iPad Pro 2018 iPad Pro 11 vs 2021 iPad Pro 11 M1?

[Jára Tyky]

A "few bucks" is subjective. Personally, I don't resell my devices so to me, the 2021 12.9 1TB 5G is a ~$2200 cash outlay (with tax). I don't consider that to be a "few bucks".

Mind, the 2021 was actually $900 more than the certified refurb/open box 2018/2019 12.9 1TB LTE (~$1300). However, considering I wish to keep it for 4-5 years, I figured I'd be much happier spending $2200 and benefiting from extra RAM, etc. now rather than $1300 now for the refurb 2018 then $1300 for the refurb 2021 or $2000+ for the latest model after 3 years.

With that said, I did notice the M1 iPad Pro having much better battery life compared to the 2018/2020 with my usage and settings (mostly reading and web browsing at 0-25% screen brightness).

And what do you do with previous iPads Pro? Giving to the family members?
I had iPad Pro 12.9 2020 and iPad Pro 12.9 2021 in the same time. I was thinking to not sell it but I had very bad feeling that I have waisted so much money.

Giving to my family members was not solution because I bought my girlfriend iPad Air few months before and I have bought to my father iPhone and he told me that I got it from work ??‍♂️

 

[rui no onna]

I see people complaining about it having worse battery life or at least no better, despite the bigger battery. My guess is that they watch HDR content that get much brighter on the M1.
By the way I don't think that M1 consumes any less than A12X/Z, the difference is the battery size

As I mentioned, with my usage and settings, I get much better battery life. I'm sensitive to light so I normally keep the display between 0-25% brightness. I think at that level, the Mini-LED consumes less power than normal LED.

 

[rui no onna]

And what do you do with previous iPads Pro? Giving to the family members?
I had iPad Pro 12.9 2020 and iPad Pro 12.9 2021 in the same time. I was thinking to not sell it but I had very bad feeling that I have waisted so much money.

Giving to my family members was not solution because I bought my girlfriend iPad Air few months before and I have bought to my father iPhone and he told me that I got it from work 🤦🏻‍♂️

I find selling to be a major hassle so I don't bother. Too many scammers and lowballers.

Trade-in value is also very low. For the 2017 iPad Pro 12.9 512GB LTE, Apple's only giving $355 so no thanks.

The iPad's better used giving them away to family or extended family (no shortage of cousins and niblings who'd take it), or keep as a backup and use for running either legacy firmware/apps or for running betas and such.

 

[darngooddesign]

Also from my research the M1 is overkill bc iPadOS is so limiting...

That really depends on what you are doing. I compared the A14 iPad Air and M1 iPad Pro 11 and noticed that the M1 is slightly quicker to display changes when editing in Lightroom; a small difference but it is there even with minor edits like changing a color profile. This is with my 26MP Fuji so I can only imagine that non-M1 lag would be more noticeable with higher res cameras like a 40-60MP A7R.

 

[Digitalguy]

I find selling to be a major hassle so I don't bother. Too many scammers and lowballers.

Trade-in value is also very low. For the 2017 iPad Pro 12.9 512GB LTE, Apple's only giving $355 so no thanks.

The iPad's better used giving them away to family or extended family (no shortage of cousins and niblings who'd take it), or keep as a backup and use for running either legacy firmware/apps or for running betas and such.

Same, I have sold a couple of times but I hate it. My 10.5 is now my beta tester for iPadOS 15 (and at this point I am happy to have a beta since I don't like the changes in Safari and the missing row of icons in the UI, so I may skip iPadOS 15 all together till there is a compelling reason to upgrade, maybe once Monterey is ready and Universal Control works, that could push me on at least one more device....)

 

[Jára Tyky]

I find selling to be a major hassle so I don't bother. Too many scammers and lowballers.

Trade-in value is also very low. For the 2017 iPad Pro 12.9 512GB LTE, Apple's only giving $355 so no thanks.

The iPad's better used giving them away to family or extended family (no shortage of cousins and niblings who'd take it), or keep as a backup and use for running either legacy firmware/apps or for running betas and such.

