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iPad Pro (2021) review: dream screen

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How much do you care about having a great screen?

That, really, is the only question that matters with the new 12.9-inch iPad Pro. It has a new kind of display so good I think it is the best thing for watching movies that isn’t a high-end television. It starts at $1,099 for a 128GB version, but increased storage and accessories like a keyboard or the Apple Pencil can shoot the price up fairly quickly.

Both the 12.9 and the smaller 11-inch iPad Pro (which starts at $799) feature Apple’s M1 processor and some other updated specs, all of which are excellent. But even that fancy processor — the same as you’ll find in the new iMac, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac mini — doesn’t fundamentally change the story of what the iPad Pro is and what it can do.

It is an iPad, after all.

But the 12.9-inch version of the iPad Pro is an iPad with a very beautiful display. And so again, the question is what that screen means to the experience of using an iPad, especially since the price has jumped $100 compared to the last model. How much do you care about having a great screen?

Here is a very brief, wildly incomplete, and necessarily oversimplified education on flat panel screen technology. (Chris Welch has a longer one.)

There are two basic types you usually see, LCD and OLED. Both have pixels that combine red, green, and blue subpixels to create colors, but in order for you to actually see those colors the display pixels need to be lit up. OLED pixels are self-lit; LCD panels light up the display pixels by putting one, several, or many LED backlights behind them.

The benefit of LCD panels with LED backlighting is that they’re relatively inexpensive, long-lasting, bright, and unlikely to burn in. The benefit of OLED is that the black pixels are not lit at all, meaning you get superb contrast, but they are relatively expensive and don’t get as bright. Each technology’s strength is the other’s weakness.

Mini LED, the technology powering the 12.9-inch iPad Pro display, is designed to bring the LCD panel as close as possible to OLED’s contrast and black levels. Its display pixels are not self-lit, but instead lit from behind. The trick is that they’re lit by 10,000 tiny LED lights split up by software into 2,500 local dimming zones. It’s almost like the backlight itself is a lower-resolution screen behind the screen, tracking the image and making sure the black parts of the picture aren’t lit up.

I would never call the display on the 11-inch iPad Pro bad, because it’s a stellar display. But because it uses a more traditional LCD backlight system with fewer dimming zones, you can see that the blacks are actually just a little gray. On the 12.9-inch version, Mini LED lets blacks be truly black, offers a high contrast ratio, and can also get very bright.

Apple is calling this screen the “Liquid Retina XDR display.” And it has all the benefits of Apple’s previous iPad Pro displays: it’s very high resolution, color-accurate, and it has fairly good viewing angles. It supports ProMotion, Apple’s term for a variable refresh rate to increase smoothness and match the frame rate of videos. (“Liquid Retina,” as far as Apple has ever told us, refers to the Apple-specific method of making round corners on an LCD.)

The funny thing about the 12.9-inch iPad is that it is very easy to miss the benefits of Mini LED in normal day-to-day use. At first you don’t see it.

Sure, there’s great contrast when you’re browsing the web, texting, playing games, and so on, but really it’s not very different from any other iPad. Apple still limits the max brightness in most scenarios to 600 nits, which is bright enough but not eye-popping (the iPad and iPad Air max out at 500 nits).

The magic kicks in when you are viewing videos or photos in full-screen. When you do that, the iPad Pro kicks into a different HDR mode (or in Apple’s parlance, XDR, for “Extreme Dynamic Range”) that really is stunning. The overall max brightness of the screen jumps up to a powerful 1,000 nits and peak brightness for certain lighting can hit 1,600 nits.

You don’t see it until you see it — but then you see it.

The iPad Pro with the Liquid Retina XDR display

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

The joke I’ve been telling people is that the display is so good that Tenet actually makes sense when you watch it on this iPad Pro. HDR content is incredible on this screen. I am not a display quality enthusiast, but this screen is functionally equivalent to a high-end OLED TV to my eyes, especially in a dark room.

If you are also not a display quality enthusiast, you might be left unimpressed with descriptions of nits and contrast ratios. I get it, but there are intangibles to the screen that I struggle to describe and have struggled even harder to capture in photos and video. For example, some colors just look better and more accurate to me, especially textured yellows. It just does a better job showing fine detail in situations where dark and light elements get mixed together, like with hair or a building reflecting sunlight.

Both Kindle and Apple Books in dark mode, in a very dark room, have a weird gray halo around text not due to normal blooming (Photo edited to best replicate what I saw with my eyes)

Dieter Bohn / The Verge

The display isn’t perfect, of course. If you run a local dimming test you will see blooming on brightly lit pixels against a black background. I only noticed this when running tests that are specifically designed to surface blooming, though. In regular use, everything looked great, sharp, and evenly lit across the entire screen.

There was one odd bug I experienced. Putting either the Kindle app or Apple Books into dark mode and viewing them in a near-pitch black room, I noticed a strange gray haze around all of the text blocks. It’s too big to be blooming; it’s more like the local dimming algorithms got a little confused. It’s a minor thing that I hope gets fixed.

For me, the quality of the display when watching video on the 12.9-inch iPad Pro is impressive, but it’s also not at the top of my list of priorities when picking a computer. I care a little more about portability, weight, and — yes — functionality.

So let’s talk about that M1 chip.

The iPad Pro is great for video editing

Photo by Kayla Murkison / The Verge

What does it really mean that the iPad Pro now has the same chip that powers Apple’s latest Mac computers?

It does not mean that iPads will be able to run Mac apps now. While Apple is happy to let the Mac run iPad apps and generally let you do whatever you want on it (except touch the screen), the iPad Pro continues to be a more, shall we say, curated experience.

One interesting consequence of the M1 is that for the first time in the history of iOS devices, Apple is publicly disclosing how much RAM these devices have. It’s 8GB on models with 512GB or fewer of storage and 16GB on models with 1TB or more. Whether or not that’s actionable information is another matter.

The M1 is obviously fast, and in benchmarks it’s faster than the last A12Z Bionic that Apple put in the previous iPad Pro models. But in my usage, I didn’t actually perceive any speed improvements in any of the apps that I use — because everything was already very fast on the iPad Pro. I got the exact same export speeds in Premiere Rush on the brand new 12.9-inch iPad Pro with the M1 as on my 2018 iPad Pro.

Both the RAM and the M1 processor are specs that won’t make an appreciable difference to the vast majority of iPad users. They’re specs that will matter to certain “pro” users who have found specific apps and workflows that push the limit of what an iPad can do.

Apple touts soon-to-be released capabilities in apps like LumaFusion and AR effects, and I have no doubt that there are benefits for power users of those apps. For the rest of us, the reasons to get an iPad Pro are less about speeds and feeds and more about the overall experience.

Another consequence of the M1 is that the USB-C port now supports Thunderbolt accessories. In theory, that’s great. I plugged my iPad into my very fancy CalDigit TS3 Plus Thunderbolt dock and was gratified to see my monitor light up right away. From there, though, I ran into the same old iPad problems.

I have a USB microphone interface hooked into the dock, and for whatever reason I was unable to get any audio out of it on the iPad, just silence. I also tested out some admittedly old LaCie Thunderbolt 2 drives with an adapter and couldn’t get them to show up in the Files app. Oh and just to remind you: the monitor still can only mirror the iPad Pro — it can’t serve as a second display.

Similarly, the dock has an audio-out so it shows up as a speaker. On the Mac, I can easily change settings to let my computer know to play audio out of its own speakers since I don’t have anything hooked up to the dock for sound. Nothing doing on the iPad Pro — if there’s a setting that would let me move the audio back to the iPad’s own excellent speakers, I couldn’t find it. (Long pressing on the AirPlay icon in Control Center only listed the dock as an option.)

Seemingly every new iPad Pro inspires an admittedly exhausting but also necessary discussion about whether or not iPadOS is actually capable enough to justify the price of the hardware that runs it.

The M1 processor sharpens that discussion. To me, the biggest difference between the Mac and the iPad at this point isn’t the touchscreen, it’s Apple’s approach to the operating system. On the iPad, Apple would rather not offer a feature than have it work in a non-iPad way. That’s noble, but it means the company has committed itself to reinventing a lot of wheels in computing: files, peripheral support, multi-window interfaces, and all the rest have to be re-thought and re-done.

