Apple’s new iPad Pro M4 has bee shown to be surprisingly robust in initial testing.
The new iPad Pro M4 is thin. Very thin. Like, 5.1mm thin in the case of the 13-inch model.
This has led to inevitable worries and suspicions that Apple’s new £1,300 toy might fold like a piece of cardboard under moderate pressure. Anyone remember the Bendgate 2 incident back in 2018, where iPad Pros started curving like bananas?
We needn’t have doubted Apple (again), it seems. Renowned smart device torturer JerryRigEverything has put the new premium iPad through its usual gauntlet of stress tests, and discovered that it’s very robust indeed.
Under normal pressure, the new iPad Pro returned to its normal shape as you’d hope. You’ll need to put a fair amount of force into it if you wanted (for some sick reason) to cause permanent damage.
That new reinforced internal structure seems to be doing its job, with “suspicious black magic levels of structural integrity” according to the accompanying video.
That was under regular horizontal pressure. It didn’t hold up quite as well to vertical bend pressure, which tells you where that strengthened spine’s efforts have been directed – as well as the weakening effect of USB-C ports on such slim devices.
Elsewhere, in a head-to-head with the previous generation’s iPad Pro M2 (a relatively thick 6.4mm), fellow tester AppleTrack found that the slinky new iPad Pro M4 performed the better of the two in similar bend tests.
It seems the verdict is in, and the new iPad Pro M4 really is as almost as tough as its is thin and fast.
