for absolutely gorgeous viewing of movies and TV, as OLED displays excel at displaying dark or high-contrast scenes without crushing blacks. And given video games are particularly suited for taking advantage of the contrast, brightness, and color accuracy of OLED displays, the “Tandem” display is a promising upgrade for gamers.

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Power efficiency of OLED

Battery length remains the same, but better?

While the new iPad Pro will be running Apple’s new M4 processor, and sports what amounts to two displays stacked on top of each other, the new tablets boast the exact same battery life as the previous model. The OLED screens actually help the tablet maintain the battery even with feature upgrades, since OLED screens have the ability to literally turn off or dim individual pixels on the display — helping with power consumption.

On a regular LCD tablet screen, the display consumes roughly the same amount of power whether you are looking at a bright image full of color, or an image with a lot of darker, or completely black spaces. This is not the case on an OLED display. On the new iPad Pro, the display can actually consume less battery overall, as dimmed or completely off pixels draw less power than brighter, lit pixels in other areas of an image. Ultimately, the display can adjust its power draw dynamically, extending battery life.

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Catching up and getting ahead

Might not be the first, but they promise to be the best

Apple never fails to make something that’s largely been done feel so novel and exciting. While other OLED tablets exist today, the new thinner, faster, iPad Pro with “Tandem OLED” promises to accomplish what Apple does best, which is to refine and improve on an existing idea.

Whether you’re an artist, gamer, film snob, or just one of those people that like using a super-powered tablet to answer e-mails, the new lineup of iPad Pros should provide a stunning experience for the end user.

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