Sometimes that reinvention results in some genuinely great features. The iPad’s “windowing” system takes some getting used to and has its limitations, but it can be a joy to use and makes organizing your digital stuff a bit easier. The problem is that all that reinvention is taking a very long time — it’s been six years since the original iPad Pro.

Center Stage works very well to keep you in frame. And as a bonus, the camera doesn’t blank out when you multitask in Zoom calls anymore.

GIF: Dieter Bohn

One new invention I love is the Center Stage feature. It zooms and follows human faces to keep them centered in the frame of the iPad’s wide-angle front facing camera. It works in any video conferencing app without the need for setup and it performs very well, better than similar features on smart displays like the Echo Show or Facebook Portal.

I’d love it even more if the front-facing cameras on the iPad Pro weren’t still in the wrong spot when attached to a keyboard — off to the side instead of centered on top. It’s great that the camera can keep my face centered in frame, it’s not so great that I am literally giving my coworkers the side-eye because I’m looking off to the right of where the cameras are to see their faces.

One more note: Apple has said that the original 12.9-inch Magic Keyboard “may not precisely fit when closed” as the new iPad Pro is slightly thicker. But when I tested it, I couldn’t discern any difference between the fit on the original and the new, white Magic Keyboard. Both worked — and closed — fine.

In any case, set aside the “What’s a computer” argument and let’s be more pragmatic. A 256GB 12.9-inch iPad Pro with a Magic Keyboard costs $1,548. A 256GB MacBook Air with the same processor costs $999. And just to be realistic: most people can get more done on the Mac than on the iPad. Taken strictly as a work machine, the Mac wins out on both price and functionality.

That includes battery life, by the way. Both iPad Pros have good battery life, but it’s not significantly improved over previous iPads. And as many people have discovered during the pandemic, if you actually use the iPad for work all day (especially if you do a lot of Zoom calls), the iPad Pro can conk out in eight hours or less. The MacBook Air edges it out.

Last and certainly not least, Apple’s refusal to offer multi-user support on the iPad has gone from being mystifying to obstinate. The company clearly intends this to be a single-user device, despite the fact that it would theoretically make for an even more compelling family computer than the pastel-colored iMacs that share the same processor.

Typing on the iPad Pro

Photo by Kayla Murkison / The Verge

But to give Apple the benefit of the doubt here, if you’re looking strictly at the iPad Pro as a work machine, you’re probably missing the point. The iPad Pro is simply a more beautiful, more premium object than even Apple’s own laptops.

It’s easy to take for granted, but the hardware in this tablet really is amazing: Face ID, dual rear cameras that are quite good and paired with LiDAR, quad speakers with superb sound and decent volume, excellent microphones, support for the Apple Pencil, the best screen you can get on a portable device, and on and on.

The reason to get the iPad Pro 12.9 (or even the 11) is simply to get the best, nicest iPad. Unless you can specifically answer right now which app in your workflow is slowed down by the specs on a lesser iPad, the $599 iPad Air or even the $329 base iPad offer the same core features that most people really use.

Except for a slim minority of people, the justification for getting an iPad Pro isn’t its feature set, it’s the experience of using a well-made, high-end object. Until I hit the limits of iPadOS (which I hit regularly), I enjoy using an iPad Pro more than I do any other computer.

The wonderful Mini LED display on the 12.9-inch iPad Pro doesn’t change any of those equations, it just makes the nicest iPad Pro even nicer. And so my yearly refrain about the iPad Pro remains. If you want the very best iPad, this is the very best iPad.

Just remember, it’s an iPad.

Apple iPad Pro 12.9-inch (2021) review: Can it finally replace the laptop?

(Pocket-lint) – A lot has happened in the world since the launch of the iPad Pro 12.9-inch in 2020, yet the need for us to work on the go is still an key factor for many people.

Apple’s 2021 iPad Pro looks to up the ante once again, bringing a new processor, a new screen, 5G connectivity, as well as improvements to the camera and elsewhere.

So, is this the year that the Apple iPad Pro will finally – yes finally – let you ditch the laptop altogether? We’ve been using the iPad Pro 2021 with M1 processor to find out.

Design gets heavier

Same design as 2020 model
Finishes: Silver or Space Grey
Dimensions: 281 x 215 x 6.4mm
Weight: 682g (Wi-Fi), 685g (5G)

Having launched previously with a much squarer design, which has since been adopted by the iPhone, the iPad Pro keeps an almost identical design to its previous offering.

For 2021 the 12.9-inch model is ever so slightly thicker than previous versions, thanks to new Mini LED screen technology, but it will still fit your previous cases (albeit snugly), including the Apple Magic Keyboard that launched in 2020.

Pocket-lint

That extra thickness also means it’s a bit heavier, with around 40g extra. While that’s not hugely noticeable over the previous version, it does mean that the Pro is getting heavier and heavier – which is something to bear in mind.

To put it in perspective, though, the 2021 Pro is actually the same weight as the original iPad from way back in 2010. And while no one will begrudge that this iPad is considerably more powerful, it’s interesting that all that tech, and batteries to power it, means that the days of a thin-and-light iPad have come to an end – well, certainly at the top-end of this market.

Why’s that important? Because it is no longer a slip-in-your-bag-and-not-notice-it device any more. Add in the Magic Keyboard – which is another 710g – and you’ve got a device that’s 1.395kg. That’s roughly the same as the company’s M1 13-inch MacBook Pro or many other Windows-based laptops – indeed it’s actually not too difficult to find sub-1kg laptops.

Display gets brighter

12.9-inch ‘Liquid Retina XDR’ Mini LED display
2732 x 2048 resolution (264ppi)
1600-nit peak brightness
120Hz refresh rate

The 2021 iPad Pro gets an updated display technology – called Mini LED – which makes it considerably brighter than older models. It’s a relatively new panel technology that’s only just making its way into the latest TVs.

What is Mini LED? The display technology explained

In the case of this 12.9-inch model that means over 10,000 LEDs are positioned behind the screen to create, at times, a much brighter display that is also more nuanced to what is happening on the screen.

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The enhanced technology is instantly noticeable. The screen is physically brighter for starters, and has the ability to increase that brightness further depending on what is required. Previously the peak brightness was 600 nits, now that can go up to 1600 nits for those high dynamic range (HDR) moments.

While the average user will benefit from watching high-resolution content from their favourite streaming service – even the end credits of a movie look stunning – creatives will certainly enjoy the ability to see all that extra detail in their images or video, especially if they are working within the realms of HDR or Dolby Vision.

Combine that with the Pro’s usual array of screen tech – such as P3 wide colour gamut, ProMotion (120Hz refresh rate), and True Tone – and you won’t find much to complain about when it comes to the screen.

What is Apple’s True Tone display?

Front-facing camera gets more intelligent

Improved front-facing camera: 12-megapixel, 122-degree field of view
New ‘Center Stage’ technology (for subject tracking)

If you’re like us, you’ll have spent a lot of time in 2020 on video calls talking to colleagues, friends, and family. So for 2021, the iPad Pro celebrates video calling by adding a new front-facing TrueDepth Camera.

It’s unique to the iPad (at launch anyway – we suspect that will change in the future) and for the most part you won’t notice that it’s ultra-wide. That’s because of a new feature Apple has introduced specifically for the iPad Pro: Center Stage.

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No doubt inspired by devices like the Facebook Portal and Amazon Echo Show 10, the idea is that the front-facing camera can now follow you as you move about so you’re always “centre stage”.

By cropping into the captured image to deliver the same image crop iPad users are used to, nothing physically moves within the iPad itself. Instead Applehas opted to emulate that movement by digitally cropping in on the image as it follows you.

The feature, which works just as well in Apple FaceTime as it does in Zoom and other video calling apps, can be fun, but it can become jarring.

Anything with a head and shoulders is automatically picked up and the frame will resize to fit them in. Add more people and the feature zooms out to make sure everyone is in the frame. That’s fantastic for a family catch-ups with the kids trying to jostle around the iPad Pro screen, or for ensuring you’re fully in the shot.

The 122-degree viewpoint is wide enough to catch most of you, wide enough to track you around the room, and wide enough to still move if you’ve stepped some distance from the camera (we got to around 5 metres away).

Where things get tricky is if you move around when using it and the iPad Pro is stationary on the desk. Not because it doesn’t follow you, but because of the fluidity to the follow. You move and the camera slowly moves with you.