I never trade-in to Apple shops and premium resellers because they offer very low prize for trade-in. But I sell all the time on Facebook market or another websites with used eletronics and I get 2/3 of original price. This year it was hard to sell my iPad Pro 2020 I could not find a buyer for one month so I returned M1 2021 and one day after I got a buyer ? so I bought M1 again ? (new battery - cool ) )

I bought iPad Pro 2020 for 1350€ and sold for 980€.
iPad Pro 12.9 2021 I bought with student discount for 1350€ again.

 

[rui no onna]

I never trade-in to Apple shops and premium resellers because they offer very low prize for trade-in. But I sell all the time on Facebook market or another websites with used eletronics and I get 2/3 of original price. This year it was hard to sell my iPad Pro 2020 I could not find a buyer for one month so I returned M1 2021 and one day after I got a buyer ? so I bought M1 again ? (new battery - cool ) )

I bought iPad Pro 2020 for 1350€ and sold for 980€.
iPad Pro 12.9 2021 I bought with student discount for 1350€ again.

I buy top capacity cellular so resale value for those tank pretty heavily. In US, I think the market's relatively saturated so resale tends to be lower (but still better than trade-in).

That said, I don't find it worth the effort. I'm already declining overtime from stress/tiredness. For the same man-hours/stress that would be spent on selling, I can just work overtime and make up the difference.

 

[Kaspio]

If you were buying either of these without having one already, (2018 refurb vs m1) which would you get? $400 difference between them

 

[rui no onna]

If you were buying either of these without having one already, (2018 refurb vs m1) which would you get? $400 difference between them

Personally, I tried both and kept the 2021.

I used the 2017 iPP for 4 years but the 4GB RAM on it was already starting to feel insufficient. I think with its higher performance/specs, the 2021 has longer legs than 2018 and has a better chance of lasting me another 4 years.

 

[Digitalguy]

If you were buying either of these without having one already, (2018 refurb vs m1) which would you get? $400 difference between them

I got the 2018, but the difference was much more than $400. I got a refurbished 256GB 12.9in + smart keyboard + pencil 2 for $750 (mint conditions, 98% battery), the M1 with those accessories is over double at $1527 (and honestly I would have gotten the 1TB 16G RAM anyway....)
Price was not the only reason. Weight was a factor. The 2018 is 50gr lighter and while some/many people don't care, for me it's an important factor for my use. Instead, contrary to many I don't care about mini-led (but I already have an OLED tablet....)
So I sacrificed RAM for half the price and a better weight when reading and holding it.
But that's not my last iPad pro and I'll get my 16GB RAM at some point. I am waiting for a larger one (with a different use case where weight will be less of a consideration) in a couple of years. At that point I'll gladly pay $2000-3000 for a 16GB RAM version and 1TB (and hopefully iPadOS will have improved by then too).

 

[Artsketch]

As I mentioned, with my usage and settings, I get much better battery life. I'm sensitive to light so I normally keep the display between 0-25% brightness. I think at that level, the Mini-LED consumes less power than normal LED.

Are you using dark mode?

 

[rui no onna]

Are you using dark mode?

No. Dark mode hurts my eyes. I need higher display brightness in dark mode to increase contrast to be able to read stuff and I find that uncomfortable. Just standard dark text on light/sepia background for me.

 

[Jára Tyky]

If you were buying either of these without having one already, (2018 refurb vs m1) which would you get? $400 difference between them

As you can see one post above I got m1 vs 2020 for +-$400 difference.

 

[Bmoreguy03]

Hmm interesting. I’m thinking about making the switch

 

[BigMcGuire]

No. Dark mode hurts my eyes. I need higher display brightness in dark mode to increase contrast to be able to read stuff and I find that uncomfortable. Just standard dark text on light/sepia background for me.

I'm getting to that point. I used to be hard core dark mode up until the last 3-4 months where my eyes (36 years old) have started changing. I just can't focus on the text anymore (white text/black background). So I find doing Sepia with brightness turned down to be far more relaxing. For the first time in awhile, light mode on my Macs - much easier on the eyes. I can only imagine what this is going to be like in 10-20 years (assuming I make it that long).

As far as the iPads - depends on what you use them for. Heavy usage - M1. Everything else? 2018 will be plenty fine.

 

[Diablo360]

The M1 would be nice but my 2018 12.9” iPad Pro is still running like the day I got it new. Won’t be u-grading until it starts slowing down

 

[Vivian125]

For launching apps, obviously the M1 or even the A14/15 iPad is faster over the slower A12 version of iPads.

