Apple iPad Pro 11 (2024) review

Ultra Retina XDR display

The OLED switch for the iPad has been rumored for years now, but it finally happened. With Ultra Retina XDR, Apple has come up with a fancy name for its new display. And with Apple being Apple, it wanted the most advanced and exclusive technology and that's Tandem OLED.

A tandem OLED consists of two stacked organic light emitting layers, which allows each of these to be powered at a lower power input. This way, you can drive the max brightness high up without the inherent penalty of accelerated OLED degradation, which is normally caused by higher driving voltage. The result is a high brightness screen with superior durability and longer lifespan.

We put the 11-inch iPad next to the 14.6-inch Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra and its Dynamic AMOLED 2X panel. The size difference is enormous, but we're focusing on technology here. And when the two displays are in SDR mode, the iPad is a bit brighter, and its panel is a touch less reflective. However, once you play an HDR video, the iPad is able to pull noticeably ahead. Great job on Apple's part.

14.6-inch Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra (above) next to Apple iPad Pro 11 (below)

Let's get back to the screen's specs. The one on our iPad Pro is an 11-inch OLED of 1,668 x 2,420 pixels or 264 ppi, 3:2 aspect ratio. The panel supports HDR10 and Dolby Vision standards and should offer up to 1,000nits of maximum and up to 1,600 nits of peak HDR brightness. Naturally, the screen supports wide color gamut and True Tone enhancements.

We completed our test on the display our iPad Pro 11 has, and the numbers are great. The tablet offers 592 nits of maximum manual brightness and 994 nits of automatic brightness. This puts the iPad Pro 11 at the top of our tablet max brightness chart.

The minimum brightness at point white was just 1 nit.

If you are shopping for the 1TB or 2TB version, you will also get the option to add Nano-Texture display glass for an extra $100. This is special laminating glass, which makes the whole front less reflective and appears consistently color-accurate during various challenging lighting conditions. It aims to help professionals always see true colors and the whole picture. Our iPad does not have this glass, but various tests online confirm that the screen is less reflective and keeps excellent colors even at bright light.

Refresh rate

Apple does not allow control over the refresh rate. It is a dynamic one, and it should drop down to 1Hz for static pictures and always-on/standby modes. Just like last year, web pages may scroll at a smooth 120Hz refresh rate, but any moving embedded content will be rendered at 60fps.

There are numerous HFR games in the App Store, so you can squeeze the maximum of this new GPU.

Streaming and HDR

The iPad Pro 11 display is certified for both HDR10 and Dolby Vision support. It also has all the necessary DRM certifications to allow third-party services like Netflix or YouTube to offer HDR streams.

There is one more thing worth mentioning - Apple does its HDR video playback in a very flexible way since it's not necessary for the content to be displayed full-screen for HDR to work. It can work on the portion of the display that has the video playing, which is a surreal experience the first time you encounter it.

Battery life

The Apple iPad Pro 11 (2024) is powered by a 8,160 mAh battery. It should offer 10 hours of web browsing or video playback/streaming, according to Apple.

The iPad Pro 11 (2024) scored an Active Use Score of 12:37 hours. It offers over 37 hours of VoIP calling, almost 10 hours of web browsing (as promised), over 15 hours of web streaming and can do over 8 hours of gaming. Those are some great reslts.

Charging speed

The Apple iPad Pro 11 (2024) supports up to 30W of fast charging via USB-PD solution. The tablet only ships with a braided USB-C cable, but you can use any USB-PD power adapter.

We have completed our charging test with a 60W Baseus PD charger, which provided the maximum 30W this iPad Pro 11 could take. The battery charge went from 0% to 20% in 15 mins; we captured 41% on the 30 min mark and 74% on the 60 min mark.

A full charge took 106 mins, which is okay for a tablet.

Speakers - loudness and quality

The iPad Pro 11 (2024) features four large speakers - there is a pair on each of its shorter sides. The speakers are well balanced and sound incredibly well.

The iPad Pro 11 (2024) scored a Good mark on our loudness test and we would rate its audio quality as excellent - there is noticeable bass, great vocals and rich high-frequency range.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.