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The resulting affect is as if Apple has applied a Ken Burns effect to dramatise your video call. Or, as we found when being fairly close to the camera, it looks a bit like being on a boat and bobbing up and down with the tide. It can, at times, be very nauseating.

Best tablet 2021: Top tablets to buy today

By Britta O’Boyle
·
19 May 2021

However, go hands-free and the technology helps stabilise your movement – making it a much better experience as the tracking is kept to a minimum and less pronounced.

It’s probably why business calls from our desk garnered plenty of complaints, but family calls resulted in much more positive feedback with the grandparents in awe of the technology in action, and a chance to see everyone for the first time without us having to stand miles away from the screen.

Performance: Everything is faster

Apple M1 processor, 8GB/16GB RAM
Options for 128GB to 2TB storage
Apple Pencil support (2nd Gen)
LiDAR sensor on back
Thunderbolt / USB4

With every iteration the iPad Pro gets a faster processor, normally on par with the iPhone. This year, rather than trying to keep pace with the iPhone, the iPad keeps pace with the Mac.

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Because now you’ll find Apple’s new M1 processor instead of an upgraded iPhone processor powering the pro tablet. Yes, the same chip that powers the MacBook Air or iMac or MacBook Pro now powers the 2021 iPad Pro. We’ll let that sink in for a moment.

According to Apple that results in a 50 per cent boost in performance without compromising the battery – so you’ll still get around 10 hours per charge. Although, just like a Mac, the battery life widely varies in performance depending on what you do and how bright that screen is.

Also just like a Mac, there are now RAM options for the first time on the iPad Pro, all the way up to 16GB – although that option is restricted to the 1TB or 2TB storage options (you guessed it, that means pricey pricey), whereas it’s 8GB RAM for the 128GB, 256GB, or 512GB storage capacities (and more reasonable price points).

Pocket-lint

The M1 processing power means the iPad Pro whizzes along with any various tasks that you’ll throw at it, just in the same way we find apps on the M1 MacBook Pro perform.

Whether that’s photo editing in Adobe Lightroom, drawing in Procreate, or designing in Affinity Designer, we had no problem loading, importing, editing, or saving large files on any of the ‘pro’ apps we use.

Working with large sound and video files proved little stress to the new 2021 iPad Pro either, while power hungry games like Asphalt 9, Call of Duty, or NBA2K21 loaded almost instantly – and, yes, noticeably faster than on previous iPad Pro models.

And if the M1 isn’t enough to keep that workflow process happy, the iPad Pro 12.9-inch now also comes in a 5G flavour for those who want speedy connectivity on the go. An afternoon hot-spotting via an EE SIM proved just as productive as being on the Wi-Fi in the home office.

Pocket-lint

Elsewhere there’s an improved Thunderbolt / USB4 port for transferring files to and from the device even faster – it’s up to 40Gbps, whereas previously it was USB-C and therefore 10Gbps.

You still get the dual camera and LiDAR sensor setup on the back for taking pictures, video, or playing with AR too. It’s the same 12-megapixel main and 10-megapixel wider-angle as on the previous generation.

iPadOS needs to offer more

Software: iPadOS 14.5

Given that the iPad Pro has the same technical power of a MacBook Air but running iPadOS, it can at times feel a little underwhelming in terms of what you can do – especially given the sheer power under the hood.

Apple broke iPadOS away from iOS a number of years ago to be able to offer things like file transfer and track support. But now with the more powerful innards it feels like it needs to do more than just offer a series of app icons on the Home Screen.

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Of course Apple watchers will know that we’re due an announcement for iPadOS 15 at WWDC in June 2021, so we’re hoping that a greater emphasis on multi-tasking, a more useful Home Screen option, and other features will come to the experience later this year. That could be a game-changer.

It’s not that the iPad Pro 2021 isn’t capable – far from it – it’s just at we can feel that there’s something much bigger coming that’s just around the corner to help capitalise on that new found power within.

Verdict

When Steve Jobs first revealed the iPad back in 2010 it was all about casual reading and surfing from the sofa, about access to apps to empower, entertain, and educate us.

More than a decade on and the 2021 iPad Pro still embraces those principles. But for today’s creative types who want more than just basic typing and surfing it’s a more empowering experience – largely thanks to the M1 processor – bringing greater opportunity for both work and play.

For all intents and purposes the 2021 iPad Pro 12.9-inch is like a touchscreen-enabled MacBook Pro with 5G connectivity that runs iPadOS instead of macOS. It’s the closest to a laptop-replacement that Apple has ever taken the iPad.

Yet the iPad Pro is still in transition. It doesn’t completely replace the laptop just yet, because Apple hasn’t quite cracked the software. So if that’s what you’re after then let’s hope iPadOS 15 changes that later in 2021.

Also consider

Pocket-lint

iPad Air (2020)

The ‘non-pro’ iPad will be good enough for many. So unless you want the higher storage, ProMotion higher refresh rate, or dual cameras, you’re just as well getting the iPad Air as the iPad Pro 11.

Read our review

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Writing by Stuart Miles. Editing by Mike Lowe.

‘HiFi’ icon spotted in Spotify’s iOS app suggests a Spotify HiFi launch is imminent

(Image credit: TheMonarc/Reddit (Spotify) )

Hot on the heels of Apple announcing Apple Music lossless and Spatial Audio earlier this week, we have a new clue that suggests the previously announced Spotify HiFi lossless tier could be with us soon.

One Reddit user, TheMonarc, has apparently been able to find the Spotify HiFi menu in a song in its iOS app, indicating that Spotify’s long-awaited higher quality offering may launch imminently. So far, the only official word from the green streaming giant is that it’ll arrive sometime this year.

According to the Reddit user, a glitch in the Spotify app for iOS meant that they were able to access the HiFi menu. As first reported by 9to5Mac, the user explains: “I successfully opened the ‘HiFi’ menu by quickly tapping the glitched icon upon app launch.” The tipster shared some screenshots, which feature a small HiFi button in the bottom right of the screen to deploy Spotify HiFi.

Spotify announced in February that it had designs on a CD-quality subscription tier, initially saying the HiFi service would launch later this year as an add-on for Spotify Premium subscribers. However, considering the popular streaming platform has since raised its prices, while arch-rival Apple Music has just announced it’s making lossless – CD quality and 24-bit hi-res – and Spatial Audio listening free to subscribers from June, it’s unclear what Spotify’s current stance on pricing is.

Again, the HiFi icon on Spotify apparently appeared in the lower right corner of the app. Clicking on it led to the advice: “Use wired devices or speakers that are capable of playing lossless audio, 16-bit/44.1kHz quality or higher, to successfully listen to music in HiFi.”

If Spotify HiFi is indeed about to launch, the premium music streaming war will be ready. Amazon just made its HD subscription tier free to all Amazon Music users and Apple Music is not going to charge more for lossless. Tidal, our current favourite service and 2020 Award winner, still charges £20 ($20) per month for its HiFi membership, while Qobuz also asks a significant premium over Amazon and Apple. So, the ball’s in your court, Spotify…

MORE:

Understand why Spotify HiFi is missing something – but will it matter?

And Apple Music’s new service isn’t perfect either… Apple Music lossless: which devices will (and won’t) play lossless and Spatial Audio

Not sure which deserves your subscription fee? See best music streaming services 2021: free streams to hi-res audio

Google Photos will soon make animated photos from your still shots

Google Photos will soon have a cool new trick: if you take two similar images with your phone’s camera, the app will be able to create an animated, moving shot that combines them. It does this by using machine learning to synthesize movement between the two shots. Google creates new frames between them, resulting in a “vivid moving picture.” Google’s Shimrit Ben-Yair made this sound like something that parents will love since now your multiple attempts at the same shot will allow for this added benefit.

The new feature is called “cinematic moments,” and it will work on both Android and iOS, Ben-Yair said.

Google also announced a new locked folder feature that will let you hide your most sensitive images behind a folder protected by a password or thumbprint. The app will also soon let you hide specific people or periods of your life from its “memories” to avoid unwanted reminders of the past.

Developing… we’re adding more to this post, but you can follow along with our Google I/O 2021 live blog to get the news even faster.

Android 12 preview: first look at Google’s radical new design

There are new features, but it’s the biggest design update in years

Google is announcing the latest beta for Android 12 today at Google I/O. It has an entirely new design based on a system called “Material You,” featuring big, bubbly buttons, shifting colors, and smoother animations. It is “the biggest design change in Android’s history,” according to Sameer Samat, VP of product management, Android and Google Play.

