Apple started using OLED displays on the iPhone X back in 2017, and before that, on the first Apple Watch. And the Touch Bar, of course (RIP). But it has been slow to move away from LCD in other places, such as its iMacs, MacBooks, standalone displays and iPads. I want OLED in all of those things, but if the iPad Pro gets it first, as rumored, then that’s fine with me.
There is no product where the use of an LCD panel bothers me more than my 11-inch iPad Pro. It has a nice screen as long as you look directly at it. However, if you deviate slightly from the axis, the screen becomes much dimmer. That goes for my laptop too, but I’m always sitting directly in front of that screen and almost always looking at a browser window with text.
Contrast isn’t an LCD’s strong point either, and the dark gray of letterboxing and shadows when watching movies and shows bothers me more than it probably should. That doesn’t matter if I’m just reading, but if I’m playing a game, especially something like Resident of the bad town, which I’m sure will run on the next iPad Pro; or watching a movie, the added deep blacks of OLED would look better. And in a dark horror game, it would be easier to spot things with the added contrast.
OLED would mean other things, like an always-on iPad screen. That could open up a version of the iPhone’s StandBy mode that turns the iPad into a true blue smart screen (something that’s been rumored before), effectively opening up a niche for the iPad that you could actually use.
Assuming an OLED upgrade means more than just a good display for the next Pro model, I’d sell my M1 iPad Pro in a heartbeat to buy it.
It seems that I will soon get my wish. This morning, Bloomberg’yes Mark Gurman reiterated in the subscriber questions and answers section of Switched on something you have said in the past: that Apple has a new OLED iPad Pro next year. And in that latest update, it called it the “first major overhaul in half a decade,” in the form of an 11-inch model and a 13-inch model, and I hope that’s true because it needs it.
Ming-Chi Kuo echoed that. Later that day, in a Medium post, Apple will mass produce two OLED iPads using the same LTPO technology that gives both Apple Watches and newer iPhones their variable 1Hz to 120Hz refresh rate. Kuo He added that they will surpass the Mini LED iPad Pro in “screen performance and power consumption.”
