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Next Year's OLED iPad Pro Models Could Have These Eye-Watering Starting Prices

That’s going to be a no for me dawg.

The Pro (or iPadOS in general) has not been good enough to be the primary device - at least for those that require a computer. My 2018 12” Pro has been a great companion device, but there are things it just can’t do and others it just is too much of a hassle to do.
Those rumored prices are well into primary device territory (as it really already is).

The M powered MacBook has really sealed the deal for me though (computer flexibility with exceptional battery longevity). An iPad is really moot at this point.
 
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It’s stuff they develop for a few professionals who buy them as assets with their companies’ money.
Don’t freak out, it’s very normal, this is how pricing for top-tier stuff has always worked. If you think that’s to much, it’s not necessarily wrong, it’s just likely not meant for you.
 
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If I need one I would just get one of the Samsung tablets.
This is what a lot of people will do and they will lose customers.

This is absolutely crazy and Apple is way overstepping it with this and it’s just going to backfire.
 
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Whose asking for this! I mean i get OLED is nice but I feel like mini-LED is also close or just as good and looks great on the 12.9 inch. A price increase is crazy to me just for OLED purposes. I'll stick with my mini-LED and apple should just bring the tech to the 11in pro as well.
 
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widestload said:
The Pro prices are already pushing the boundaries of what's acceptable, especially when new features aren't exactly ground breaking. sure OLED is better, but not THAT much. And as for other recent updates, it's why i went for a refurbished M1 pro once the M2s were announced without anything to wow me.
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What I want is an “iPad Plus” where the only major feature is a bigger screen. I was gifted an iPad Pro 12.9 and I love it but if it ever wears out I will never replace it because the price is just completely ridiculous.
 
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tfresquezdxs said:
Whose asking for this! I mean i get OLED is nice but I feel like mini-LED is also close or just as good and looks great on the 12.9 inch. A price increase is crazy to me just for OLED purposes. I'll stick with my mini-LED and apple should just bring the tech to the 11in pro as well.
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OLED will look amazing but I agree that price is just too damn much for an iPad.
 
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These Prices are never gonna happen. First no one cares enough about OLED to pay double the price. Second Apple put OLED in the base iPhone since iPhone 12…..for barely any more money. The iPad pricing structure would have a giant gap between 599 for an air and 1499 for a pro? Seriously use some damn logic on this.

Clearly something’s being lost in translation as usual from China OR this pricing is simply for another device…maybe a folding iPad or something.
 
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in the midst of a struggling economy, massive inflation, this would be a horrible idea.

I view the iPad as a $500 device, always have. When the M1 version came out I waited patiently. I finally got a used 12.9 256GB M1 iPad Pro for $550. It was a screaming deal. But 1500-1800? That's silly money
 
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Cristim74 said:
Not going to happen. It never happened with any Apple product at that scale. Maybe 20-30%, but not 60-80%.
Nobody is going to pay that much regardless of how less frequent they upgrade.
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iPhone 7 Plus to iPhone X was around a 40% increase in the UK jumping from £819 to £1149. Percentage increase would be even higher if you based it on the regular sized iPhone 7.

This was the starting point for Apples current drive for higher and higher prices.
 
Greenmeenie said:
Yet you can buy a 55” OLED smart tv for $1,500? Something doesn’t jive with this 80% price hike from Apple for an OLED ipad pro. $1,500 to start for the 11” OLED iPad Pro would mean a maxed out 11” iPad Pro will cost well over $3,000 now! One that doesn’t even run Final Cut Pro yet? That’s crazy! I usually get the maxed out 11” ipad pro & was planning to upgrade next year. I might just have to upgrade this year instead. I don’t want an OLED screen THAT bad to pay over $3 grand.
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Actually it makes perfect sense. There’s a huge difference in OLED panels between what you get on a TV and what you get on a tablet. TV sets are limited to 4K on a gigantic panel. An iPad would have similar numbers of pixels in a panel significantly smaller. That makes OLED for devices inherently more expensive due to pixel density. Then throw in the double stacked nature of the new OLED panels and the price goes up even more. Remember, a TV is meant to be viewed from many feet away while an iPad is maybe a foot or two max from your eyes. If OLED were as cheap as you think they should be, nobody would bother with LCD.

The rule of thumb in business is that you sell your device for 3 times the cost of the parts in order to cover for things like R&D, overhead, and a respectable profit margin. That $100 panel on the current 12.9” inflates the cost by $300 while an estimated $270 cost for a double stacked OLED panel would end up with a pricing of $810 for the panel alone. There’s your $500 price increase.
 
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I'm half considering buying a 13" Pro now, as the mini-LED is still great for the uses I have in mind, and it's already immensely expensive.
 
Sadly I can totally see this happening, however Apple may spin it differently - make an higher-end model with an OLED display vs a "base" model with mini-LED (or another way would be to have an OLED display available only on the top-end model to skip the pricing issue).
 
James Godfrey said:
If they want to charge that then they need to do something drastic with the OS
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Yep, it's already got the M1/2 chip for processing power, but iPadOS is holding it back in "simple" mode vs a full-fledge notebook OS.

Dare I say it, Apple needs to complete the transition of it's iPad Pro line into MS Surface Pro-like convertibles.
 
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Smartass said:
They could've gotten away with it maybe 10 years ago, but not today. Tablets are old tech, that has more or less hit a wall and they don't know where to go with them.
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The only wall they’ve hit is the artificial one they’ve made with whats allowed on the App Store this week and the subset of functionality iPadOS is allowed to have.

But hey, they want something exactly halfway between a phone and laptop forcing some number of people to buy all three.
 
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I got rid of my iPads a while ago now when I just no longer had any use for them. I charged them full and then they just sat there until they went dead again.

Sticking with iPadOS is crippling the device. Zero point in putting any M series chips in there if they weren’t going to unleash its full potential and allow iPads to run MacOS.

Then Apple has the cheek to price these devices at MacBook levels. Disgraceful.
 
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jonnyb098 said:
These Prices are never gonna happen. First no one cares enough about OLED to pay double the price. Second Apple put OLED in the base iPhone since iPhone 12…..for barely any more money. The iPad pricing structure would have a giant gap between 599 for an air and 1499 for a pro? Seriously use some damn logic on this.

Clearly something’s being lost in translation as usual from China OR this pricing is simply for another device…maybe a folding iPad or something.
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You’d be surprised. People with good eyes drool over OLED screens. Just look at the television market. A lot of OLEDs get sold every year as high end TV’s because their picture is so much better than any mini-LED.

As for phones, there are two reasons phones can use OLED and not get too pricey. One is their replacement window. Most people replace their phones every 1-3 years. For tablets, it’s every 5-7 years. OLED has a risk of burn-in on single OLED panels that get up over 1000 nits. But if you notice tablets like the Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 or S8 series with OLED panels, those panels are really, really dim, maxing out at about 400 nits. They can’t make them any brighter without risking burn-in within the tablet replacement window. With double stacked OLED, Apple can get the brightness of a mini-LED without any additional burn-in risk.

The second reason is size. A phone is a lot smaller than a tablet. Even today, manufacturing screens still has a fairly significant failure rate. The smaller the screen, the lower the failure rate because there are fewer pixels to fail. If even a few pixels fail on a screen, the whole screen is junk to be recycled. Now increase the panel size five fold. The error rate goes up significantly with many more rejected panels. That increases the cost.
 
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