That might be a bit of hyperbole, especially considering how many design iterations Android has seen over the past decade, but it’s justified. Android 12 exudes confidence in its design, unafraid to make everything much larger and a little more playful. Every big design change can be polarizing, and I expect Android users who prefer information density in their UI may find it a little off-putting. But in just a few days, it has already grown on me.

There are a few other functional features being tossed in beyond what’s already been announced for the developer betas, but they’re fairly minor. The new design is what matters. It looks new, but Android by and large works the same — though, of course, Google can’t help itself and again shuffled around a few system-level features.

I’ve spent a couple of hours demoing all of the new features and the subsequent few days previewing some of the new designs in the beta that’s being released today. Here’s what to expect in Android 12 when it is officially released later this year.

Android 12’s new design includes a lot of color and customization

Image: Google

Material You design and better widgets

Android 12 is one implementation of a new design system Google is debuting called Material You. Cue the jokes about UX versus UI versus… You, I suppose. Unlike the first version of Material Design, this new system is meant to mainly be a set of principles for creating interfaces — one that goes well beyond the original paper metaphor. Google says it will be applied across all of its products, from the web to apps to hardware to Android. Though as before, it’s likely going to take a long time for that to happen.

In any case, the point is that the new elements in Android 12 are Google’s specific implementations of those principles on Pixel phones. Which is to say: other phones might implement those principles differently or maybe even not at all. I can tell you what Google’s version of Android 12 is going to look and act like, but only Samsung can tell you what Samsung’s version will do (and, of course, when it will arrive).

The feature Google will be crowing the most about is that when you change your wallpaper, you’ll have the option to automatically change your system colors as well. Android 12 will pull out both dominant and complementary colors from your wallpaper automatically and apply those colors to buttons and sliders and the like. It’s neat, but I’m not personally a fan of changing button colors that much.

You can customize the system colors to match your wallpaper in Android 12.

GIF: Google

The lock screen is also set for some changes: the clock is huge and centered if you have no notifications and slightly smaller but still more prominent if you do. It also picks up an accent color based on the theming system. I especially love the giant clock on the always-on display.

Android’s widget system has developed a well-deserved bad reputation. Many apps don’t bother with them, and many more haven’t updated their widget’s look since they first made one in days of yore. The result is a huge swath of ugly, broken, and inconsistent widgets for the home screen.

New widget designs in Android 12.

GIF: Google

Google is hoping to fix all of that with its new widget system. As with everything else in Android 12, the widgets Google has designed for its own apps are big and bubbly, with a playful design that’s not in keeping with how most people might think of Android. One clever feature is that when you move a widget around on your wallpaper, it subtly changes its background color to be closer to the part of the image it’s set upon.

I don’t have especially high hopes that Android developers will rush to adopt this new widget system, so I hope Google has a plan to encourage the most-used apps to get on it. Apple came very late to the home screen widget game on the iPhone, but it’s already surpassed most of the crufty widget abandonware you’ll find from most Android apps.

Bigger buttons and more animation

As you’ve no doubt gathered already from the photos, the most noticeable change in Android 12 is that all of the design elements are big, bubbly, and much more liberal in their use of animation. It certainly makes the entire system more legible and perhaps more accessible, but it also means you’re just going to get fewer buttons and menu items visible on a single screen.

That tradeoff is worth it, I think. Simple things like brightness and volume sliders are just easier to adjust now, for example. As for the animations, so far, I like them. But they definitely involve more visual flourish than before. When you unlock or plug in your phone, waves of shadow and light play across the screen. Apps expand out clearly from their icon’s position, and drawers and other elements slide in and out with fade effects.

More animations mean more resources and potentially more jitter, but Samat says the Android team has optimized how Android displays core elements. The windows and package manager use 22 percent less CPU time, the system server uses 15 percent less of the big (read: more powerful and battery-intensive) core on the processor, and interrupts have been reduced, too.

Android has another reputation: solving for jitter and jank by just throwing ever-more-powerful hardware at the problem: faster chips, higher refresh rate screens, and the like. Hopefully none of that will be necessary to keep these animations smooth on lower-end devices. On my Pixel 5, they’ve been quite good.

One last bit: there’s a new “overscroll” animation — the thing the screen does when you scroll to the end of a page. Now, everything on the screen will sort of stretch a bit when you can’t scroll any further. Maybe an Apple patent expired.

Shuffling system spaces around

It wouldn’t be a new version of Android without Google mucking about with notifications, Google Assistant, or what happens when you press the power button. With Android 12, we’ve hit the trifecta. Luckily, the changes Google has made mostly represent walking back some of the changes it made in Android 11.

The combined Quick Settings / notifications shade remains mostly the same — though the huge buttons mean you’re going to see fewer of them in either collapsed or expanded views. The main difference in notifications is mostly aesthetic. Like everything else, they’re big and bubbly. There’s a big, easy-to-hit down arrow for expanding them, and groups of notifications are put together into one bigger bubble. There’s even a nice little visual flourish when you begin to swipe a notification away: it forms its own roundrect, indicating that it has become a discrete object.

The quick settings and notification shade have gotten a facelift in Android 12.

GIF: Google

The thing that will please a lot of Android users is that after just a year, Google has bailed on its idea of creating a whole new power button menu with Google Wallet and smart home controls. Instead, both of those things are just buttons inside the quick settings shade, similar to Samsung’s solution.

Holding down the power button now just brings up Google Assistant. Samat says it was a necessary change because Google Assistant is going to begin to offer more contextually aware features based on whatever screen you’re looking at. I say the diagonal swipe-in from the corner to launch Assistant was terrible, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it seriously reduced how much people used it.

I also have to point out that it’s a case of Google adopting gestures already popular on other phones: the iPhone’s button power brings up Siri, and a Galaxy’s button brings up Bixby.

New privacy features in Android 12.

Image: Google

New privacy features for camera, mic, and location

Google is doing a few things with privacy in Android 12, mostly focused on three key sensors it sees as trigger points for people: location, camera, and microphone.

The camera and mic will now flip on a little green dot in the upper-right of the screen, indicating that they’re on. There are also now two optional toggles in Quick Settings for turning them off entirely at a system level.

When an app tries to use one of them, Android will pop up a box asking if you want to turn it back on. If you choose not to, the app thinks it has access to the camera or mic, but all Android gives it is a black nothingness and silence. It’s a mood.

For location, Google is adding another option for what kind of access you can grant an app. Alongside the options to limit access to one time or just when the app is open, there are settings for granting either “approximate” or “precise” locations. Approximate will let the app know your location with less precision, so it theoretically can’t guess your exact address. Google suggests it could be useful for things like weather apps. (Note that any permissions you’ve already granted will be grandfathered in, so you’ll need to dig into settings to switch them to approximate.)

Google is also creating a new “Privacy Dashboard” specifically focused on location, mic, and camera. It presents a pie chart of how many times each has been accessed in the last 24 hours along with a timeline of each time it was used. You can tap in and get to the settings for any app from there.

The Android Private Compute Core

Another new privacy feature is the unfortunately named “Android Private Compute Core.” Unfortunately, because when most people think of a “core,” they assume there’s an actual physical chip involved. Instead, think of the APCC as a sandboxed part of Android 12 for doing AI stuff.

Essentially, a bunch of Android machine learning functions are going to be run inside the APCC. It is walled-off from the rest of the OS, and the functions inside it are specifically not allowed any kind of network access. It literally cannot send or receive data from the cloud, Google says. The only way to communicate with the functions inside it is via specific APIs, which Google emphasizes are “open source” as some kind of talisman of security.

Talisman or no, it’s a good idea. The operations that run inside the APCC include Android’s feature for ambiently identifying playing music. That needs to have the microphone listening on a very regular basis, so it’s the sort of thing you’d want to keep local. The APCC also hands the “smart chips” for auto-reply buttons based on your own language usage.

An easier way to think of it is if there’s an AI function you might think is creepy, Google is running it inside the APCC so its powers are limited. And it’s also a sure sign that Google intends to introduce more AI features into Android in the future.