I have an iPad Pro 11 M1 while my co-worker has an older iPad Pro 2018 11" version, for the HEAVY Website of Safari, i notice her 2018 iPad Pro sometimes lag, and to make matters worse, it even refresh, like the nytimes.com (when its not even considered a Heavy website lol)

So if you do a lot of Gaming, and especially Browsing the internet, do not expect that your older iPad Pro 2018 with 4 years Old tech will be Par and same speed with A14/A15/M1 launching speed, and scrolling website is a bit fuzzy on safari with the 2018 iPad Pro 2018..

When M1 iPad cames or after i updated my iPad Pro 2018 to iOS 15 last year, i notice it isn't as smooth scrolling the sites in safari especially the tweeter when it only has videos and photos to load, which makes me cringe and ended up upgrading to M1 immediately, and now scrolling through website, and loading games is much smoother and faster on newer chip.. even my cousins iPad Air 4 has no issues at all loading such heavy website.

120hz animation is there, but it is completely useless if the performance alone isn't that good making it breakeven to consider still fast, but not that fast for me so no.

The only good thing about 2018 iPad Pro is for video editing, support for magic keyboard and usb c, and not so heavy games is still fine, but for mainly browsing? its a big no. since some website are very heavy for such older chip

 

[Greenmeenie]

Hi,

I have a 2018 iPad Pro 11 256gb with LTE, and it is still running extremely well after 2.5 years of ownership. Has anyone with a 2018 iPad Pro 11 upgraded to the 2021 iPad Pro 11 M1 and if so have you seen any noticeable speed improvements.

I’ve read through the various threads on here and it appears to be mostly a spec bump with the standard apps loading faster as well as Safari being a bit faster too. Also from my research the M1 is overkill bc iPadOS is so limiting, so as a result I have not upgraded yet and am trying to wait until next year since that is supposedly when the iPad Pro 11 will get the updated screen as well. However, I just thought I’d ask and if I’m wrong and you are noticing noticeable improvements I just thought I’d ask!

Thanks

I also still use the 2018 11” iPad Pro. I have no plans of upgrading anytime soon. It still does everything I need Perfectly. Battery is still great too. I edit 4k videos on it with LumaFusion without hiccups. I edit photos on it with Affinity Photo just fine. And I draw on it with Procreate. Curious what features the iPad Pros will get next month, but Until I actually see issues running my current iPad Pro or until the battery dies, I don’t feel the need to get a new one. I am quite happy with my 4 yr old iPad Pro. 👍🏼

 

[FeliApple]

A "few bucks" is subjective. Personally, I don't resell my devices so to me, the 2021 12.9 1TB 5G is a ~$2200 cash outlay (with tax). I don't consider that to be a "few bucks".

Mind, the 2021 was actually $900 more than the certified refurb/open box 2018/2019 12.9 1TB LTE (~$1300). However, considering I wish to keep it for 4-5 years, I figured I'd be much happier spending $2200 and benefiting from extra RAM, etc. now rather than $1300 now for the refurb 2018 then $1300 for the refurb 2021 or $2000+ for the latest model after 3 years.

With that said, I did notice the M1 iPad Pro having much better battery life compared to the 2018/2020 with my usage and settings (mostly reading and web browsing at 0-25% screen brightness).

I am so utterly shocked by M1 battery life! One of my main reasons for upgrading, apart from the display and performance, was battery life. You know this, but for the rest, my 9.7-inch iPad Pro was forced by Apple from iOS 9 (14.5 hours of SOT), to iOS 12 (barely scraping 9-10, oftentimes not even getting to 10), with, like you, low brightness and light use.

My M1 iPad Air is everything I wanted! On my first test, I got 9 hours of screen-on time with 63% remaining. Extrapolating (correctly, taking into account the 100-99% difference), I’d get about 22.5 hours of screen-on time with that light use. That’s the best battery life I’ve gotten on any Apple device, ever.

That was my first test. It might be even better next time!

A funny curiosity. Once, I had time to kill, and a few books to read, so I figured I’d run a once-in-a-lifetime test of only using iBooks (possibly the lightest on-screen task you can do, to get more than that I’d have to listen to downloaded music with the screen off) on my 9.7-inch iPad Pro. I got 21h 50 min of screen-on time (on iOS 9) before it died.
I‘d possibly get more with standard all-around light use on this iPad than on the 9.7-inch iPad Pro with the lightest possible usage ever, on the most efficient iOS version ever.

