When You Pay for Extra IPad Pro Storage It’s Well Worth It
If you are looking to buy an iPad Pro, you probably haven’t forgotten about the price. High refresh rates, mini LED HDR displays, incredible Apple M1 chip and LiDAR sensor, among other key features, set a premium price for professionals that you don’t see on other iPads. So you can look at smaller storage to save money; however, this year Apple decided to add something special to the iPad Pro’s larger storage capacity that might justify the right buyer’s costs.
Many sizes of iPad Pro storage
For 2021, Apple offers as many as five different storage options for the iPad Pro. Both the 11-inch and 12.9-inch devices come in 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB configurations that vary considerably in price. The 11-inch iPad Pro with 128GB costs $ 799 and the 2TB model costs $ 1,899. The 12.9-inch Pro with 128GB costs $ 1,099 and the 2TB variant – wait – $ 2,199.
As the iPad relentlessly tries to replace your laptop with every new generation, choosing the storage size is key. It’s great that Apple doesn’t launch the 64GB iPad Pro like it does with the iPad, iPad mini, and iPad Air, but depending on how you use it, 128GB can fill up quickly as well. Whether you want to edit videos, create music, or otherwise create large files on your tablet, you need to consider how much storage you need to keep your new iPad Pro alive.
It’s not just storage sizes that differ.
However, it turns out that you don’t just get more disk space by buying an iPad Pro with more storage. This time around, Apple decided to do something a little different and give the iPad Pro what has always been in the Mac lineup: RAM options.
For the first time ever, you can choose an iPad Pro with varying RAM sizes. Apple offers two configurations, 8GB or 16GB, the same options found on the M1 MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mac mini, and iMac. Perhaps since the iPad Pro uses the same M1 chip found in these computers, Apple is simply offering the same 8GB and 16GB options we see on Macs.
Unfortunately, you cannot mix and match storage sizes with RAM configurations. Instead, the following options are offered for the 11-inch and 12.9-inch models:
- 128 GB memory, 8 GB RAM
- 256 GB memory, 8 GB RAM
- 512 GB storage, 8 GB RAM
- 1 TB storage, 16 GB RAM
- 2 TB storage, 16 GB RAM
This means that in order to get 16GB of RAM on your iPad Pro, you need to purchase at least the 1TB variant; An 11-inch with 1 TB of storage will set you back $ 1,499, while a 12.9-inch with 1 TB of storage costs $ 1,799.
Why do you need more RAM in iPad?
Here’s the deal; Not only is 16GB of RAM a huge amount of storage for an iPad, but 8GB is still more storage than any iPad before these Pros. The 2020 iPad Pro had 6GB of RAM, which seemed like a huge step up for a device at the time. In 2021 and for a while after that, 8 GB will still seem like overkill.
So why do you need 16GB, especially if you have to spend a lot more to get it? In the short term, I think it’s beneficial for people pushing their iPads to their limits. Whether you’re editing 4K HDR video, creating music, or doing any graphics work, you can find additional benefits in the extra RAM.
However, the 8GB models certainly perform well enough. Currently, what you’ll probably see most on the 16GB iPad is the lack of app updates. Because iPadOS is already so memory efficient, 16GB of RAM ensures that most apps can stay open for long periods of time. And you’ll probably see this level of performance for longer than the 8GB model; the day will come when the latest software will start loading 8GB of RAM, while 16GB of RAM will continue to multitask without too much trouble.
In my opinion, we won’t see the benefits of 16GB of RAM in the iPad for a while. Perhaps, Apple’s, will finally finally bring their professional applications such as Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro to iPadOS; perhaps iPadOS will adopt more macOS features and capabilities with additional memory support. However, this is speculation. We wondered similar things when Apple first released the iPad Pro in 2015, and yet, six years later, we don’t have Final Cut Pro or macOS on the iPad.
For most of us, 8GB in the iPad Pro is more than enough. You will also save between $ 400 and $ 700 by choosing one of these models. But if you plan on using this iPad as a workhorse for a long time (for example, for a long time ), and you have the money, 16 GB may be for you.