No news on app tracking — yet

Location, camera, mic, and machine learning are all privacy vectors to lock down, but they’re not the kind of privacy that’s on everybody’s mind right now. The more urgent concern in the last few months is app tracking for ad purposes. Apple has just locked all of that down with its App Tracking Transparency feature. Google itself is still planning on blocking third-party cookies in Chrome and replacing them with anonymizing technology.

What about Android? There have been rumors that Google is considering some kind of system similar to Apple’s, but there won’t be any announcements about it at Google I/O. However, Samat confirmed to me that his team is working on something:

There’s obviously a lot changing in the ecosystem. One thing about Google is it is a platform company. It’s also a company that is deep in the advertising space. So we’re thinking very deeply about how we should evolve the advertising system. You see what we’re doing on Chrome.

From our standpoint on Android, we don’t have anything to announce at the moment, but we are taking a position that privacy and advertising don’t need to be directly opposed to each other. That, we don’t believe, is healthy for the overall ecosystem as a company. So we’re thinking about that working with our developer partners and we’ll be sharing more later this year.

The Android TV remote in Android 12.

Image: Google

A few other features

Google has already announced a bunch of features in earlier developer betas, most of which are under-the-hood kind of features. There are “improved accessibility features for people with impaired vision, scrolling screenshots, conversation widgets that bring your favorite people to the home screen” and the already-announced improved support for third-party app stores. On top of those, there are a few neat little additions to mention today.

First, Android 12 will (finally) have a built-in remote that will work with Android TV systems like the Chromecast with Google TV or Sony TVs. Google is also promising to work with partners to get car unlocking working via NFC and (if a phone supports it) UWB. It will be available on “select Pixel and Samsung Galaxy phones” later this year, and BMW is on board to support it in future vehicles.

Android 12 will add some new integrations between Android phones and Chromebooks.

GIF: Google

For people with Chromebooks, Google is continuing the trend of making them work better with Android phones. Later this year, Chrome OS devices will be able to immediately access new photos in an Android phone’s photo library over Wi-Fi Direct instead of waiting for them to sync up to the Google Photos cloud. Google still doesn’t have anything as good as AirDrop for quickly sending files across multiple kinds of devices, but it’s a good step.

Android already has fast pairing for quickly setting up Bluetooth devices, but it’s not built into the Bluetooth spec. Instead, Google has to work with individual manufacturers to enable it. A new one is coming on board today: Beats, which is owned by Apple. (Huh!) Ford and BMW cars will also support one-tap pairing.

Android Updates

As always, no story about a new version of Android would be complete without pointing out that the only phones guaranteed to get it in a timely manner are Google’s own Pixel phones. However, Google has made some strides in the past few years. Samat says that there has been a year-over-year improvement in the “speed of updates” to the tune of 30 percent.

A few years ago, Google changed the architecture of Android with something called Project Treble. It made the system a little more modular, which, in turn, made it easier for Android manufacturers to apply their custom versions of Android without mucking about in the core of it. That should mean faster updates.

Some companies have improved slightly, including the most important one, Samsung. However, it’s still slow going, especially for older devices. As JR Raphael has pointed out, most companies are not getting updates out in what should be a perfectly reasonable timeframe.

Beyond Treble, there may be some behind-the-scenes pressure happening. More and more companies are committing to providing updates for longer. Google also is working directly with Qualcomm to speed up updates. Since Qualcomm is, for all intents and purposes, the monopoly chip provider for Android phones in the US, that should make a big difference, too.

That’s all heartening, but it’s important to set expectations appropriately. Android will never match iOS in terms of providing timely near-universal updates as soon as a new version of the OS is available. There will always be a gap between the Android release and its availability for non-Pixel phones. That’s just the way the Android ecosystem works.

Android 12.

Photo composite by Amelia Holowaty Krales and Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

That’s Android 12. It may not be the biggest feature drop in years, but it is easily the biggest visual overhaul in some time. And Android needed it. Over time and over multiple iterations, lots of corners of the OS were getting a little crufty as new ideas piled on top of each other. Android 12 doesn’t completely wipe the slate clean and start over, but it’s a significant and ambitious attempt to make the whole system feel more coherent and consistent.

The beta that’s available this week won’t get there — the version I’m using lacks the theming features, widgets, and plenty more. Those features should get layered in as we approach the official release later this year. Assuming that Google can get this fresh paint into all of the corners, it will make Google’s version of Android a much more enjoyable thing to use.

Halide’s iPad camera app is here to recklessly promote tablet photography

One of the best third-party camera apps for iOS, Halide, is coming to the iPad, its developer Lux announced today. The iPhone app has a reputation for the amount of control it gives you over your photographs, and this functionality has been carried over to the iPad along with a redesigned interface that’s optimized for larger displays. The app is free to existing Halide owners, while new users can either pay a one-off purchase fee ($40) or go with monthly ($1.99) or yearly ($11.99) subscriptions.

Using iPads to take photographs has a bit of a reputation problem. Not only do Apple’s tablets tend to have fewer and lower-specced rear cameras than its phones, but the act of taking a photograph using a large tablet often looks just plain goofy. At least Lux appears to be aware of one of the most egregious iPad photography sins: taking photos at a concert. The company is teasing a potential future “Concert Mode,” which could automatically disable the camera if it detects it’s being used at a show.

“Concert Mode is disabled for now – as we trust our users to Do The Right Thing,” Lux tells me, “but we’re going to be ruthless about bringing this in a future update if people cannot behave.”

The app’s controls have been reconfigured to work better with a larger display. It’s got a toggle to switch between modes for left- and right-handed users, and key features have their controls arranged around the edges of the screen where they’re within thumbs’ reach. Like the iPhone app, Halide on the iPad allows for manual control of ISO, shutter speed, focus, and supports its recent RAW photography modes.

One of the more interesting features of Halide’s iPad app is a “Pro View” mode, which is a toggle that shrinks the viewfinder into the center of the display. Lux’s argument is that this makes it easier to take in the entire viewfinder, and it has the side benefit of creating extra space around the edges of the display for a bigger histogram, waveform, manual focus, and other controls.

Halide’s launch on the iPad isn’t going to convince anyone that tablets are the best devices for taking photographs. But if you insist on going against the grain, at least there’s a nicer way to do it now.

Apple Music lossless supported devices: what will (and won’t) play lossless and Spatial Audio, and why

(Image credit: Apple Music)

Apple Music is being upgraded in a big, big way. From June, the music streaming service will support CD-quality and hi-res lossless audio as well as Dolby Atmos-powered Spatial Audio, offering subscribers much higher quality, immersive playback.

Both lossless and Spatial Audio will be available to Apple Music users at no extra cost. Apple describes these two additions as Apple Music’s “biggest advancement ever in sound quality” – which we’d have to agree with. “Excellent news. Well done, Apple!”, we thought upon hearing the news.

But here comes the (rather large) downside.

Apple’s own headphones don’t support lossless audio. None of them. That means even if you’ve spent £549 ($549, AU$899) on a pair of AirPods Max, you can’t listen to Apple Music in the highest quality. Miffed? We don’t blame you.

That’s not the whole story, though, and not the only Apple device not able to take advantage of the new Apple Music features. Let’s take a look at which devices can benefit from hi-res audio, which don’t, and why…

What is Apple Music Lossless?

Essentially, it’s Apple embracing hi-res audio. Apple’s lossless streams use ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) to offer more detail and information in a recording.

Apple offers three tiers of higher resolution audio: CD quality (16-bit/44.1kHz), Apple Music Lossless (24-bit/48kHz), and Hi-Res Lossless (up to 24-bit/192kHz). You can choose your quality through the Settings > Music > Audio Quality section of Apple Music.

As of next month, all of Apple Music’s 75-million-strong music catalogue will be available in CD quality or Apple Music Lossless. At launch, 20 million will be accessible in the highest quality Hi-Res Lossless format, with the whole catalogue following “by the end of 2021”.

Apple Music isn’t the first service to offer lossless streaming, of course. Tidal, Qobuz and Amazon Music HD all offer CD-quality and hi-res listening, while Deezer offers the former. The Spotify HiFi lossless tier is due to offer CD-quality streams later in the year too.

What is Spatial Audio?

Another new addition to Apple Music is Spatial Audio, which is an Apple technology designed to provide “multidimensional sound and clarity”; to deliver surround sound and 3D audio via your headphones.

Spatial Audio was initially launched as part of iOS 14 and iPadOS 14, and the newer Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos feature for Apple Music is coming as part of the iOS 14.6 and iPadOS 14.6 updates that are due in June 2021.

