Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

iPad Pro What's The Big Deal Re: Pro Motion?

H

Heat_Fan89

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Feb 23, 2016
2,973
3,905
I stopped by to pickup an online order at Best Buy and was checking out the different iPad's. The 12" iPad is a freaking monster and the UI and icons looks out of place. But I went over and was messing with a 10.5" iPP and was scrolling up and down on the Apple homepage and the text got a little blurry and the bold header text got blurry as well when scrolling up and down. Wasn't Pro Motion supposed to eliminate that?

I'm asking strictly out of curiosity because I would never spend that much for any tablet and my next tablet will probably be next year's budget iPad.
 
  • Like
Reactions: BrianSoCal
I have no idea what it was “supposed to” do but all I’ll say is that if one doesn’t form an appreciation for the difference upon visually comparing the two displays side by side then it doesn’t matter. Different strokes for different folks.

I for one could immediately tell that one display looked better than the other, with more accurate colors/tones, the laminated screen, and smoother animations and scrolling. It was a factor in me justifying my 12.9 inch iPad Pro but it certainly wasn’t the only factor.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jayderek and Precursor
I have played with the 10.5 iPadPro at BestBuy, I noticed no blurry printed pages when scrolling the pages.
Did you try another iPad to see if the pages looked better?
 
DNichter said:
Everything looks better to me. I notice any iPad without ProMotion now and it looks pretty terrible.
Click to expand...
I'm just not seeing that. Comparing the 10.5" iPad to the 2018 budget iPad they looked close enough. The budget iPad had a little more blur when scrolling but again, i'm not seeing the big deal regarding Pro Motion.
 
Heat_Fan89 said:
I'm just not seeing that. Comparing the 10.5" iPad to the 2018 budget iPad they looked close enough. The budget iPad had a little more blur when scrolling but again, i'm not seeing the big deal regarding Pro Motion.
Click to expand...

Then good, save yourself some money and go with the cheaper one in the future if you can't tell the difference.
 
It's one of the main reasons I bought the Pro last year (another big one being the Smart Keyboard). It makes a huge difference to me. Scrolling is a lot smoother. Using my wife's regular iPad is quite annoying for me now; scrolling on that looks choppy to me.

If you can't see it, then that's good since it's one less reason to be tempted to spend the extra money on the Pro.
 
Given an otherwise perfect screen, it should half the amount of motion blur. Because LCD has a relatively slow pixel transition time, it doesn’t quite achieve that.

Ideally, you’d have an OLED or microLED display, and the option to strobe the display for about 1ms each frame. That would make everything look almost perfectly clear while scrolling. That’s basically how CRT screens worked, and it’s also how VR displays work to eliminate motion blur.
 
Jensend said:
Given an otherwise perfect screen, it should half the amount of motion blur. Because LCD has a relatively slow pixel transition time, it doesn’t quite achieve that.

Ideally, you’d have an OLED or microLED display, and the option to strobe the display for about 1ms each frame. That would make everything look almost perfectly clear while scrolling. That’s basically how CRT screens worked, and it’s also how VR displays work to eliminate motion blur.
Click to expand...
I only brought up the subject because I have read comments in the past where I got the impression that Pro Motion totally eliminated the blurriness when scrolling up or down because the refresh rate was something like 120Hz.

I was somewhat disappointed I could still see some blurriness when scrolling up or down especially since it's near double the price of the 2018 budget iPad.
 
I loved Promotion until touch screen blues and got rid of 2027 iPP. Have a 2018 iPad now and while there are differences, cannot say I really miss Promotion all that much.


Now the better pencil latency and 4gb of RAM? I miss those.
 
Heat_Fan89 said:
I was somewhat disappointed I could still see some blurriness when scrolling up or down especially since it's near double the price of the 2018 budget iPad.
Click to expand...

