KEEP A TAB

Tablets made a comeback of sorts in the post-pandemic world. But their sales stagnated towards the end of 2022. Is it time to write them off? Not yet, perhaps

- Ashwin Rajagopalan

WRITE off tabs at your own risk. Tablets made a comeback of sorts in a post-pandemic world when our workflows and patterns changed forever. Those soaring sales might have stagnated somewhat towards the end of 2022 as we went back to the office and ultrabooks became the preferred travel companion for road warriors. That hasn’t stopped tab launches. Apple revamped its entry-level iPad and added more wings to its top-of-the-line iPad Pro while brands like Xiaomi and OPPO launched new Android tabs.

APPLE IPAD PRO

THE DEBATE around the iPad’s capabilities as a productivity device has raged almost since the first iPad debuted in 2010. The iPad Pro line has strengthened the iPad’s reputation to get stuff done. It was Apple’s iPad OS that first launched in 2019 that has given a serious productivity boost to iPad’s Pro line. The 2022 iPad Pro takes it to the next level with the formidable M2 chip.

The new iPad Pro can leave many powerful laptops in the shade thanks to the M2 chip that features an 8-core CPU — up to 15 per cent faster than M1 — with advancements in both performance and efficiency cores, and a 10core GPU, delivering up to 35 percent faster graphics performance for the most demanding users. Combined with the CPU and GPU, the 16-core Neural Engine can process 15.8 trillion operations per second making the new iPad Pro even more powerful when handling machine learning tasks.