iPad Pro M4 Teardown Finds Easier-To-Access Battery, Tandem OLED Design Preview

In line with the planned schedule for previous releases, iFixit has taken apart Apple’s new redesigned iPad Pro. He found that the iPad itself is a big improvement in repairability over its predecessor, but the Apple Pencil Pro is basically unusable.

The first step of the teardown video revealed arguably Apple’s most exciting new technology: the “Tandem OLED” display. This doesn’t reveal anything we didn’t already know and didn’t describe in our review last week, but it’s interesting to see up close what it all looks like.

The teardown also revealed that there were not one but two metal brackets all along the middle of the iPad to improve durability. Some were concerned that the new, thinner iPad Pro would be thinner than previous models and break in half, but durability tests have shown that’s not the case. This could partly explain why.

Moving on to the battery, the 38.99 Wh battery (up from 40.33 Wh) in the 13-inch iPad Pro M4 was difficult to remove, but it was still a notable improvement over the previous unit. Before, you had to remove almost everything to access the battery. Now, opening it still involves going through a complicated series of screws, tabs, etc., but you can get there without removing much else.

All told, the iPad Pro is still difficult to repair, but it’s doable and, in some ways, easier than before.

The Apple Pencil Pro, which iFixit also took apart, is a different story. Watch the video for more details, but you’ll watch it more for entertainment at how ridiculously impractical (nearly impossible, in fact) the process is rather than a how-to. It was a time-consuming task filled with tasks that required extreme precision to avoid irreversible damage. iFixit concludes that it is simply not possible to perform repairs on this $129 device.

Listing image by iFixit