Spatial Audio is a slightly different beast to this new Dolby Atmos-powered Spatial Audio for Apple Music in that it also utilises the sensors in Apple’s own headphones to enable head-tracking. Because the implementation for Apple Music of spatial audio is sound-only, there’s no head-tracking involved.

“Thousands” of Apple Music tracks will be available in Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos at launch, with more being added regularly.

Which Apple devices work with Apple Music lossless?

(Image credit: Apple)

The big news is that no model of AirPods will support lossless audio. In the case of the AirPods and AirPods Pro, that’s not exactly surprising, seeing as they’re both completely wireless and Apple only supports the AAC (rather than ALAC) codec over Bluetooth – that’s a step up from MP3, but nowhere near the quality of lossless.

The AirPods Max can be wired to an iPhone, so one might hope that that could be a way to get lossless audio. But actually they only work with analogue audio sources in wired listening mode. Which again means no lossless listening.

Its HomePod range of smart speakers also won’t support lossless – that’s the now discontinued HomePod and still-very-much-current HomePod Mini.

Apple’s iPhones (since the iPhone 7) natively support lossless – but only Apple Music Lossless, and not the highest quality Hi-Res Lossless (which delivers up to 24-bit/192kHz). If you want to listen to Apple Music tracks above 24-bit/48kHz on your iPhone, you’ll need to connect an external DAC and use a wired pair of headphones. Check out our guide for how to listen to hi-res audio on an iPhone.

The same is true of the Apple TV and iPad families, which are listed as supporting Apple Lossless, with no mention of Hi-Res Lossless.

Which Apple devices support Spatial Audio?

(Image credit: Apple)

Apple devices are much better represented when it comes to Spatial Audio through Apple Music. Some – like the AirPods Pro and Max – already support it, after all. And it will come to the standard AirPods 2 in due course.

In fact, it will be available on all AirPods and Beats headphones with an H1 or W1 chip. (That’s the AirPods, AirPods Pro, AirPods Max, BeatsX, Beats Solo3 Wireless, Beats Studio3, Powerbeats3 Wireless, Beats Flex, Powerbeats Pro, and Beats Solo Pro.) But you don’t have to line Apple’s pockets to hear the Dolby Atmos tracks: it will also work on any headphones connected to an iPhone or iPad. You just have to enable it manually.

To do so, head to Settings on your iPhone or iPad and then to Music – once the update has landed next month, a new Dolby Atmos option will be available. This will be set to Automatic by default, which means Dolby Atmos tracks will play correctly when you’re listening via any W1- or H1-enabled pair of Apple or Beats headphones, but not when you’re using third-party headphones. However, if you switch this option to Always On, even non-Apple headphones will play back Dolby Atmos tracks in all their sonic glory.

However, this only applies to Dolby Atmos Spatial Audio tracks on Apple Music, and not Spatial Audio content from other apps like TV. (Remember, Spatial Audio in the TV app is a slightly different beast in that it also utilises the sensors in Apple’s own headphones to enable head-tracking.)

The HomePod and HomePod Mini also support Spatial Audio, so you can fill your room with virtual 3D sound from a single device. As do the iPhone 11 onwards and iPad Pro (but not iPad, iPad Mini or iPad Air).

Playing from an Apple TV 4K into a Dolby Atmos soundbar or system will work too.

MORE:

Check out the best wireless headphones around

3D sound from a soundbar: Best Dolby Atmos soundbars

Try 30 Apple Music tips, tricks and features

Need new music? 10 Apple Music playlists to listen to right now

Spotify will auto-transcribe podcasts over the coming weeks

Spotify announced multiple updates to make its app more accessible across iOS and Android today, including a beta version of a podcast transcription feature. The company says it’ll start auto-transcribing certain exclusive and original shows over the coming weeks as part of a beta rollout. People will be able to read the transcript with or without audio and can tap on text to jump to that point in the audio. The company says the goal is to eventually “enable transcripts across all podcasts on Spotify.”

This is an especially helpful feature for people who want to scan and move around a podcast, possibly to hear a specific segment, and for people who would rather read than listen to a show. Spotify is one of the first major podcast apps to make this an automated feature.

Along with transcriptions, the app will undergo visual changes, too, starting today, in terms of button colors, text formatting, and size. The idea is to make it easier for people with low vision and visual impairments to navigate and use the app. This should also help with low lighting situations or high screen reflections, the company says. Additionally, iOS users can also make the text size much larger through their settings. To do so, they have to navigate to Settings > Accessibility and then tap “Display and Text Size.” From there, they can tap on “Larger Text” to make the text as large as they want.

Apple’s new iMac brings M1 goodness to the desktop

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This is an iMac unlike any other iMac we’ve seen before, and it all comes down to the M1 chip.

Sure, there are some other differences between this 24-inch iMac and the 21.5-inch model from 2019 that it’s replacing. There are better microphones and better speakers. There are fewer ports, and some of them have moved around. The screen is bigger and better. The keyboard now has TouchID. But the M1 is the star of the show.

It’s not just the performance increase. It’s not just the fact that you can run iOS and iPadOS apps natively on the system. It’s not just the new advanced image signal processor, which helps create better low-light images than I’ve ever seen from an integrated webcam. It’s also the groundbreaking efficiency with which this processor runs, which has enabled Apple to create a slim, sleek, and quite unique iMac chassis.

Whether you actually get every upgrade here depends on the configuration you choose. The entry-level iMac is $1,299 for 256GB of SSD storage, two Thunderbolt / USB 4 ports, 8GB of unified memory, and a seven-core GPU — but that’s only available in four colors and doesn’t come with TouchID. The model I tested bumps the storage up to 512GB and the memory up to 16GB. It has two USB-3 ports in addition to the two Thunderbolt, an eight-core GPU, Touch ID, and a gigabit Ethernet port (which is in the power brick). I also received both the Magic Mouse and the Magic Trackpad with my model. You’d need to pay a total of $2,028 to get everything Apple sent me (and which I’ll be sending back, for the record).

In short, this device costs money. And it’s true that you’d get similar performance and save a few hundred bucks, if you just plugged a Mac Mini into an external display. But this iMac has almost everything that most people need in one package: processing power, sure, but also a camera, speakers, microphones, a keyboard, a mouse, a trackpad, and a display. And they’re all good. This is a computer you can plonk on your desk and never think about again. And for some of the iMac’s target audience, that’s probably worth the extra money. You’re paying for simplicity.

The new iMac is completely redesigned, but instantly recognizable

The M1 processor uses what’s called a “hybrid” configuration. The easiest way to conceive of this is that most competing Intel and AMD chips have a number of equally “okay” cores, where Apple’s M1 has four very fast cores and four lower-powered high-efficiency cores. This allows M1 devices to deliver arguably the best performance-per-watt in the world. It also means that they’re nearly unbeatable in single-core workloads.

That advantage bore out in our benchmark testing. This iMac model achieved a higher score on the Geekbench 5 single-core benchmark than any Mac we’ve ever seen before — even the iMac Pro. That means if you’re looking for a device for simpler everyday tasks that don’t scale to every available CPU core (and that largely seems to be the demographic that Apple is trying to sell this machine to), there has literally never been a better iMac for you to buy.

You can see the rest of our benchmarks below:

Apple iMac 24 (2021) benchmarks

Benchmark	Score
Benchmark	Score
PugetBench for Premiere Pro	372
Cinebench R23 Multi	7782
Cinebench R23 Single	1505
Geekbench Multi	7668
Geekbench Single	1739
Geekbench OpenCL	19114

These results help illuminate where this iMac fits into Apple’s all-in-one lineup, and where its limitations are. The 24-incher is a significant improvement over the 21.5-inch iMac in both single-core and multi-core workloads. And it’s very comparable in graphics tasks — which is quite impressive, given that the 21.5-inch iMac has a discrete GPU and this one relies on what’s integrated with the M1.

On the other end, these results (with the exception of single-core performance) are not close to what we’d expect from the 27-inch Intel iMac with discrete graphics. In this comparison, multi-core results are more important. They indicate that the 27-inch iMac is going to do much better on the types of tasks that owners (or prospective buyers) are likely to be doing: intense multitasking, computations, design, video work, and other more complex loads that may leverage the GPU.