If none of the other hardware enhancements that the Pro line offers matter to you and all you are basing your comparison on is Promotion then the iPad Pro is definitely not for you. It's great that the 2018 base iPad has been improved and made more affordable, and its great to have choices.
 
muzzy996 said:
If none of the other hardware enhancements that the Pro line offers matter to you and all you are basing your comparison on is Promotion then the iPad Pro is definitely not for you. It's great that the 2018 base iPad has been improved and made more affordable, and its great to have choices.
Click to expand...
I've never considered the iPP a Pro device, that's just Apple's marketing spin. If it had a real file system a desktop OS then yeah, then I would consider it a Pro device. The Surface Pro which I don't own is definitely a Pro device. I just created the thread because I read comments indicating the big selling point about the iPP is the smoothness of the screen and comparing between a 9.7" and 10.5" iPad the screen difference was negligible to me.
 
Heat_Fan89 said:
I've never considered the iPP a Pro device, that's just Apple's marketing spin. If it had a real file system a desktop OS then yeah, then I would consider it a Pro device. The Surface Pro which I don't own is definitely a Pro device. I just created the thread because I read comments indicating the big selling point about the iPP is the smoothness of the screen and comparing between a 9.7" and 10.5" iPad the screen difference was negligible to me.
Click to expand...

I’d take it a step further and say there are no such things as “pro” devices. There are only devices, which some professions find useful and others don’t, depending entirely on the profession and the person.

I agree, I find promotion to be a subtle improvement.
 
Heat_Fan89 said:
I've never considered the iPP a Pro device, that's just Apple's marketing spin. If it had a real file system a desktop OS then yeah, then I would consider it a Pro device. The Surface Pro which I don't own is definitely a Pro device. I just created the thread because I read comments indicating the big selling point about the iPP is the smoothness of the screen and comparing between a 9.7" and 10.5" iPad the screen difference was negligible to me.
Click to expand...

Wasn't calling out the Pro as a pro device, I was merely using the word Pro because Apple named it that. I do not have any preconceived notions of what constitutes professional use - truth be told I believe the entire debate to be a wasted exercise because anyone who considers themselves a professional in any market will still have THEIR OWN preferred workflows and requirements (basically what subjonas said above).

I understand that some don't have an appreciation for the difference in quality of the displays and I see where you're coming from. What I need to remind myself is that it isn't uncommon for people make their evaluations based upon what Apple markets as features rather than diving down into specs to find differentiators that aren't always marketed. For me I'm a specs kind of guy so like I like to look at the details. Like I said ProMotion was a factor for me but I looked at the whole picture - higher storage capacity, faster processor, more RAM, faster GPU, better speakers, better cameras both front and back, and yes better display - they all added up to a more premium device over the baseline iPad line and that's how I evaluated my purchase.
 
Increasing refresh rate beyond 60 is kind of like increasing PPI beyond 300.

Increasing PPI from ~150 to ~300 was a huge jump. Switching from 300 to 450 or 600 is a more subtle change.

30 Hz to 60 Hz is a big change, but 60 to 120 is more subtle.

It’s not quite equivalent. 1000 Hz would have much clearer scrolling than 120 Hz. Anyone could tell the difference if you showed them how.
 
Jensend said:
Increasing refresh rate beyond 60 is kind of like increasing PPI beyond 300.


It’s not quite equivalent. 1000 Hz would have much clearer scrolling than 120 Hz. Anyone could tell the difference if you showed them how.
Click to expand...
You don’t need beyond 300 ppi, there are displays fullhd with 144hz and the difference is big enough
 
There is a huge subjective factor when it comes to evaluating ProMotion, when used in a casual and "normal" fashion. Promotion refreshes the iPad screen dynamically, meaning that when there is no motion on-screen (such as reading a webpage), the refresh rate is low. When there is motion, for example when playing a game, the refresh rate adjusts upward accordingly. The result is that action on-screen appears smoother; other actions such as opening windows and various UI animations will also appear smoother (compared to other iPads). I should add that when the refresh rate adjusts downward from 120 Hz, when the system deems it appropriate, this saves power over running the screen at a continuous 120 Hz.

To some, ProMotion is an amazing difference when non-Pro iPad screens are compared with an iPad Pro's screen. The Pro's screen is often described as "buttery smooth." Objectively, high speed footage of side-by-side iPads (a Pro next to a non-Pro) shows that the non-Pro screen appears to stutter and move jerkily whereas the ProMotion screen moves evenly and smoothly. But of course people will vary in how they perceive this. Apple is knows this better than anyone--that's probably why ProMotion isn't found on most iPads.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back