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The newly announced iPad Pro hides a sneaky upgrade option that Apple didn’t mention during its event today. When you cough up the $600 it costs to jump from the 256GB base model iPad Pro to the 1TB version, Apple doesn’t just double the RAM along with that — it also puts a faster chip inside, going from a nine-core M4 chip to a 10-core version.
This is the first time Apple has offered a processor upgrade on a specific tablet model — in the past, no matter what other options you picked on a given tablet, you knew you were getting the same chip as any other configuration. In the past, Apple only tied RAM upgrades to storage boosts; that’s still true here, with the quantity doubling from 8GB to 16GB. You also get the privilege of buying Apple’s glare-fighting nanotexture glass for $100 (lucky you!), which isn’t available on the lower-end models. So, if you really want the best-performing iPad Pro, you have to bump your storage to the 1TB or 2TB configuration.