There are other limitations that may put some workloads out of reach. As is the case with the MacBook Pro and Mac Mini, you can’t configure the iMac with more than 16GB of memory and 2TB of storage; we wouldn’t recommend those specs to anyone who regularly edits 4K or 8K video, for example. The memory and storage are soldered, so you can’t upgrade them after purchase. Only one external display is supported (up to 6K resolution at 60Hz). Ports are also bizarrely limited; the base model has just two Thunderbolt / USB-4 ports and a headphone jack, while more expensive models have an additional two USB-3 ports and Gigabit Ethernet. These all may be reasons Apple is pushing this iMac as a “home and family” PC, even though its processor is clearly capable of all kinds of professional work.

The M1 processor’s efficiency allows the iMac to get away with a thin design and minimal fan noise, and still maintain performance

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Another way to interpret these numbers is that I was getting effectively the same performance out of this machine as we got from the M1 MacBook Pro and the Mac Mini. That’s completely unsurprising, since these devices all use the same processor. But it’s a good proxy for gauging whether the iMac can handle your work: if you expect you could get a task done with the M1 MacBook Pro, you should be able to do it on this.

More anecdotally, I was able to use my test unit for all kinds of daily tasks, from emailing to YouTube to amateur photo and video work. I was able to hop between over 25 Chrome tabs with Cinebench looping in the background, with no stutter or slowdown whatsoever. If you’re buying the iMac for this kind of thing, I can’t imagine you’ll see too many spinning wheels.

During this testing process, I also got a sense of just how well cooled this chassis is. On thinner laptops that I test often (including the fanless MacBook Air), you’ll see performance decrease if you run heavy tasks over and over again. None of that on this iMac: I looped Cinebench R23 as well as a Premiere Pro 4K video export several times over and never saw scores go down. It took a lot to get the fans going — they were checked out during my daily office multitasking. When they did spin up, mostly while I was working in Premiere, I could barely hear them. They were quieter than the background hum of my refrigerator. That’s quite a quality-of-life improvement over prior Intel iMacs.

The M1’s advantage, after all, has never been raw power; it’s the combination of power and efficiency. We saw much better battery life in the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro than we did in their Intel predecessors. Battery life obviously isn’t a concern with the iMac, but efficiency certainly is. Chips are limited by two things: the power available and how well their systems can keep them cool. They vent almost all the energy they use as heat, and because the M1 has such incredibly high performance per watt, Apple doesn’t need a heavy-duty cooling system to keep it from frying itself. Because it doesn’t need that heavy-duty cooling system, Apple has finally been able to redesign the iMac from the ground up.

The iMac’s chassis is so thin it looks like a big iPad minus the touchscreen

This iMac is sleek. Even though it has a 24-inch screen, it’s close in size to its 21.5-inch predecessor. Apple reduced the screen’s borders by close to 50 percent in order to squeeze the bigger screen into the compact chassis. This device is also 11.5 millimeters thick, or just under half an inch — which is quite thin as all-in-ones go. Next to the 27-inch iMac, it looks like a tablet on a stand.

Size isn’t everything; this iMac also comes in seven colors. There’s blue, green, pink, orange, purple, yellow, and the boring silver we know and love. I’m not quite convinced that the jazzier models will fit in outside of especially stylish homes and offices. But I will say: I’ve never seen so many of my friends, or so many people on TikTok, as excited about a tech product as they seem to be about the colored iMacs. The hues are a nice change, aren’t obnoxious, and are clearly a hit with certain crowds.

Some traditional iMac touches remain, of course. The bezels are still substantial compared to those of some modern monitors. You can’t raise or lower the display height — the built-in stand only allows tilt adjustments. (You can also buy it with a built-in VESA mount adapter.) And there’s still that pesky chin, though it’s no longer emblazoned with the Apple logo.

Pretty much every other notable part of the iMac has been upgraded in some way. There’s a 4.5K (4480 x 2520) Retina display, a step up from the predecessor’s 4096 x 2304 Retina display (though both have effectively the same pixel density). It has Apple’s True Tone technology, which automatically adjusts colors and intensity based on your surroundings.

But the screen is also another reminder that this iMac doesn’t have “Pro” in its name. Twenty-four inches is on the small side as screens go; most of the best external monitors are 27 inches or larger these days. Professionals on The Verge’s video team also noticed some vignetting on the sides of the screen, which caused issues with off-angle viewing — we had a similar issue with Apple’s Pro Display XDR. Of course, neither of these limitations were a problem for my untrained eye; I thought the display looked great, with sharp details and plenty of room for my Chrome tabs and apps.

Elsewhere, Apple has upgraded the camera, microphones, and speakers. The company claims that they’re the best camera, mic system, and speaker system that have ever appeared in a Mac. I’d believe it. The six-speaker sound system is easily on par with a good external speaker. I played some music in my kitchen, and it was audible all over the house. Percussion and bass were strong, and I felt very immersed in the songs. It also supports spatial audio when playing video with Dolby Atmos.

The new camera has a higher resolution and better picture quality for video calls

I don’t have too much to say about the three-mic array except that nobody on my Zoom calls had any trouble hearing me. But the webcam was a very pleasant surprise. The iMac has a 1080p FaceTime HD camera, which has a higher resolution than the 720p shooter that lives in the 21.5-inch iMac (as well as the MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and many other AIOs). The M1 also lends a hand here: its built-in image signal processor and neural engines help optimize your picture in low-light settings.

I wouldn’t say I looked amazing on my Zoom calls — parts of my background were sometimes washed out, and the image looked processed in some dimmer areas. But I was visible and clear, which is better than you get from most webcams these days. And the difference between this webcam and the grainy mess the MacBook Pro has is night and day.

The iMac is the computer to get if you just want to buy it and not think about it for the next five to ten years

When I review a computer, my task is usually to figure out for whom that computer is made.

But all kinds of people use iMacs, from college students to accountants to podcast producers to retired grandparents. And this model has arguably the most widespread consumer appeal of any iMac that Apple has made in recent years. So it’s much easier to figure out for whom this iMac isn’t made.

It’s not for people who can’t handle dongles and docks; I kept a USB-C to USB-A dongle next to me on my desk while I was testing the iMac, and I used it very frequently. It’s not for people who already own a 27-inch iMac, because it would be a downgrade in display size and quality, port selection, upgradability, and raw power. And it’s not for people with serious performance needs.

It’s not for people who are looking for the very best value for their money. Most folks won’t need the specs and accessories that I tested here, but even $1,299, the base price, is certainly more than plenty of people want to spend on a computer. The base Mac Mini is $600 cheaper than the base iMac; plug that into a monitor and some speakers (you can find plenty of good ones for well under $600), and you’ll get the same M1 performance at a massive discount.

And that, right there, is the biggest reason that this iMac, despite its power, is primarily targeting the family market. Because it’s asking you to pay more in order to do less. You’re paying $600 not to have to research and budget out monitors, speakers, webcams, docks, keyboards, and mice. You’re paying not to have to arrange thousands of things on your desk. You’re paying for a device where everything, out of the box, works well. You’re paying to eliminate fuss.

Tech enthusiasts (especially those who want to pop their machines open and make their own upgrades) may see that as a waste of money. And for them, it probably is. But they’re not the target audience for this Mac — even if its specs might suit their needs.

Could Apple have done more with this iMac? Of course. I was hoping to see a 30-inch, 6K iMac with a powerhouse 12-core workstation chip this month as much as the next person. But I have faith that we’ll get one in the future — and in the meantime, I’m glad Apple released this. It’s not earth-shattering in its design; it doesn’t redefine its category. But it’s fun. It improves upon the 21.5-inch iMac to offer a simple, attractive, and very functional device for users across all kinds of categories. It’s not the iMac to beat — but it is the iMac for most people to buy.

Astell & Kern AK USB-C Dual DAC Cable

Our Verdict

Astell & Kern’s digital expertise comes good in this entertaining USB-C cable DAC

For

Notable improvement to audio
Clean, precise character
Nicely made

Against

No iOS device compatibility
No MQA support

For a relatively simple product, Astell & Kern’s first portable DAC has a rather convoluted moniker. ‘Astell & Kern AK USB-C Dual DAC Cable’ isn’t something you’d want to say out loud (or type) often but, to the company’s credit, it sums up the product perfectly: it’s a USB-C cable with two DACs inside.

Thankfully, the name doesn’t attempt to further explain its purpose, so let us fill in the gaps.