If I extrapolate again, I’d get around 34 hours of screen-on time while reading on the M1 iPad Air. Astonishing.

 

[Macalicious2011]

The M1 would be nice but my 2018 12.9” iPad Pro is still running like the day I got it new. Won’t be u-grading until it starts slowing down

Good decision!👍👍

I received early bought a 2021 iPad Pro 11’ and gave my 10.5‘ iPad Pro 2017 to my girlfriend.

With browsing, streaming, multi tasking , split screen and watching videos there is zero difference between them.

The 2017 iPad Pro is as snappy as my 5 year old newer iPad. Gaming performance is irrelevant as neither of us play AAA titles on our iPads.

Basically it’s not worth upgrading to an M1 iPad Pro unless you will find Face ID useful or do video editing.

 

[chevyboy60013]

Debating if I want to upgrade my 2017 iPad Pro 256 gb to something newer, I use it pretty much all day and it still does everything I need it to do, and still has fantastic battery life and still great performance on iPadOS 16 beta, only issue is had to put a screen protector on it because of a cracked screen, makes it much more usable but still notice it’s cracked. Debating on getting a basic iPad with the same storage, even though I’d likely never fill it or an iPad Air m1.

 

[FeliApple]

Good decision!👍👍

I received early bought a 2021 iPad Pro 11’ and gave my 10.5‘ iPad Pro 2017 to my girlfriend.

With browsing, streaming, multi tasking , split screen and watching videos there is zero difference between them.

The 2017 iPad Pro is as snappy as my 5 year old newer iPad. Gaming performance is irrelevant as neither of us play AAA titles on our iPads.

Basically it’s not worth upgrading to an M1 iPad Pro unless you will find Face ID useful or do video editing.

I upgraded from a 9.7-inch iPad Pro to an Air 5, and other than screen quality, form factor, and battery life, for my use, they’re very similar in overall use quality. It speaks to iPads’ quality, in my opinion.

 

[Macalicious2011]

I upgraded from a 9.7-inch iPad Pro to an Air 5, and other than screen quality, form factor, and battery life, for my use, they’re very similar in overall use quality. It speaks to iPads’ quality, in my opinion.

Yeah. iPads are overpowered now to the extent that you can buy a 1-3 year old model and be fine with it for years.

 

[DSTOFEL]

Hi,

I have a 2018 iPad Pro 11 256gb with LTE, and it is still running extremely well after 2.5 years of ownership. Has anyone with a 2018 iPad Pro 11 upgraded to the 2021 iPad Pro 11 M1 and if so have you seen any noticeable speed improvements.

I’ve read through the various threads on here and it appears to be mostly a spec bump with the standard apps loading faster as well as Safari being a bit faster too. Also from my research the M1 is overkill bc iPadOS is so limiting, so as a result I have not upgraded yet and am trying to wait until next year since that is supposedly when the iPad Pro 11 will get the updated screen as well. However, I just thought I’d ask and if I’m wrong and you are noticing noticeable improvements I just thought I’d ask!

Thanks

I had the 11 inch 2018 256gb (non cellular) that I was able to sell locally (Craigslist) in June 2021 for $560 and upgrade to the 11 inch M1 256gb. The 8GB vs 4GB of ram means less app refreshing when switching apps. I‘ve also noticed that large spreadsheets (Excel) that I open are much faster and fluid when scrolling through. Also noticed the speakers are louder on the M1 version….nice for things like Youtube and Netflix. Other than these things…nothing noteworthy. But…I primarily use the iPad pro as a consumption device (ie consuming media, web pages). I’m not ”pushing” it. So, depending on your use…you might not see much of a difference either.

With the powerful M1 and 8GB of ram…it is an iPad that I can likely hold onto for several yrs….without a slowdown!! That’s nice.

 

[FeliApple]

Yeah. iPads are overpowered now to the extent that you can buy a 1-3 year old model and be fine with it for years.

Absolutely! Take care of it and it will be fine for many years, like you said. I also agree: you don’t even need the latest model. Hell, barring battery life issues, I reckon the 2nd gen iPad Pro is still perfect to use (4GB of RAM, compared to the 2GB my 9.7-inch iPad Pro has).