iPad Pro Grainy display on new iPad Pro M4?

[Gelam]

I saw someone making that joke but not much else.

There is one comment there that is a joke yes. But there are 2 others that does not sound like they are joking. So I am still keeping my mind open =)

 

[makrumor]

In meantime OLED Surface Pro from Microsoft has been launched and exhibits the similar issue, in a bit different way. You can add 2024 OLED Laptops from Asus to the list as well.

To quote reddit user

The SP11s graininess is very noticeable, across the entire screen, any brightness and any color. Solid white doesn’t look “solid”. I think it’s a combination of two things: the digitizer matrix is very visible, and OLED not having a traditional sub pixel arrangement (think pen tile and similar) so text can be “less crisp” than an LCD at the same resolution, and this is usually less noticeable the higher the DPI. The windows logo (start menu) looked blurry in every unit I saw.

Welcome to 2024 OLED devices.

Personally, after weeks I stopped caring.

 

[IT Troll]

There is one comment there that is a joke yes. But there are 2 others that does not sound like they are joking. So I am still keeping my mind open =)

I only saw one other comment and someone else repeating it. I’d like it to be true but I think there would be more evidence by now if it was.

 

[Gelam]

In meantime OLED Surface Pro from Microsoft has been launched and exhibits the similar issue, in a bit different way. You can add 2024 OLED Laptops from Asus to the list as well.

To quote reddit user



Welcome to 2024 OLED devices.

Personally, after weeks I stopped caring.

Oh my god not another one. What is with this year's panels?
I hope I can stop caring and unsee it too when I retry in a month's time.
Since I draw I will be up close to the display, and I need accurate texture representation for that.

I only saw one other comment and someone else repeating it. I’d like it to be true but I think there would be more evidence by now if it was.

Yes those are the ones I saw. And true that there should be more evidence, I am hoping some people here that has the iPad and the new iOS18 beta could tell us.

 

[f1restarter]

Here is mine. 13” Nano texture. Still under 14 day return period. Build month is May. At normal distance I really cannot see any grain, only when I take a photo with macro setting on my Pixel 8 Pro phone. I have a feeling all the 2024 iPad 13” will have this issue, some more some less but not perfect. Even the 11” OLED. At this time it will be a waste of time to exchange it hoping for a perfect display until Apple officially addresses the issue and fixes it in the next batch which who knows when that will be.

 

[Gelam]

Here is mine. 13” Nano texture. Still under 14 day return period. Build month is May. At normal distance I really cannot see any grain, only when I take a photo with macro setting on my Pixel 8 Pro phone. I have a feeling all the 2024 iPad 13” will have this issue, some more some less but not perfect. Even the 11” OLED. At this time it will be a waste of time to exchange it hoping for a perfect display until Apple officially addresses the issue and fixes it in the next batch which who knows when that will be.

Thank you for your data point, that is exactly what my eyes see when looking from around 20-30cm.
I have investigated slowly over time and was digging up Samsung S24 Ultra reddit threads that talks about this grain issue.

Interestingly a Samsung employee openly talks about this issue (not officially of course). And he/she accumulatively looked through multiple units across various production batches, including other models like S23U and Flips. He/she said that some units show this symptom more while some is minimal, and that later production batches show lesser symptoms than the earlier batches. The different datapoints are scattered in multiple threads and comments by this guy/gal.

https://www.reddit.com/r/GalaxyS24Ultra/comments/1ahcihd

I mention this because Apple uses Samsung (and LG) as the panel supplier and they both exhibit the same symptoms.

So I have some hope that this issue can become smaller the later the production batches for these iPads. However, like what you said, the best hope is to wait for the next major iteration, the M5 iPad Pro.

I will try again in the next month (or few months). I will try again for 1 or 2 times to see if the issue is minimized enough that I can live with it.

 

[Mity]

I'm deliberately bumping this old thread. I had noticed something similar last October when I bought the 13" M4 iPP. Similar to @sziehr and @makrumor, I also noticed fuzziness. And my iPhone 14PM also had this issue as well. What was odd about my iPhone was that it appeared randomly one day. I factory reset the phone and I never had the issue again. Not sure why that would resolve the problem but it did. I haven't experienced it on my iPhone 15PM.

I'm hoping that someone that purchased the M4 OLED iPads recently can provide an update, especially folks that purchased them very recently in 2025. Sometimes manufacturing defects are quietly fixed and we never hear about them because the defect rates are not high enough to warrant a recall.