Features

(Image credit: Astell & Kern)

Portable DACs – compact DACs that don’t rely on mains power – have arrived in force in recent years with the mission of conveniently improving the sound quality between your phone or computer and wired headphones. That’s because the digital-to-analogue converters and analogue output stages of these do-all devices are generally pretty poor.

Though wireless headphones connected to a device may be the portable audio preference of many nowadays, a wired set-up generally still offers the best performance-per-pound value, particularly if you want to play hi-res audio.

Astell & Kern AK USB-C Dual DAC Cable tech specs

(Image credit: Astell & Kern)

Input USB-C

Output 3.5mm

Hi-res audio PCM 32-bit/384kHz, DSD256

Weight 27g

While there are a number of traditional box or USB stick portable DACs in existence, the AK USB-C Dual DAC Cable is one of an increasingly common group of DACs designed to enhance on-the-go or desktop sound quality in cable form. This Astell & Kern, like the Zorloo Ztella and THX Onyx, is essentially an extension of your headphones cable; the discreet middleman between them and your source device.

At one end is a 3.5mm output, and at the other is a USB-C connection for plugging into any device with that output, such as an Android phone, Windows 10 PC, tablet or MacOS computer. For the bulk of our testing, we use it with a Samsung Galaxy S21 and Apple MacBook Pro.

Some portable DACs, such as the multi-Award-winning Audioquest DragonFly Red, have a USB-A connection instead, but now that USB-C is becoming more prevalent it makes sense for a portable DAC like this one to adopt it. You can always buy a USB-C-to-USB-A adapter to cater for devices with such ports.

Portable DACs can often be used with Apple’s camera adapter to make them compatible with iPhones and iPads, but Astell & Kern says that isn’t the case here “due to the dual DAC incompatibility and power restrictions of iOS devices”. So iPhone users will have to look elsewhere.

The dual DACs (specifically, two Cirrus Logic CS43198 MasterHIFi chips) support native high-resolution audio playback of PCM files up to 32-bit/384kHz and DSD256. However, due to the AK USB-C Dual DAC Cable’s lack of MQA file support, Tidal HiFi subscribers won’t be able to benefit from the (MQA-encoded) hi-res Tidal Masters that are part of the tier’s offering. It’s also worth noting that the DAC has been built for sound output only, so it won’t work with headphones with an in-line remote.

A portable cable DAC is new territory for Astell & Kern – the company is most renowned for its portable music players but also makes headphones and desktop audio systems. But digital-to-analogue conversion technology is something the company is well versed in. And that shows.

For the AK USB-C Dual DAC Cable, Astell & Kern says it developed a circuit chip on a six-layer PCB just 14 x 41mm in size, featuring bespoke capacitors found in its music players, and optimised to prevent power fluctuations. The analogue amplifier (with a 2Vrms output level), meanwhile, is designed to drive even power-hungry and high-impedance headphones.

Sound

(Image credit: Astell & Kern)

We use a range of headphones, from high-end Grados to more modest Beyerdynamic on-ears and Sennheiser Momentum earbuds – and the Astell & Kern doesn’t struggle to power any of them. However, we would be wary of your playback device’s volume output level when you first connect the DAC and plug in your headphones (especially if you’re using more than one pair) to avoid getting an unexpected earful. It’s something Astell & Kern advises in the manual, too.

Adding the AK USB-C Dual DAC Cable between these headphones and our source devices (which provide power to the DAC) makes the world of difference. As the likes of the Zorloo Ztella and Audioquest DragonFly Black have shown, even a modest outlay can make a significant improvement to your portable sound.

The Samsung Galaxy S21 is by no means the worst-sounding smartphone out there, and yet the Astell & Kern makes music come through our wired headphones much clearer, cleaner and punchier than with just a standard USB-C-to-3.5mm dongle. This little DAC doesn’t just do the basics by amplifying the sound and beefing up its tone, it also goes the extra mile to open up music and let you in on more of its detail.

Considering the increasing competition in the portable DAC market, you could say it’s a necessary mile. One of our favourite portable DACs, the Audioquest DragonFly Red, proves to be a notably more insightful and rhythmically entertaining performer – but then it is significantly pricier at £169 ($200, AU$280). For this modest amount of money, the AK USB-C Dual DAC Cable is a very attractive proposition indeed.

We play Lesley by Dave ft Ruelle and the rapper’s poignant storytelling is all the more compelling for the boost in clarity and vocal insight delivered by the DAC. The melodious synth chords, which twinkle with clarity against the contrasting backdrop, are planted with precision on either side.

It’s a similar story as we plug the Astell & Kern into our MacBook Pro and settle into Big Thief’s Shoulder, the presentation pleasantly opened up and generously populated with definition aplenty around Adrianne Lenker’s pleading vocal delivery and the warm textures of the band’s hallmark folksy guitar licks.

Build

(Image credit: Astell & Kern)

So, it sounds good. But what’s it like to live with? After all, this is an everyday device that’s likely to sit in your pocket or on your desktop during the 9 to 5. Perhaps most crucially for a device of this nature, the AK USB-C Dual DAC Cable is compact, lightweight (27g) and well made – to the extent that we feel comfortable tossing it in a bag or shoving it down trouser pockets before long.

The twisted cable between the USB-C output and main body – made up of Technora aramid fibre at its core, wrapped by copper layers and finished with shielding treatment – makes it easy to manipulate the device into a jeans pocket when connected to a phone, and feels built to last. It also helps absorb the shock of accidental knocks, unlike USB stick designs.

While we would expect a device like this to last years, in the weeks we spend in its company we feel confident of its durability. Even when we accidentally yank the device out of our playback source with the cable a number of times, it proves hardy enough to withstand it.

While made to fit nicely into a pocket, some consideration has also clearly been taken to make the AK USB-C Dual DAC Cable look nice when it’s not hidden away – when it’s on a desktop, for example.

The metal casing at the end of the cable – comparable with one of the more compact USB sticks in our collection – has a polished finish and angled surface that resonate with the aesthetic of the company’s premium music players. Design niceties on products like these are only ever going to be the small touches, but they’re here at least.

Verdict

Before Astell & Kern announced its AK USB-C Dual DAC Cable, it wouldn’t have been a stretch to imagine the company making such a product. It has been in the portable digital audio game for years and enjoyed much success.

That know-how has been put to good use in offering USB-C device owners an affordable, practical way to soup up their smartphone or desktop sound through wired headphones. It’s such an appealing option that we can almost forgive the unwieldy name.

SCORES

Sound 5
Features 4
Build 5

MORE:

Read our guide to the best portable DACs

Read our Audioquest DragonFly Red review

Read our Audioquest DragonFly Black review

Forget AirPods 3 leaks, Beats Studio Buds have now shown up in iOS beta code

(Image credit: MacRumours)

Apple is working on a new pair of Beats true wireless earbuds, according to images found in the latest tvOS and iOS beta codes by MacRumours and 9to5Mac.

Referenced as ‘Beats Studio Buds’ in the tvOS 14.6 and iOS 14.6 codes, they will reportedly feature noise cancellation and, courtesy of an Apple chip, “Hey, Siri” voice control.

As suggested by a MacRumours mock-up image (above) and an animation of the earbuds tweeted by the publication’s Steve Moser (below), they embrace the more familiar rounded form as adopted by the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Pro Buds, Google Pixel Buds and Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 2, without the fitness-friendly ear hooks of the Beats Powerbeats Pro. We can expect them to stick with silicone eartips and come in a choice of black, white and red finishes.

Animations of Beats Studio Buds: 🧵 pic.twitter.com/XYVvYP7ez3May 17, 2021

Rumours have been circling the launch of the AirPods 3 is imminent. That may still be the case, however Apple has already dropped a bombshell this week by announcing it is adding lossless audio and Dolby Atmos-powered Spatial Audio tracks to Apple Music for free next month.

Could the Beats Studio Buds be released before the next-generation AirPods? Considering that iOS 14.6 is expected to arrive in the coming weeks alongside the new Apple Music features, we should expect the launch of the new wireless earbuds to coincide with, or shortly follow, that.

MORE:

All the AirPods 3 leaks: release date, price, design and news

The lowdown on the heavily rumoured Google Pixel Buds A-Series earbuds

Check out our pick of the best true wireless earbuds you can buy

Apple Music Dolby Atmos will work with all headphones