The latest iPad Pro rumor is ridiculous and I refuse to believe it

As I woke up on Thursday and scanned the Apple rumors circulating the internet, a certain set of headlines caught my attention: The upcoming iPad Pro will have an OLED display and will start at $1,499. According to Korea-based The Elec (translation), which has a pretty decent track record for rumors, the 11-inch model will start at around $1,500 and the 12.9-inch model will set you back $1,800.

Some quick calculations show that this price is nearly double that of the current 11-inch model, which starts at $799. It costs $400 more than the 12.9-inch iPad Pro with a Liquid Retina XDR display. It’s $300 more than a MacBook Air. It’s as much as a 24-inch M1 iMac with an 8-core GPU. And it’s only $100 less than the 27-inch studio display. Add a Magic Keyboard and 1TB of storage and you’re in 16-inch MacBook Pro territory.

Granted, Apple isn’t afraid to raise prices. The iPhone SE went from $399 to $429 last year. The 10th-gen iPad costs $449, a steep increase from the $329 price of the 9th-gen model. The M2 MacBook Air jumped $200 to $1,199. And the iPhone 15 Ultra is expected to be a $100 premium over the iPhone 14 Pro Max.

But in each of these cases, the rise in price was understandable. The iPhone SE has 5G support; the 10th generation iPad has a completely new design and a larger display; The M2 MacBook Air has a larger display, a new design and a faster chip. And when Apple launched the 10th generation iPad and M2 Air, Apple kept the older models as a cheaper option.

An OLED iPad Pro that costs $700 more than the current model doesn’t make sense. Apple’s current iPad screens are fantastic, and even the keenest of eyes will struggle to tell the difference from an OLED model. In my review of the iPad Pro 2020, I had a hard enough time telling a difference between the mini-LED display and the previous-generation standard LED — there’s no way an OLED upgrade is going to be worth $700 more than that current model. The current model is already one of the best tablets money can buy – if not the best – but I expect the price will keep sales pretty low. Add $700 and they would be anemic.

Even if an OLED iPad is part of a larger iPad redesign and repositioning, I have a hard time believing that Apple would release an iPad Pro that costs hundreds more than the current model, unless it has one much bigger screen. And even then, it would have to be something very special to justify spending $2,000 or more on it. Plus, Samsung sells an OLED tablet with a 14.6-inch screen for $1,099, so the display tech is clearly not like that The expensive.

Maybe one day Apple will release an OLED iPad Pro. Maybe it costs more. Perhaps it will be a new iPad Ultra model with high-end features and a titanium body. But if you think it’s $700 more than current models, I have an Apple car I can sell you. Or one of the current models that looks comparatively cheap.